That said, it does bear following up.

Prospective citizens will be able to speak and understand English, but does that mean they will be able to speak and understand Australian?

Austalian isn’t a language. I understand your point about idioms – the fact that confusion can be arise even in cases of native English speakers from the same country, etc.

It leaves me with a bit of a ’so what?’ feeling though. Every now and then I have a hard time understanding idioms (from musical terms to slang used by different subcultural groupings, etc.). If I’m confused by an idiomatic usage of language or term, I ask to have it explained to me.

People might not understand some usages, but … so what? If they understand English they can presumably enquire as to the meanings of terms. If they don’t understand English then it’s kind of irrelevant anyway.

I’m afraid I just don’t get your point.

Granted that was years ago and I was only a teenager, but I’m sure you see my point.

Teenagers are dumb?

*sigh* Another irony meter to be repaired.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/we-dont-want-your-rich-migrant-culture/2007/08/28/1188067108372.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1

The whole thing is a farce.

I agree, but a harmless one. On the other hand, the immigration policies of the Fraser and Hawke govts often looked like a malicious practical joke. Whose brilliant idea was it to bring people like Habib into the country? Do we really want immigrants to drag their spouses around in a cloth bag?

Howard’s immigration policies, which focus on bringing in and bringing up migrants who will add to our economic prosperity rather than culltural diversity, have so far proven an overwhelming success.

The results speak for themselves. The unemployment and crime rates for incoming adoptives are low relative to the 1975-95 period when loonie Lefties and ethnic lobbies called the shots. As a consequence, natives are “relaxed and comfortable” about the adoptive inflow.

THe only test that should really matter in so far as immigrants are concerned is the IQ test. However the Cultural Left has managed to the subject of comparative intellectual performance, both within and between cultures, a taboo subject. Dont open that closet unless you want to rattle some ideological skeletons.

SO the government is reduced to drawing up proxy test for immigrant suitability. With somewhat farcical results, as Mark notes.

I would throw the question back onto Mark and ask him what what immigrant selection criteria, induction process and encultation policy does he think is in AUS’s national interest? I suggest that immigrants, whether black, white or brindle, should be fit, smart and nice. A bulging bank account would do no harm.

And they should be encouraged to be team players, fitting into the AUS mainstream. If you want OECD-standard outcomes you have to follow OECD-standard practices.

We can all agree that multiculturalism as it stands is too vague an answer to that question. Unless Mark is happy to let people like the Dayak headhunters in, on the grounds that they would bring much needed cultural diversity to our hum-drum lives.

“It is not unreasonable, four years into the time you have lived in this country, that you have some working knowledge of English

Short answer – how many languages does John Howard speak? It’s a very common attribute of those who have never successfully studied a foreign language to have any idea how hard it can be – and this doesn’t include picking up a bit of very similar European languages.

Well my question is: Why should anyone have to speak English to become a citizen here anyway?

No I don’t think they have to. I think it’s an extremely good idea that they do and to their benefit if they can but they can still be citizens as good as any other citizen with abilities far below what would be deemed necessary for this.

and there most certainly wont be translations, because as you infer Anthony, it has nothing to do with understanding principles at all.

Well that would be enormously cynical of me to say so but it wouldn’t be the first time language has been used in this country in this way.
I think this is an attempt to make a two tiered citizenship process and is a tummy rub to the kind of people who take the greatest pride in the things they’ve done nothing to achieve
1) the country they were born in and
2) the language they were born with.

“It is not unreasonable, four years into the time you have lived in this country, that you have some working knowledge of English and some understanding of the basic values and aspirations of Australian society.”

In other words, to do the test you need to speak and write English. So its unlikely there will be any accommodations such as audio, and there most certainly wont be translations, because as you infer Anthony, it has nothing to do with understanding principles at all.

Well my question is: Why should anyone have to speak English to become a citizen here anyway? Does a migrant who comes here as an adult with identity fully formed, ever have to identify as unproblematically Australian anyway? Time eventually works on the generations and brings about the assimilation Howard is so anxious to force onto people, so what is this about?. We have already proved in this country its not necessary for migrants to speak english, it makes things harder for the migrant (though my dad got by just fine thank you very much), but it is not necessary.

Well bugger Howard, cause this is another way for him to homogenise this country. He is so busy erasing sites of difference, I wont be surprised if pretty soon he will be asking prospective citizens to powder their faces white with a straight face, after four years or so, just so they can integrate better, you know. God forbid, people should betray any signs that multiculturalism still thrives in the nation and continues even against the concerted effort to erase it. Abhorrent after all that some “ethnics” continue in the outrageous notion that they can become Australians but continue to identify with the national identity of their country of origin, maintaining, against every imperative of this govt, the cultural values of that country, whether or not they match up with Australian ones.

To paraphrase Groucho – I wouldn’t want to belong to a club that wouldn’t have these people as members.

David – an audio version wouldn’t necessarily help but a translation would – because we’re interested in understanding the principles right?

It also puts the Australian debate in context. We have a long way to go before reaching the excess of the Chinese party-states, either KMT or CCP, who have deployed nationalism in their interests over the last century, but the principles of the politics of it are not so different.

And the other lesson shouldn’t be forgotten, either, that nationalism can be a force of resistance against empire and against the very nation-states which appropriate it and deploy it. It worked that way in Taiwan in the 1970s, and its logic led to the unravelling of authoritarianism there in the 1980s, and it has worked that way in China, too, as a part of the 1989 protest movement, for example. Nationalism a high-stakes strategy for any government, including ours.

I would *think* that the government will provide a audio version… eventually. I think they’ll get too much flack if not – perhaps I’m wrong?

I suspect that wont be the case David. The people who would no doubt make the most grateful citizens in this country are the ones who wont be able to do it. ABC reported on this:

There are also concerns that the Federal Government’s planned citizenship test will marginalise humanitarian refugees – especially women.

South Australia’s Migrant Resource Centre spokeswoman Eugenia Tsoulis is worried that some migrants would take many years to qualify for citizenship under the new system.

She says the test would exclude many migrants who have come to Australia for humanitarian reasons.

“I am actually quite worried about … a number of women who will be illiterate and will not be able to actually sit for that test,” she said.

“It’s just a matter of fact. It doesn’t mean that they’re not productive women, it doesn’t mean they can’t do cleaning jobs or do other things, but they physically would not be able to do the test.”

My bet is that refugees will be thinking its pretty bad really.

Of course the questions are going to be dumb. Who could find a list of simple and uncontroversial questions with single word/multiple choice answers that wouldn’t be 1) banal or 2) unknown by 80% of Australians.

Although it’s dumb populism, I don’t think it’s all *that* harmful. Anyone can cynically spend a couple of hours learning answers from a book.

As for the “values” component, no one is going to be stupid enough to get wrong some trite question like “Australia believes in a) mateship – lending a hand to your fellow Australians or b) laziness – dolebludging and living of the hard work of your fellow taxpayers.”

This is why the test is 1) so pointless and 2) not particularly harmful.

Especially when the Ilsmaists are dyslexic.

“The test is imperfect, but it is a start.”

Newsflash. Ilsmaist terrorists tend to be highly educated and they would be smart enough to bone up on all the necesaary Australiana trivial pursuit to pass the test.

Whereas your garden variety refugee from say Somalia who is trying to get away from the Ilsmaists would be most likely to fail the test.

reality of global Ilsmaist terrorism.

Well there certainly is anxiety, but anxiety isn’t necessarily rational.

But, do tell, how will the test defend us against the frightful hordes of “global Ilsmaist terrorism.”? Or are you, like Hendo, a devotee of symbolism in politics? Funny how that’s bad when Keating did it, but good when JHo does it.

Seriously, where’s the link – except for prejudice and its reinforcement?

The citizenship test itself is an extremely clumsy and blunt instrument. While I agree with you its design is about a lot more than improving immigration selection processes, it is certainly about a lot more than members of some mythical national ‘exclusive club’ feeling chuffed in their exclusivity!

There is a very real anxiety surround national identity and the reality of global Ilsmaist terrorism. The test is imperfect, but it is a start.

Thanks for your observations about the New Life movement, MH. It would have to be particular to Taiwan though, wouldn’t it, given that it was set up by Chiang Kia-shek?

New Life began in the 1930s on the mainland, before the KMT took Taiwan from Japan in 1945 and Chiang Kai-shek relocated to Taiwan in 1949. Taiwan’s national identity as it is currently imagined has a (very) complex relationship to it. The national identity discourse on the mainland is very Sunist (as in Sun Yat-sen) in its ideology – all that stuff about 5000 years of history, China “awakening” or “standing up”, the national myth of humiliation by foreign powers, and race, which is central to Chinese nationalism. In political terms the Party (i.e. the CCP) constructs itself as congruent with the nation (some interesting parallels with the Liberal’s current kick). Like all nationalisms, it doesn’t withstand much scrutiny. I once wrote a paper comparing the nationalist claim over Taiwan with that of Tibet. Both “inalienable” parts of China, but the bases of the claims are somewhat different. I mentioned New Life, though, because the ideology of Chinese nationalism holds that a Chinese person is essentially Chinese whether they like it or not. It is an objective essence which must be demonstrated by behaviour. So it is very regulatory. There’s a lot of work on these issues, but the most detailed writing of my own is about the first Diaoyutai Islands movement in 1971 in Taipei (I published a book on Taiwanese identity last year) which was a Chinese nationalist protest culminating in a “blood petition” which 2000 student signed using their own blood – so ritual, nation, the body, race and blood, all there. Some of it is here.