Monday’s piece on the Citizenship Test generated some intriguing comments in Crikey yesterday and here too — but this one takes the biscuit.
Adrian Ridgway writes: Stilgherrian must be an idiot — my eight year son old got thirteen of the sample questions right — without referencing the booklet! My guess Stilgherrian must have gone to Grammar or one of those other special schools where the only skills necessary are football and socialising with the right sort of people — he’s probably a lawyer or stockbroker these days. Or maybe an immigration broker. Latte-set liberals (small l) need to pull their heads in — being invited to become an Australian citizen is a privilege — not a right, just as Stilgherrian probably exercises the right to invite who he chooses to a party in his into his home, we as a society should be allowed to exercise the right to determine who, and under what circumstances, immigrants are allowed to enter Australia. The point of the test is not to put up a barrier to anybody, but to enshrine in law as part of the process Immigrants understand they are joining an established society, not establishing colonies. (Many apologies to Aboriginal Australia — we knew not what we did at the time).
Just how many ways can one paragraph be wrong? And I’m not talking about the typos…
I love it!
5 Random Semi-Related Posts
Tags: citizenship, crikey
-
The non-sequiturs in there made my head hurt.
-
Any time you want to leave us some investment tips, though….
-
That’s great. Personally I’m a latte-sipping socialist, not least because of my experiences of the doctrines of privilege in private schools.
-
@Snif: Buy the shares when they’re cheap, and sell them when they’re more expensive. [nods] Also, only bet on the horse which wins the race.
@Quatrefoil: “The doctrines of privilege in private schools,” eh? Spot on there! Prince Alfred College certainly had plenty of that. Constant reinforcement that you were part of an “elite” and that if you passed you’d automatically gain entrance to The Good Life. It disgusted me — because by and large the students were spoiled, self-centred boorish arseholes.
Except I was a scholarship student, there on my ability rather than through mummy and daddy’s chequebook, so I was constantly reminded that I was not one of the “elite” and didn’t belong. Somehow, though, this farm boy still managed to adopt the “Adelaide private schoolboy accent” known to linguists. Call it “protective camouflage”.
-
Speaking of anti-Australianism, Kerry Nettle didn’t sound too chuffed.
Then there was the issue of whether or not the government’s proposed citizenship test would achieve its objectives. We had an extraordinary number of witnesses appear before the committee to say that, no, it would not achieve the objective of improving cohesiveness and that, rather, it was likely to fuel division within our society and undermine existing English language programs.
http://parlinfoweb.aph.gov.au/piweb/Repository/Chamber/Hansards/Linked/5596-1.PDF
-
@zzkx: Well spotted! That’s exactly what I was talking about in my original post. All the talk — including my own! — about whether the content of the information booklet is appropriate or not is irrelevant. The test itself simply is not a useful tool.
More Stilgherrian
Crikey
Delicious
Dopplr
Facebook
Flickr
LinkedIn
newmatilda.com
Patch Monday
Qik
Stilgherrian Live (Ustream)
The Drum (ABC)
Twitter
ViddlerProject TOTO
Follow my travels to Tanzania for Project TOTO. Support ActionAid Australia by making a donation.
6 comments
Comments feed for this article
Trackback link: http://stilgherrian.com/personal/slagged_off_nationally/trackback/