Howzat? Citizenship Test Gets Review It Needs
The Age
Wednesday January 30, 2008
HOW hard can it be to formulate what it means to be an Australian citizen? Very hard, apparently. Yesterday the Immigration Minister, Chris Evans, reconfirmed that the Government would review the citizenship test. Senator Evans already had said, on January 1, that a review would take place this year. His reaffirmation this week was fuelled in part by the unlikely, and quite benign, figure of Sir Donald Bradman, Australia's greatest batsman.
Yesterday The Age reported that sporting heroes could vanish from the citizenship test because it placed refugees at considerable disadvantage. Although 97% of skilled migrants passed, only 80% in the humanitarian section, which takes in refugees, did so. One of the questions on the online example of the test asked: who was Australia's greatest cricketer? Applicants had a choice between Bradman, Sir Hubert Opperman (cyclist) and Walter Lindrum (billiards player). Well, of course a refugee from Sudan should know the answer to the question, shouldn't they? Of course they should not. It was at this point the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, stepped up to the crease to save the Don, information on whom is to stay in a citizenship booklet. But as Senator Evans commented, and with which The Age agrees: "Whether or not they (test applicants) need to understand the history of Walter Lindrum's contribution to billiards in the 1930s and '40s I'm not so sure." Quite so.The review is to be completed by April. It must be hoped that the reconstituted test will focus less on what it means to be a particular follower of a particular sport and more on what it means to be an Australian, to know how this country has evolved, its form of government under which an applicant will live and its culture. They don't need to be stumped by irrelevancy.
© 2008 The Age