Alan Tudge, Australian Citizenship Minister wants the new migrants assessed against Australian values before a permanent residency is granted.
Addressing a leadership forum in London; Tudge said that the Federal Government is considering a rethink of the immigration policy that will include testing of Australian values of the immigrants before permanent residency is given.
According to Tudge the current system, which requires people to sign a value statement before coming to Australia, is inadequate.
“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 said.
In a 7 News discussion the anchor made a comment, “Until Australians know what our values are how can we expect migrants to know”, and then asked a question to Susie O’Brien, a Herald Sun Columnist. Susan’s reply was, “there are some Australian values; the Fair go, everyone gets treated equally, help out your neighbour, anti-discrimination, anti-racism, men and women are treated equally”.
Do all the Australians know that those are the Australian values? Do all the Australians practice those values?
We know that many of the values Susan mentioned are not practiced by a significant proportion of white Australian population. “Fair go, everyone gets treated equally, anti-discrimination, anti-racism”, for example, are not the values practiced by many Australians. Ask a few non-white Australians and you get the feel very quickly.
Yet we expect new arrivals to start practicing those values, which most of them eventually will, with or without the test. And the remaining will not practice those values, same as many Australians, even after passing the test.
The question is; will the new test add any value to Australian society? Will it benefit the new immigrants? Who will bear the cost of this new test – Australians or the immigrants? Is it just a political stunt to retrieve some of the One Nation party’s votes back to the Liberal Party in forthcoming election?
Some of us can remember a similar, 'Australian Citizenship Test' that was introduced by John Howard’s government in 2007. The reasons given for that test are similar to what Alan Tudge is talking about.
It’s interesting to note that the bill that lead to the Australian Citizenship Test was a result of mere 986 community votes.
Millions of tax payers money have been spent since then to support the bureaucracy and other resources required for the test.
Public money was also spent on advertising the new policy and the bill, which did help John Howard win the next election, but did not add any value to the Australian society.
So why are they talking again of the same useless wine, in a new bottle, with a new label.
Well the reason could be simple. There is an anti-immigrant wave going across Europe and America at the moment.
Viktor Orban won Hungary election due to anti-immigrant slogans he used in his election rallies. Donald Trump’s election campaign had a fair degree of anti-immigrant dose too.
It means that elections can be won by creating and exploiting anti-immigrant sentiments. And, that could be the crux of this proposed test, and the publicity its getting. And, that could well be the card Malcolm Turnbull is playing. It’s a bad card to play, but proven to be effective – at least for short term.
Pauline Hanson played that card with anti-Asian flavour in mid 1990s and became popular very quickly.
After a fraud conviction, she came back to One Nation party and rejuvenated her anti-something approach – this time being Muslims. Why Muslims? Because that’s what US has got since 9-11, and that is the current wave in Europe.
Regardless of her fear mongering and hate talks, Pauline Hanson has been able to polarise a big proportion of voters towards her party recently. The vote she is gaining is mostly coming out of Liberal vote bank.
The current sentiment of the voters are against federal Liberal party, and the Labour has a reasonable chance of winning next election, even without Hanson’s upsetting of the apple cart.
Proposed new immigrants' assessment could be one of the few remaining straws Liberals could be trying to win back some of the voters they have lost to One Nation.
So going back to the question; will the proposed test add any value to Australian society – the values as defined by Susie O’Brien?
First, O’Brien’s values are not just Australian values. With few possible exceptions, they are universal values. Its not a matter of knowing or not knowing those values, its a matter of practicing those values - something many Australians don't do themselves.
If approved and implemented; the pass rate of immigrants will be no different to the pass rate of Australians, if subjected to the same test. It will also be a test of memory rather than inherent or embraced values. And, the tested memory will be forgotten within couple of weeks after passing the test.
