Australian citizenship: removing the welcome mat?

Mr Robb also states that citizenship “is more than a ceremony”. This follows on from Mr Robb’s oft-repeated claim that citizenship is being thrown around “like confetti”. The implications here are that people are not taking their new Australian citizenship seriously. Yet there is no evidence provided to back up this claim.

Mr Robb’s paper fails to provide any evidence that people are refusing to learn English and does not comment on some of the barriers to learning English faced by new migrants. Rather than imposing a discriminatory citizenship test the Government could consider providing more flexibility in the provision of English language training through more flexible and better funded English language training. The journey to English language proficiency is hugely important but people need help.

The Prime Minister, John Howard, has recently lavished praise on the Australian Greek community as an example of a community that has successfully integrated into the Australian community while retaining a love of their country of origin.

The irony of the Prime Minister’s comments is that the Greek community has relatively low rates of English language proficiency in comparison with other communities, with 67.9 per cent of Greek Australians reported as having good English from the 2001 census. Many older members of the Greek Australian community would not pass an Australian citizenship test with a stricter English component.

The Government’s citizenship paper lists Australian values as including respect for the freedom and dignity of the individual, support for democracy, commitment to the rule of law, the equality of men and women, the spirit of a fair go and mutual respect and compassion for those in need.

Looking at those six value sets, democracy and the rule of law are already covered by our current citizenship pledge and are of course central Australian values, as well as being values practiced by a large number of nations of the world, if not all. “Respect for the individual” while not inherently contentious draws heavily on the Western liberal tradition.

Supporting the equality of men and women seems reasonable but it must be stressed that this is only a recent Australian value. About 20 years ago women couldn’t get into the Melbourne Cricket Club and Australia’s largest religion, Catholicism, still disallows female priests. The final two values, of a fair go and mutual respect, are hardly Australian values but are actually universal values found in a vast array of nations and different religious and secular beliefs.

The problem with trying to define “Australian values” beyond democracy and the rule of law is that they are not necessarily agreed values. Pluralism, or the right to hold different values beyond the acceptance of democracy and the rule of law, is arguably one of the most important values in a multicultural society and effectively rejects a detailed list of agreed values.

Multiculturalism could also be considered a quintessential Australian value as recently argued by our former Governor General, Sir William Deane.

The proposals within the Government’s Citizenship paper may cause significant discrimination against new migrants, and in particular against refugees from non-English speaking backgrounds.

Under Australia’s current off-shore humanitarian migration program about 70 per cent of migrants are currently sourced from Africa including a significant number from non-English speaking countries such as Sudan. Placing a further requirement for higher-level English on such people to become Australian citizens, having already accepted them as residents, would effectively create a situation of “double jeopardy” for these people.

Many African humanitarian migrants are illiterate in their own language and have not even had basic educational experiences after long periods in refugee camps or living in severe hardship. Some refuges may never have sat in a classroom or attended school. Simply holding a pen and writing may be a foreign experience to some refugees. To expect such people to achieve a level of English higher than basic in a short period of time sometimes with no more than 510 hours of government subsidised English language training is often unrealistic.