Review of Citizenship Testing Bill submissions

While there is another day to go, I’ll give a quick review of submissions on the JingoismCitizenship Testing Bill 2007 as I look like being off-line for a few days.

Updates for later submissions now included at bottom of post.

Submissions seem to fall into four categories:

• Personal stories
• Civilized submissions that were against or suspicious of the bill
• Civilized submissions that supported the bill (whatever I think of their reasoning or omissions)
• Submissions the seemed less civilized and wanted the bill and associated tests to be so harsh few natural-born Australians would pass it.

Let’s deal first with the points of those that were wary of the bill and associated regulations (including mine).

The skeptics, while supporting the idea of migrants (and existing citizens) having greater awareness of the nature of the Australian state, showed many common concerns.

Skeptics were concerned about the arbitrary content that a Minister could include in the test, and were dubious of how "Australian" values (as opposed to "Universal" values) could be tested without being properly codified, the questionable utility of the test for determining suitable citizens, and the possibility that better citizenship could be achieved in other ways.

As the Scots representative on the Ethnic Communities’ Council of Victoria said:

… the kind of testing seems quite inadequate, perhaps irrelevant, to its apparent purpose: to establish the applicant’s worthiness to be a citizen of this country.  …  The considerable amount of money spent on setting up the proposed testing would be far more productively spent on extending the availability of English education for new arrivals. They would then learn about – and contribute to the development of Australian values

The Castan Centre for Human Rights Law (Monash Uni) made a similar point about utility:

It is difficult to understand how a formal test, which focuses on an applicant’s knowledge of Australian history and undefined aspects of Australian culture and values, will assist migrants to integrate into the Australian community or generate a desire in them to be "good citizens".  Such a test merely requires a person to do the required reading and then tick the correct boxes based on what they have prepared. It does nothing to encourage them to participate or connect with the wider community.

In general the skeptics wanted tools available to allow people to be better, more engaged citizens.  Fans of the thrust of the bill were, in general, taking the attitude "me and my kind are fine… keep more people out".

The Australia for Australians submission is an extreme example, but unfortunately reflects the views of many Howard voters.  While this submission wanted proof from migrants of being able to "both read and speak legible and clearly understandable written English", a knowledge of our involvement in major wars, and

strong understanding of Australian culture, mateship, dress, love of sport, work ethic, our love of freedom, womens and children’s rights, the rule of law, our overridiing democratic government, our Christian heritage based society, our honesty and openness.

Yes, sic, the typos were many ("elligible", "all the test criterior", "disfunctional", and even "Auatralia"), while the "openness" is clear from the requirement for 90% white immigrants, and

… there should be a ban on allowing Muslims into the Australia – from whatever country – no exceptions

Ad hominem?  Possibly – but the author was fairly uncompromising on the need for Australians to have good English, so I guess a Media Watch moment or two is warranted.  Oh, mea culpa, I had at least one typo in mine.

Interestingly, Australia for Australians may have understood the Howard agenda better than I: "It is time an Australian Government got immigration policy and its proposed censorship test right."  (David Marr must write an addendum to his QE26 essay!)

Perhaps Australia for Australians could run the little self-test using the attachment to the submission by Prof George Williams (UNSW Faculty of Law) which covers then ignorance of basic facts about the Australian political system, even among his students.

Australia certainly does not have a bill of rights, yet most of us think that we do.  A Roy Morgan poll taken for Amnesty International in July this (2006) found that 61 per cent of us mistakenly believe that Australia has a bill of rights.  If the U.S. has one, it seems that people think so do we.

New citizens should know how our systems work, but so should we.  We need more investment in education to make sure that not only new, but also current citizens, have the information they need to be good Australians.

The Curtin Uni Centre for Human Rights Education

gave the best coverage of the problems for disadvantaged groups, but also made the following, very important point:

The proposed changes encourage a politick of fear at a time when we need cross cultural dialogue,

Curtin Uni CHRE also made the legal point ^[1] that cites Article 34 of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and Article 32 of the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, saying the test could:

(run) contrary to Australia’s international obligations which state that Australia should "facilitate" rather than obstruct the acquisition of citizenship by refugees and stateless persons.

Interestingly, those who supported the thrust of the bill tended to make a big deal of action in the time of war, and wanted to make a point about Christianity.  Curiously, the Festival of Light did not mention Christianity (perhaps military action is more important to them than pacifism).

One submission, from South Australian MP Bob Such, was fully supportive of the bill, and did not see any legal or administrative problems, but at least did give a broader understanding of Australian values than most of the fans of the bill:

… should be required to demonstrate an understanding of life in Australia, including its indigenous people, the wider Australian culture, … ecology & the environment, … not simply key dates but the flesh and bones of history.

Well, at least potential citizens will have an understanding of how great a range of attitudes they’ll face if they come to Australia!

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Update ….

The Social Issues Committee, Country Women’s Association of NSW are getting up-in-arms too.  They’ve got more on their mind than scone recipes these days, and raised many issues in common with other skeptics, and added this new one:

Finally, what is the point of the whole exercise in the face of the following paradoxes: 9/11 and the London Underground Bombing perpetrators included citizens, some of whom were locally born. A citizenship test would be meaningless when seen in this light, if it is supposedly designed to keep out would-be terrorists.

The WA Minister for Multicultural Interests and Citizenship, Ljiljanna Ravlich made an interesting point about the inconsistency between 23A(7) of the proposed bill (which states the Minister’s decisions are not subject to the normal controls of Legislative Instruments) and the Legislative Instruments Act 2003.  She also questions the steep rise in fees.

It is also worth reading Prof Kim Rubenstein’s contribution given his experience, and indeed was a consultant to the Commonwealth (but not DIMIA/DIC in the development of the bill), as well as an author and High Court practitioner on the subject..  He stresses he was ignored by DIMAC/DIC. He pulls apart the ideas the Act has about the differences between citizens and non-citizens relating to the need to obey the law, and even be part of military efforts.

He is more specific than others about the ignorance of natural-born Australians:

If a formal citizenship test is introduced, it should not only apply to applicants seeking the grant of citizenship, but should also be considered as a method of testing for those who automatically become Australian citizens by birth (or through other automatic means). That is, the questions asked of those seeking citizenship by grant could be applied to those people when they enroll on the electoral roll.

The Victorian Immigrant and Refugee Women’s Coalition pointed to the 70% of 148 published submissions for the 2006 discussions on the issue were against the idea behind the bill.  I note this is not highlighted indicated on the citizenship.gov.au site, and further that the summary report from that consultative process gives a lot more emphasis on the values Australians should have, but little to the concept of a test (see p4), which is opposed by 68% of organizations (14% "unclear" and 18% in favor).  Unfortunately, 1500 odd individual submissions aren’t public because of the need to anonymize them, or the department is having trouble contacting people to seek consent to publish.  (I wonder how hard they tried).

Here is the 2007-07-31 review of the committee report.

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Note 1: Article 32 (Naturalization) of the Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons states: The Contracting States shall as far as possible facilitate the assimilation and naturalization of stateless persons. They shall in particular make every effort to expedite naturalization proceedings and to reduce as far as possible the charges and costs of such proceedings, and has identical wording with Article 34 of the Convention relating to the Status of Refugees.

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See Also
This site’s Parliamentary Submissions guide
Citizenship Testing and Renouncing Citizenship on citizenship.gov.au
(Does anybody see a weirdness in the following: "You can renounce your Australian citizenship if:… it is considered that it would not be in the interest of Australia for you to renounce." In other words, it seems, the government is happy for the best citizens to go away!)

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