Gavan O'Connor (Corio, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Not surprisingly, Member for Corangamite, none were available. So we have the Prime Minister of this country saying to the migrant population of Australia: ‘It is time that you took a test; you are going to be tested out of 200 questions and you are going to have to answer 30 with a pass mark of 60 per cent and it is all going to come out of a resource book. But, by the way, we haven’t even done any of that. We don’t even know which values we are talking about. We don’t really know which historical questions there will be,’ et cetera. I think that at that point the process of this bill coming into existence was exposed. There is nobody in this chamber who would deny that citizenship is a very important source of identity for us all. When we travel, we love to be considered as and let everybody know that we are Australians. Indeed, when citizenship ceremonies are held, we welcome those people who have made that momentous decision and we encourage and support them in making that great decision to become citizens that enhances their identity as Australians. Nobody has argument with that particular proposition. What we on this side of the House have argument with is a government that seeks to deliberately manipulate this issue for its own political purpose.

As I said, the Prime Minister made the statement and then, when we asked him to front up to the crease and bat out some questions that were involved in the test, he could not even answer them. The Prime Minister is asking people who want to take out Australian citizenship to answer questions that the government has not even thought about or thought through in proposing this legislation. The facts of the matter were that there was no test devised, there was no reference list of 200 questions and there was no base document from which the questions were sourced. So the fraudulent behaviour and confected concerns of members of the Howard government were exposed for us all to see. The government was prepared to risk community division and deliberately cause anxiety and concern among our migrant communities—all for the sake of wringing the political rag to pander yet again to the more ugly and destructive elements of its conservative constituency. The people of Geelong and the rest of the nation deserve better.

I want to share with members of government and my side of the House aspects of the Geelong experience. It is something of which our community is extremely proud. We are a multicultural community in Geelong and proud of it. I have been the member for Corio since 1993 and have seen my community mature and grow in tolerance and understanding over that time. As each new wave of settlers has sought sanctuary in Geelong to build a better life for themselves and their families, through their efforts, those migrants have made an enormous contribution to the economic prosperity of the region, and they have enriched its social and cultural life immensely. On behalf of the wider community, I thank each and every one of them for choosing Geelong as their home and for their personal contribution to making Geelong the great city and wonderful place to live that it is. Geelong’s diverse ethnic communities come together under the umbrella of the Geelong Ethnic Communities Council, which, since its inception, has played a very constructive role in giving each community an opportunity to formally have its say on issues affecting migrants and the provision of services to migrant families. Not only that, it is a major promoter and supporter of Geelong’s great Pako Festa, a multicultural festival that is now acknowledged to be one of the best in the country.

It is not only in the economic, cultural and social fields that migrants have made a great contribution. There has been one in the sporting field as well. Members of this House will note that Geelong is on the top of the AFL ladder.

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