Kerry Nettle (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The other question I want to ask, which again came up in the Senate inquiry, is about the best way for people to learn about Australian values, as the government defines them. There was a suggestion made by people who appeared in front of the Senate committee that if you teach someone values in their own language they may have a better capacity to understand the intricacies around what values or content you are trying to get across than if you teach them in a language which is not their first language. I note that, in the United States citizenship test, people can learn the values part of the citizenship test in their own language, and I presume that is because they have made an analysis or an assessment that the best way to convey what can be quite complex, complicated or detailed information is in the language that the person best understands. I acknowledge it is not the government’s intention to do that here.  I ask the minister whether the government has looked at and considered that example in the United States—where you learn about the values in your own language, in your first language—and rejected it.