Citizenship Minister Alan Tudge flags values test for migrants

Citizenship Minister Alan Tudge has warned Australia is veering towards a “European separatist multicultural model”.

Tudge said the broader problem facing Australia was a cultural cringe. Picture: AAP

Citizenship Minister Alan Tudge has warned Australia is veering towards a “European separatist multicultural model”, flagging a rethink of immigration settings that could include new migrants being assessed against Australian values before being granted permanent residency.

In a landmark speech to a closed meeting of the Australia/UK Leadership Forum in London, Mr Tudge last night called for the nation to mount a “muscular” ­defence of Western liberal values and challenge the rise of identity politics, which was legitimising “practices and behaviours which should be deemed intolerable”.

“Hence, it takes years for some Western countries to even take a strong position against something as barbaric as female genital mutilation,” he said.

In the wake of the Turnbull government’s recent cuts to the annual permanent migration ­intake from 190,000 under Labor to less than 163,000 this year, Mr Tudge flagged potential changes to the vetting process to elevate a values assessment for new ­entrants.

He said the current practice of granting permanent residency to about 100,000 migrants a year ­before “ever stepping foot in Australia” needed “further consideration”.

But Mr Tudge did state that there weren’t the same expectations on arrivals under the humanitarian intake as there were under the migrant intake.

While hailing Australia’s integration model as uniquely successful in the world, it was now facing similar challenges to that of Britain, such as “ethnic segregation and liberal values being challenged”.

“Our ship is slightly veering ­towards a European separatist multicultural model and we want to pull it back to be firmly on the Australian integrated path,” he warned.

Mr Tudge, who is also the Multiculturalism Minister, ­repeated the Turnbull government’s commitment to an English language skills test for those seeking permanent residency and said that same principle should be ­extended to “values”.

“We place an emphasis on Australian values as the glue that holds the nation together,” he told the meeting.

“We do this through requiring people to sign a values statement before coming into Australia, ­satisfy a citizenship test and pledge allegiance before becoming a citizen.

“The weakness of this, however, is that we presently have few mechanisms to assess people against their signed statement.”

Mr Tudge said the broader and longer term problem facing Australia, and the West more broadly, was a cultural cringe in promoting a core set of values.

“We need muscular ongoing promotion of our values: of freedom of speech and worship, equality between sexes, democracy and the rule of law, a fair go for all, the taking of individual ­responsibility,’’ he said.

The implication of not acting was that Australia risked capitulating to a crisis of values in the West more broadly.

“We need to be confident enough in these values to call out practices which are contradictory to them, even if those practices are the ‘culture’ of a particular group,” he said.

He pointed out that in Australia, diversity, tolerance and inclusion were now the “near universally cited principles by NGOs, companies and the elite when discussing our multi-ethnic society”. “Diversity can be great, but not when it includes those who want sharia law and will use violence to achieve their ends,’’ he said.

“But these principles provide no guidance for what we actually hold dear as Australians and ­expect of each other.

“Similarly, tolerance is generally a good principle, but we should not be tolerant of FGM or child marriage or women being prohibited from learning English, studying, or even driving.”

Defending the success of Australia to date, Mr Tudge said new migrants coming to Australia achieved at “the same rate if not better than the home born”.

He cited the OECD’s Indicators of Immigrant Integration Report which cited Australia as unusually successful. One indicator was the unemployment rate of Australian migrants being the same as the home-born compared to the EU where the ­migrant unemployment rate is six percentage points higher.

“Our model is integrated multiculturalism,’’ he said. “It is not an assimilationist model, where people must leave their heritage behind. We don’t want or expect that, but of course where there are conflicts in cultural behaviours, Australian law and values must prevail.

“But nor is it a separatist model which we have frequently seen in Europe where people have sometimes brought their entire practices, language and culture and planted them into the new land, with little expectation placed upon them to share or mix with the local community.”

“Our challenges are made harder today because technology means that a person can communicate easily and cheaply back to their birth country or within their own diaspora. In short, a person can more easily live within a language and cultural bubble in suburban Australia.

“This is why we are continuing to think about this deeply and work on policies to address issues now, before they get larger.”

Mr Tudge said that having secured the nation’s borders, Australia was able to select people to enter the country “who want to become Australians, adopt our values and make a contribution to the nation”.

“We have generally done this well, through a combination of a heavy emphasis on skilled ­migration, making up almost 70 per cent of our permanent migrant intake, and a strict vetting process.

“In half of all cases, individuals have already been in the country for several years on short-term visas before they apply for permanent residency. We know a lot about them after they have been here for a few years.

“But in the other half of cases — constituting about 100,000 people each year — they are granted full permanent residency before ever stepping foot in Australia. This is less ideal, and something that requires further consideration.

Mr Tudge, being careful not to pre-empt any policy which could be taken to Cabinet, said the government’s current citizenship reforms, which included English language tests were still currently stalled in the Senate.

Of those, he said the extension of the ban on access to welfare payments from two year to four years for new migrants was critical to social cohesion.

But Mr Tudge said the same expectation was not placed upon those who came through the ­humanitarian intake. “I believe we do not place the same high expectations upon them to secure employment. We can do better here,” Mr Tudge said.