The ridiculous result of the hard new citizenship test

OPINION: So much for keeping us safe from terrorism and promoting Aussie values. The new citizenship test will do the exact opposite.

OPINION

The Australian citizenship test is about it get a whole lot harder, if the government gets its way.

Immigration Minister Peter Dutton wants to beef up character requirements, toughen English language conditions, increase how long permanent residents must spend in Australia before applying and add a whole bunch of new questions to the test.

This, the government claims, is essential to keeping us safe from terrorism and making sure new citizens share Aussie values.

Except the changes won’t do anything of the sort. If anything, they’ll do the exact opposite, creating a growing group of people who have the right to live in Australia forever but who will never be welcomed at citizens. How is that a good thing?

Consider just one element of the changes being put forward — the heightened English language requirements.

Under Peter Dutton’s proposal, migrants will be required to demonstrate university level skills in reading, writing, speaking and comprehension to become citizens. If you’re wondering what that looks like, well, here are just two example sentences from the extensive English comprehension section:

The worldwide coal industry allocates extensive resources to researching and developing new technologies and ways of capturing greenhouse gases. Efficiencies are likely to be improved dramatically, and hence CO2 emissions reduced, through combustion and gasification techniques, which are now at pilot and demonstration stages.

See what I mean?

The test requires English language skills of far greater standard than is required to participate in everyday life in Australia. Some Australians would probably struggle to pass.

Now, if you’ve spent the better part of a decade in a refugee camp, if you’ve seen war and dealt with untold trauma, if education in your own language has been constantly disrupted — well, suffice to say this test is a very big ask.

Experts warn this change would have the harshest effect on humanitarian entrants. That is, refugees fleeing persecution and who we have invited to come and live permanently in our country.

This creates an incredibly perverse situation of having people with the right to live permanently in Australia, who have fled their home country, but will never be welcomed at true members of the Australian family.

It is a cruel and unnecessary punishment for being from a non-English speaking country.

There is a huge gap between what the government claims these changes will achieve and what they will actually achieve. The actual outcome will likely be this: Citizenship will become further and further out of reach for people who already have the right to and do live permanently in Australia.

This kind of policy cuts against the inclusive approach to citizenship policy that we’ve championed for half a century since White Australia was abolished.

Australia rightly sets a very high bar to someone gaining permanent residence. It is hard to become a permanent resident of Australia and so it should be. However once an individual and their family have been awarded the right to live in Australia forever — to access welfare benefits, to use Medicare, to send their kids to public schools, to pay taxes — why would we then make it harder for them to make that final step of becoming Australian?

Surely, by that point we want to do everything we can to make permanent residents feel included and accepted as “one of us”. And the ultimate step in that direction is to become citizens of Australia.

The first citizenship ceremony I ever attended was my dad’s. I would have been six or seven years old and I’m sure I was wearing a new dress to mark the occasion. Young as I was, I don’t remember many specific details. I recall mum telling me it was a day worthy of celebration and wondering if that meant there would be cake. I can still picture dad standing at the front of a hall, saying complicated words aloud and wearing his best suit.

I know we went for a walk in some nearby gardens afterwards and mum took pictures of some rose bushes. Dad was given a little tree by the government and when we got home, he planted it on the far side of the house, next to his favourite Collingwood football player garden gnome. Peter Daicos, Number 35.

There is something extraordinary about someone who was born elsewhere saying “Yes, me too. I love this country just like you do, so much so that I want to become one of you”. To choose — rather than chance — one’s citizenship of Australia is something to be celebrated, not denigrated.

Jamila Rizvi is a writer, presenter and news.com.au columnist. In a former role she worked for the Labor Party. You can follow her on Facebook and Twitter.