In Defence of an Inclusive Citizenship

FECCA Congress - Hobart, July 31 2007

A Speech on the Changes to Australia’s Citizenship Laws

by Peter van Vliet Executive Officer, Ethnic Communities’ Council of Victoria

Thank you for the opportunity to address the FECCA Congress 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.

It is common knowledge 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.

Flowing from the Act was a dictation test which allowed immigration officers to conduct a test on potential migrants in any European language.

The purpose of the test was of course to screen out non-British migrants by insisting they write a passage of fifty words in any European language until they failed. The test was specifically designed to enforce Australia’s then White Australia Policy.

It is somewhat ironic that a century later the barriers are again going up. Again today we are facing the introduction of a higher level citizenship test which could potentially be used as a discriminatory mechanism to deny citizenship to certain groups of people.

Download FECCA Congress Speech (42 KB)