Petro Georgiou (Kooyong, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is now transparently clear that both sides of the House will support the Australian Citizenship Amendment (Citizenship Testing) Bill 2007. Unfortunately, I believe this bill is overwhelmingly regressive. I believe that it turns its back on Australia’s tradition of inclusive citizenship and that it imposes a punitive test. I do not support the citizenship testing bill because there has been an utter failure to show that a new citizenship test is needed or that it will operate fairly. I do not support the bill because it sends a corrosive message to many people who would become citizens that they are undeserving of this status. I do not support the bill because the new test will prevent many meritorious aspiring citizens from full membership of the Australian community, and I believe this will diminish us as a nation.

This is not a matter of my personal opinion but a matter of evidence, which I and many others can personally affirm. The experience of my father is emblematic of the experience of hundreds of thousands of men and women. My father, Constandino Georgiou, came to Australia after the war. He raised and educated a good family and he worked two jobs for most of his life. He became a citizen in 1957, if I recollect, and he died at age 56. He was like hundreds of thousands of postwar immigrants—he, and they, earnestly tried to learn English but, despite their best efforts, they could not achieve a standard of English that would have enabled them to pass the test that this parliament is about to endorse. But, despite their limited English, these people committed to Australia. They enriched every facet of our nation’s life. They worked hard, they obeyed the law, they were good parents and fine neighbours. This is not about looking backwards; it is about the future. It is about the hundreds of thousands of migrants who are here now and who will come here in the future to make Australia their home and make their children our nation’s inheritance. It is about people who would make wonderful citizens but who would not pass the proposed test.

Let me set out why this bill is, in my view, an unsupportable measure. There has been a lot of talk about this test not signalling any significant change—that it is just a formalisation—but I do not believe that to be the case. Since Australian citizenship was created in 1949 and our country began its massive immigration program, successive governments have chosen an inclusive approach to citizenship. Discrimination which once existed against non-English-speaking migrants ended. English language requirements were eased. Residency requirements were made equal for all. Discriminatory voting privileges were addressed. Dual citizenship was allowed. All were required to attend a citizenship ceremony. The belief was that if we encouraged and embraced migrants who wanted to become Australians we would become a better and stronger nation.

The inclusiveness of our approach to citizenship has been sustained through massive changes in the racial and cultural composition of our migrant intake. It has to be said—and it is unquestionable—that we have sometimes felt anxious about the speed and magnitude of this change. But Australia has held fast and we have not compromised our belief in inclusiveness, and I believe we have been vindicated by society.

I think it is ironic that, while paying lip-service to the fact that our citizenship has been outstandingly successful, the advocates of this bill ask the parliament to reverse the longstanding thrust of our approach to citizenship. Let me make it clear: as so many have recognised in the course of this debate, if not before, this bill is not about the introduction of an Australian citizenship test, and I think there is a common misapprehension that no test currently exists. The existing law requires applicants for citizenship to be assessed at a compulsory spoken interview for a basic knowledge of English and an understanding of the responsibilities and privileges of Australian citizenship.

What this bill does, which I do not think is sufficiently recognised, is introduce a significantly tougher citizenship test than the present one. That is its explicit intention. The new test represents a fundamental shift from our focus on basic English-speaking ability and an understanding of citizenship. The test will be a test of literacy. It will be a test of the ability to read and comprehend written English and respond to written English at a computer to demonstrate a knowledge of Australian values, culture and history—a knowledge that many native-born Australians do not have. To pass the test applicants will have to study a book written in English and use a computer to answer 20 multiple-choice questions drawn randomly from a large pool of confidential questions determined by the minister.

Let us look at how substantial the case is that has been used to justify the imposition of this tougher test. The bottom line is that this case is utterly without substance. It is based on fallacious and unsubstantiated assertions. The first argument repeatedly advanced for a harsher test is that Australia today faces a new unprecedented challenge, a challenge posed by the intake of large numbers of migrants coming from cultures far removed from our own and from the cultures of earlier waves of European immigration. The facts refute this assertion. There has been a fundamental change in the composition of Australia’s immigration intake. That change took place 30 years ago with the demise of the White Australia policy and the growth of Asian immigration, which has exceeded European immigration every year since 1984. Australia met the challenge of that change, and there have been no major changes to our migrant intake since then. I seek leave to incorporate in Hansard graphs bearing out some of my statements.

Leave granted.

The graphs read as follows—

There have been some difficult and ugly moments in the process. In the 1980s we had the Asian immigration debate, which led some to call for a restriction on Asian migration, and we then had the One Nation outbreak. Today most of the people who were concerned about Asian migration have since accepted that they were wrong, and Australia has grown stronger, not by creating new barriers to citizenship but by maintaining our commitment to inclusion.

A second argument advanced for the tougher citizenship test is that many citizens do not value Australian citizenship because they can get it too easily. Citizenship, it has been suggested, is being scattered around like confetti. The only so-called proof of this was a single unattributed anecdote that at one citizenship ceremony a number of people left before the national anthem was sung. I think it is difficult to imagine a flimsier basis for a major change in public policy, which in a few years will cost over $100 million to implement.

A third argument for imposing a tougher English language test is that it will provide an effective incentive for migrants to learn English. Let me make my position unequivocally clear: I believe it is of the utmost importance that people are encouraged and supported to learn English. It benefits them. It benefits their families and the community. The community consensus shared by both migrants and the native born is that English is important for citizenship and the greater the proficiency in English the greater one’s ability to take advantage of the opportunities that Australia has to offer. Despite this, the proponents of the new test suggest without a single shred of evidence that many migrants are unmotivated or resistant to learning English and that the threat of denial of citizenship is an appropriate and effective spur to get them to study harder. I believe that this utterly misunderstands the migrant experience.

Migrants do recognise the centrality of English in Australian society and the importance of learning it. The bill uses the stick of denial of citizenship to penalise people without even having established the nature and extent of limits on English language fluency. Do some immigrants not want to learn or can’t they get into classes? Are they fully occupied in meeting other demands such as employment and family responsibilities? Are there simply limits on how much English some people can learn?

It is recognised that some people will not have the literacy skills required. It is said that in these so-called special cases a test administrator will read out the test questions and possible answers. But, if applicants do not have the literacy skills to read the questions, how does the minister think they will be able to study the book on which the questions are based? This is not just a misunderstanding of the migrant experience; it is based on a flawed perception of literacy and knowledge across the Australian community. The plain fact is that hundreds of thousands of Australians would fail such a test even when English is their native language.

Studies conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics indicate that 2½ million Australians have very poor literacy skills. One and a half million people who have English as their native language have great difficulty in using much of the printed material that is encountered in everyday life. The ABS says that these people cannot locate information on a medicine label giving them the maximum number of days the medicine should be taken and they cannot enter the number of tickets required on an order form.

This bill is premised on a belief that questions about Australia’s culture and history can generally be answered by primary school children or by secondary school children. The fact is that studies that have been undertaken show that 77 per cent of year 10 students do not know what Australia Day commemorates or the functions of the Governor-General and that only half of Australian students have a grasp of the purpose of democracy. The native born do not have to pass any tests to be citizens. That is as it should be. We got over the notion of literacy tests a long time ago. But, nonetheless, a test for citizenship for migrants should not demand a level of proficiency that is beyond the reach of a significant number of Australians who have English as their mother tongue. Rather than being an incentive to learn English, the new test will punish those with low English language proficiency who happen to have been born overseas. This is totally inconsistent with Australia’s commitment to equal treatment and a free go.

A fourth argument is that we should follow other countries—the USA, Canada and the UK. It has been said that these countries have perfectly functioning citizenship systems. So why, if these models are so good, should our test be even tougher than theirs? Our tests will demand knowledge of history that many native-born Australians would not be able to meet. The UK, which is consistently put forward as the preferred model, does not test history, explicitly on the grounds that it would be unfair to ask immigrants questions that many British people would have difficulty in answering.

The so-called successful UK test was introduced in November 2005, less than two years ago. In March 2007, it was revised because it was deemed to be too difficult for people with basic English fluency to study for it. The US test is currently being revised because it was found to be highly deficient in a number of respects, and a pilot program is being mounted in 10 cities to ensure that the new test works fairly and effectively. This experience shows that there is a need to proceed with caution and that we are being harsher than our so-called role models. But, transcending this, why should Australia culturally cringe to countries whose citizenship systems have yielded inferior results?

A fifth argument advanced by advocates of a tougher test is that the community needs to be assured that migrants are able to integrate into Australian society. It is said that the ability to pass a formal citizenship test will signal that reassurance to the broader community. Personally, I am not aware of any widespread community disquiet that needs to be addressed by imposing a tougher citizenship test. The evidence that is relied upon is an assertion that 60 per cent of a completely unrepresentative sample who responded to a government discussion paper said that they supported a formal citizenship test. Okay, let us take that for granted. But why is this evidence of a troubled community, in particular given the fact—as has been widely acknowledged in the course of this debate—that a test is already in place?

Despite the quite biased presentation in favour of a formal test, a quarter of the respondents opposed it and 15 per cent were unclear. It has been said that 60 per cent supported the introduction of the test. This is not the case. Sixty-seven per cent did not respond to the question asking whether knowledge of Australia is important, 60 per cent did not comment on whether English ability is important and 70 per cent did not address the issue of whether a demonstrated commitment to Australia is important. The question about what should be in a test, let alone in ‘the’ test, yielded no results—and I repeat, no results—that were statistically significant. I could go on, but, in brief, there was absolutely and unequivocally no majority in favour of the test.

Let there be no apprehension about the impact of the proposed new test: it will stop many migrants who are committed to Australia as their home from becoming citizens and thereby full members of our community. Hundreds of thousands of native-born Australians would not be able to pass the test. Low literacy skills should not make a new migrant unworthy of citizenship, just as they do not and should not debar the native born who are low in English fluency from the right to fully participate in the life of the nation.

Since the introduction of Australian citizenship, many hundreds of thousands of people have been accepted as citizens, despite having only basic English proficiency. They have made enormous and universally acknowledged contributions to their new nation. How can it be in the interests of cohesion and integration to impose new barriers to citizenship, barriers that would have prevented its acquisition by so many Australians who have proved themselves to be model citizens? Would having been refused citizenship have increased their commitment to and identification with Australia? Would it have accelerated their integration into our society? Would they have won the respect of other Australians if they had been permanently relegated to the position of guest workers? The only rational answer is no.

The fact that Australian citizenship laws have been made more inclusive in the past has provided a basis of trust, confidence and achievement. The fact that we accepted people with modest English language skills as citizens has broken down barriers, not maintained them. The establishment of this test will, I believe, diminish Australia. I do not believe that this will be apparent immediately, but I believe that it will happen, as the test excludes people who are committed to Australia and who could pass the present test. Their opportunities will be restricted, their participation will be impeded and the fairness and vitality of our society will be eroded. I do not support this bill and I cannot commend it to the House.

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