Louise Markus (Greenway, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Hansard source

I refer to the budget papers that relate to Australian citizenship, particularly output group 2.3 in table 2.2. I refer to the contributions section, where it states:

The Australian Citizenship output will:

…            …            …

• encourage the community to value citizenship and promote the acquisition of Australian citizenship.

Given that the Labor government has reduced the amount of funding for the promotion of Australian citizenship, how serious is the government about promoting citizenship? And given that the overall budget for citizenship has only increased by 1.68 per cent, according to table 2.2, can the minister confirm whether the government has any intention of watering down or abolishing the current citizenship test which forms part of the process of becoming an Australian citizen? More specifically in relation to the citizenship test, Richard Woolcott, chair of the review of the citizenship test, was quoted in Monday’s newspapers as saying the citizenship test was ‘still flawed because you can get 19 of 20 questions correct and still fail’. He was referring of course to the mandatory rights and responsibilities questions. Will the government rule out making any changes to the requirement for applicants to answer all three mandatory questions correctly?

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