citizenship

I agree with Tim Dunlop: “Just dump the stupid, politically motivated, shallow, ill-conceived thing.”

Today The Age reports that fear of failure is turning away potential citizens in droves.

Some migrants were too frightened to apply to become Australians because they feared they would be deported if they failed the controversial citizenship test, Immigration Minister Chris Evans has admitted…

Just 16,024 migrants applied to be citizens between January and March, compared with 38,850 at the same time last year.

I’ve written about this before, of course, both to point out how the whole concept is teh FAIL (to use current lingo), and how it was just pre-election dog-whistle politics anyway.

It’s pointless. I’m assuming there’s already a black market in the answers — though they’re in the book anyway. As one soon-to-be-citizen told me, “It’s all easy enough: 1. Barton. 2. Bradman. 3. Wattle.” And exactly how does that arcane knowledge prove you’re not a “bad person” in a way that isn’t covered by the police and other checks already in place?

Senator Evans, ruling out scrapping the test but setting up a committee to analyse its impact is just wasting taxpayers’ money. Just make a cup of tea, get yourself an Iced Vo-Vo or two, and work through the logic yourself. If you can, that is.

An Australian Citizenship certificate just isn’t Australian unless it’s soaked in beer and completely damaged, eh? Welcome, ’Pong.

I want a photo to be sitting at the top of the website through the night, not just the links digest and Twitter digest that appear at midnight. So, here’s ’Pong receiving his Australian Citizenship certificate from the Mayor of Marrickville, Councillor Dimitrios Thanos.

He’s a dentist, but we’re allowed to show you his face.

And doesn’t he look like he’s loving this? Still, we had a drink and chatted local politics afterwards. More of that later.

In theory, this post should only appear at two minutes past midnight on Saturday morning, Australian Eastern Daylight time. If anyone’s visiting at that time, please let me know if it worked.

This coming Wednesday evening, the Mayor of Marrickville will cast a political spell and ’Pong will become an Australian citizen.

The ceremony is bound to be a dull local affair in his office. I’ve no idea why this wasn’t all done in the public ceremony on Australia Day, given that ’Pong’s citizenship was approved before the election last year. I presume the word is “incompetence”.

Still, the following Sunday 16 March we’ll be celebrating in appropriate style with alcohol and burnt, dead animals. I just don’t know what’d be an appropriate gift. Suggestions?

[Photo of ’Pong taken by me on 23 March 2004, just after ’Pong had been a movie extra in either Son of The Mask or Dynasty: The Making of a Guilty Pleasure. Both so classy...]

This Boeing 747-400, photographed at Sydney airport last Friday, belongs to Thai Airways International. If you happen to have decent eyesight, you can confirm this by the fact that it has “Thai” painted on the side. Ownership is not about paint, however.

If you paint “Thai” on my side, I do not then become the property of Thai Airways, not even if you’re employed by Thai Airways to do so. Paint is just paint, whereas ownership of property is an abstract concept. A concept which can be supported or asserted by paint or other physical signs, but still an abstract concept which can only be agreed upon by sentient beings.

But what about another concept: nationality?

Nationality is not about paint either. Paint “Thai” on my side if you like. If you use the right brush I might even enjoy it. But I won’t become even remotely Thai. However is nationality something which is just agreed upon? Or is there something essential — in the core meaning of the word, having to do with essence — which makes someone immutably Thai or Australian or Czech or Chinese?

And how does nationality relate to similar concepts, such as ethnicity or race or culture?

I usually don’t think about these categories. The variation within them outweighs the supposed differences. People of every nationality range from amiable to arsehole. However that aircraft — that specific aircraft — has brought it all into focus.

Read the rest of this entry »

Another week, another big-spending government TV “information campaign”. This one’s for the new Citizenship Test — and gosh, that just happens to be a Coalition-specific policy and it just happens to be running when we’re not in an election campaign, honestly.

And last night immigration minister Kevin Andrews was seen on TV with a bunch of potential citizens — all of whom, by some happy coincidence, had reasonable English and were not particularly unphotogenic. But he was still defending the test.

This TV advert is little more than dog whistle political propaganda. That’s clear for two reasons. First, look closely at the script (below). And second, if you wanted to reach the people most directly affected, mass TV advertising is far from cost-effective.

Read the rest of this entry »

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!

Excellent. On the basis of the Draft Citizenship Test Resource Book released yesterday I’d fail Australia’s new Citizenship Test. And if a privately-educated 5th-generation Aussie-Anglo like me can’t do it, I reckon few other Australians would pass either.

But that’s OK, because a multiple-choice “Citizenship Test” is meaningless. Let’s remind ourselves what happened when Apu went for US citizenship in The Simpsons. “Being American” was reduced to a cliché.

And the booklet itself is a gorgeous piece of political propaganda that’ll achieve the following:

• The bitter old Alan Jones listeners Howard thinks he needs to placate will be relieved to see an emphasis on the UK as the biggest source of migrants and Christianity as the biggest religion. They’ll think this will stop the “wrong” people becoming citizens. Once more, Howard is Big Tough Daddy protecting them from the woggy bogeymen.
• It’ll cause Howard’s much-hated “elites” — that is, anyone capable of using logic, analysis, multi-syllable words or joined-up thinking generally — to run around in circles for a week or two, losing focus on real election issues.
• Howard gets another chance to moisten over all those “achievements” he personally considers important but which he could never achieve himself — being a soldier (because of his hearing problem) and playing cricket (because he’s completely bloody hopeless).
• It’ll create a minor black market in the answers to the test, which will appear approximately a week after the first potential citizens are processed.

What’s remarkable is how backward-looking the booklet is… and how biased to Howard’s personal interests.

The words “science”, “physics”, “medicine”, “genetics”, “aviation”, “satellite”, “solar” and “film” don’t appear at all, despite Australia’s renown contributions in those fields. “Beer”, “ale” and “lager” are completely absent. “Literature” appears just once. “Computer” only once too — in the context of the test being computer-based.

Who was the first Prime Minister of Australia? Who cares? “George Washington,” suggested our Korean cleaner this morning with a laugh — but of course most Australians would indeed know more about the US system than our own. Do we really need to know where Phar Lap’s heart is? Will the Opening Ceremony of the 2000 Olympics really be of any relevance in 5 years time?

Are we choosing Australian citizens for the 21st Century, or putting together a geriatric pub trivia team?

One question really makes me laugh, though. Who do members of Parliament represent? This is a trick question, right?