A Speech on the Proposed Changes to Australian Citizenship Laws
VASST VCE Teachers Conference
19 March 2007 Caulfield Melbourne
Address by Peter van Vliet, Executive Officer
Thank you for the opportunity to address the VASST Conference today on the issue of Australian citizenship.
Today I wanted to focus on the politics of citizenship and look at the current debates around citizenship in Australia.
Australian immigration and Australian citizenship policies are of course closely linked. As Social Studies teachers I don’t need to tell you that at Australia’s Federation in 1901, one of the first Acts of the new federal parliament was the Immigration Restriction Act which entrenched Australia’s then White Australia policy.
However, world events like the retreat of the British Empire during the Second World War, the famous ‘Fall of Singapore’ and the bombing of Darwin by Japanese forces in 1942, forced Australia to rethink its migration and population policy.
Soon after the War Australians became citizens, rather than subjects, with the passing of the Australian Citizenship Act in 1948 by the Chifley Government. Around that time Australia’s large post-war migration boom also began.
‘Populate or perish’ was the theme and our brief brush with Japanese domination convinced Australians that the country could not sustain itself with a population of less than 10 million people.
Since the Second World War Australia has absorbed over 6 million migrants, around one million per decade. This has been one of the most successful, well managed migration programs in the world. It has literally changed the face of our nation.
The initial streams were from central and southern Europe, countries like Italy—and like Holland, where my father came from. Then came the Greek migration wave and later still the Indo-Chinese wave, stemming from Malcolm Fraser’s courageous decision to allow Vietnamese refugees to settle in Australia.
The White Australia policy was also effectively ditched from the late 1960s on, following both domestic and international pressure for our racially discriminatory laws to be scrapped.
It is worth noting that today most migrants come from the United Kingdom, China, India and New Zealand under our skilled migration program. This stream now forms the largest chunk of our immigration program. A small proportion of our migrants also come from countries like Sudan and Burma under our refugee program.
As we have absorbed these migrants our culture too has of course evolved. We have gone from being a predominantly mono-cultural Anglo-Saxon country, not forgetting of course Indigenous Australians, to a multicultural community, particularly in our big cities like Melbourne and Sydney.
Nowadays few people argue our post-war migration experience has not benefited Australia. Our population is over twenty million and we have passed through over a decade of economic growth—something few other countries in the world have achieved.
Our migration experience has enriched us: economically, socially and culturally. We have gone from being a society where around 97% of the population was from and Anglo-Celtic background to one where around one quarter of the population has a non-Anglo-Celtic background.
With this new multicultural society, Australian citizenship has become hugely important. Citizenship is a critical part of the migration experience. It is crucial to successfully integrating migrants into the Australian community.
A shared Australian citizenship breaks down the barriers of race, ethnicity and language. It unites all Australians around core values like democracy, the rule of law and our shared homeland.
Australian citizenship for the last forty odd years has been up until now profoundly democratic and egalitarian.
Becoming an Australian citizen has meant being welcomed into the Australian family. It means sharing the rights and responsibilities that go with citizenship: exclusive rights and responsibilities like voting, having an Australian passport, serving on juries, being able to work in our federal public service or serving in our armed forces.
Up until now people wishing to become Australian citizens had to have two year’s residency, pass a Basic English test, pass a character test, and make a public pledge to our country, our laws and our democracy.
This has been an inclusive process that has seen many migrants from non-English speaking backgrounds become citizens.
But now the barriers are going up. Undoubtedly since September 11, 2001, the Bali Bombings of 2002, the Iraq War from 2003 and the London Bombings of 2005, the values of cultural diversity and pluralism have been in retreat.
Perhaps not surprisingly some people in the West have responded in kind to these events. People have begun to question the value of multiculturalism. In January this year the Howard Government officially dumped the word multiculturalism from its list of Ministries. Integration has become the new buzz word.
With these seismic world events Australia has gradually, almost unnoticeably, become a less optimistic society. We have become a society less willing to accept the inherent decency in the hearts of most people we share this magnificent country with.
As Federal Labor MP Carmen Lawrence said recently, “The emphasis is (now) on exclusion rather than inclusion, on fear rather than hope.”
And now the new politics of fear have touched on our citizenship laws.
Last month, without much fanfare, new laws passed the Australian parliament that doubled the waiting period for Australian citizenship for some migrants from two to four years. Federal Labor supported this legislation in its final form.
This means that an African refugee, without adequate travel papers, may have to wait four rather than two years to obtain a valid passport and be able to visit a sick or dying relative overseas.
Shortly we also expect to see legislation mandating a much higher level computer based English test, as well as an Australian knowledge test.
Citizenship applicants will have to sign up to a list of six apparently core Australian values. These are values that are above and beyond the current public pledge to our country, our democracy and the rule of law.
Make no mistake about it this test will mean that a large number of migrants, and in particular refugees from non-English speaking backgrounds, will fail such a test. People without good English language skills will fail the test.
Some African migrants from Sudan and the Horn of African will fail the test. Some older migrants from countries like Vietnam and China would also fail the test.
As the prominent Victorian Liberal MP Petro Georgiou said last week this is a test that many Australian born citizens would also fail.
This is because the new test will require the extra skills of reading and responding to written English, further to the existing requirement for spoken English.
With one and a half million Australians from English speaking backgrounds having very poor literacy standards they may well fail such a test. Thankfully they will not have to reapply for their Australian citizenship under this new model!
The great bulk of migrants from our skilled migration program will pass the test easily as they already have good English skills. Ironically many of our skilled migrants, particularly from the United Kingdom, don’t necessarily want to become Australian citizens anyway.
What the Government’s new citizenship laws will do is discriminate against non-English speaking migrants seeking to become Australian citizens.
No one from the migrant sector is saying English language is not important. On the contrary, English language acquisition is hugely important: important for jobs, important for training, and important for successful integration.
But surely the aim of the government should be teaching rather than testing.
Migrants themselves want to learn English. No one enjoys sitting in queues or shopping and not being able to communicate with other people. Sometimes however, age, family commitments, long work hours or existing learning difficulties may prevent the quick acquisition of English for some people. For some people learning English can take a lifetime. Some may never get there!
The Government seems determined to use the stick approach by linking citizenship to a higher level English test that we know many people will fail.
Why not use the carrot approach of more flexible adult migrant English programs. Who knows we could maybe even remove the late night adult movies from SBS and have practical English lessons for new migrants! SBS might actually meet their charter obligations.
And we should never forget migrants’ kids generally have good English. In fact, journalist and author George Megalogenis has shown the sons of post-war European migrants have on average higher levels of education than their more established Australian counterparts.
The proposed citizenship laws are in my view an ill-conceived attempt to tap into the current climate of fear in our community, in this a federal election year.
The laws will do zip all to reduce the threat of terrorism in Australia. If anything they may well encourage a culture of exclusion among certain refugee communities that may have negative effects on our social harmony further down the track.
Australia is actually a world leader in successfully integrating migrants into our community. Sure each wave of migrants presents new challenges. I know that many schools and probably many of you individually are presently facing the challenge of schooling refugee kids from Africa who may have unique learning and literacy problems.
But modern Australia has always met these challenges successfully. On the whole our policies of inclusion, and our policies of multiculturalism which have allowed people to celebrate their own cultural identity, have made migration work in this country.
This has contributed to the economic prosperity we have today. It has enabled us to enjoy and celebrate a remarkable level of cultural diversity in this country.
As our population ages and skills shortages grow the on-going success of our migration program will become even more important.
The Government’s proposal for a high level citizenship test will diminish the universal citizenship that we have successfully established here in Australia. There will be a gradual removal of the common bonds that exist between all people of all backgrounds and between people of all literacy levels in Australia.
Australian citizenship is extremely important. As the leader of the Melbourne based Sudanese lost boys, Akoch Manheim, has said:
There are no words that truly express how it feels for a stateless person to receive the privilege of Australian citizenship in a country like Australia. An approximation might be the experience of a person who has battled a serious illness, experiencing the borderline of death, only to recover and resume full health. Citizenship is a gift of God of priceless value.
Akoch is right. Citizenship is a gift. And it is often only those that don’t have citizenship that realize how supremely important the gift is.
I just wanted to finish now with one final observation. This week you’ll notice some people such as me wearing orange ribbons. That’s because this week is cultural diversity week and on this Wednesday March 21 we celebrate Harmony Day, which also marks the United Nations day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.
In 1965 the United Nations enacted the International Covenant on the Elimination of all forms of racial Discrimination, which Australia ratified in 1975.
This is one of the great body of instruments of the United Nations, which includes the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, that seeks to protect the human rights of people around the globe.
All of these instruments were set up following the affronts to humanity we witnessed during the Second World War. Now more than ever the common human rights principles found in these instruments matter.
Interestingly Australia’s proposed citizenship laws potentially conflict with Article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which states that minority groups may practice their language rights free from discrimination. They also may conflict with Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that says everybody has the right to a nationality. But these are probably arguments for lawyers.
Let me conclude today by saying that these rights are important. An inclusive Australian citizenship is important. Australia shouldn’t retreat into a world of fear and difference. We should stand united around a common citizenship open to all people who have lawfully come to call Australia home and pass basic requirements. These are the bonds that unite us. Thanks for your time today.
