Phil Shannon Quadrant Online January 28, 2025
A recent Sky News Australia report revealed that one-third of those applying to become Australian citizens fail the citizenship test: only 187,574 of the 288,603 who took the test between June 2022 and August 2023.) This amount of flunking should be ringing bells about the quality of Australia’s would-be citizen-immigrants.
The current test aims to assess an applicant’s knowledge of Australian history, government and civic values through a twenty-question, three-option, multiple choice quiz (rotated through a total database of 200 questions) for which the applicant must get at least fifteen questions correct, including all five “Australian values” questions on “freedom, respect and equality”.
The test can be retaken three times before failure may be finally declared. Despite the soft-ball format of multiple choice (pure chance alone would see around seven of the twenty questions answered correctly, about one-half of the required number for getting citizenship), and despite an online practice test and a citizenship booklet (Our Common Bond) which handily has all the likely questions and correct answers embedded in it, one in three intending citizens are still bombing the exam, a stunningly high failure rate. A little bit of homework and swatting up on the finer details of Australian governance shouldn’t be beyond any diligent applicant.
An instinctive grasp of the values of the developed, civilised, Western, Judeo-Christian world would also help. It is this ‘values’ module (introduced by the Morrison government in 2020 – something Scomo actually got right) that is the tripping-up point for most of those who fail whilst those on humanitarian visas (putative ‘refugees’, for example) have the highest failure rate overall – rather stunning from a group which apparently has, after travelling through other candidate countries, chosen faraway Australia as their preferred new national home. It almost suggests that many ‘asylum seekers’-cum-citizens may value Australia’s generous welfare system more than our values.
How to explain the high failure rate? It’s not as if the test is particularly demanding or designed to trap applicants with tricky or arcane questions that even most existing native-born Australians would not know (contrary to the ‘progressive’ mockery of the concept of ‘Australian values’, there are no questions about Don Bradman’s batting average, for example). Taking a look at the current practice test on the Home Affairs website — if the answers aren’t self-explanatory or easily memorised by studying a booklet, then just what sort of citizens are the failures likely to make? Lazy, entitled and at odds with civilised, Western values, that’s what.
A few citizenship questions
How tough, for example, are the following questions (remembering that the answer to every possible question is in the booklet)?
“On Anzac Day, we remember (a) all Australians who have fought and died in wars, (b) the creation of an independent Australian nation, (c) the arrival of the First Fleet from Great Britain”.
Whatever one’s attitude to Anzac Day, it is a rather central day in the Australian national calendar and intending citizens should be aware of its origin.
“Which is correct in Australian law? (a) men and women have equal rights, (b) men have more rights than women, (c) women have more rights than men”.
If our aspirant citizens are getting this one wrong, are they the sort of people we want in an egalitarian Australia?
“When did the separate colonies join together to become the Australian nation? (a) 1601, (b) 1901, (c) 2001”.
Hard to get such basic history wrong with such a wide margin for error.
“What is Australia’s capital city? (a). Brisbane, (b) Canberra, (c) Perth”.
Fruit for the sideboard, you might think.
“In Australia, the parliament (a) makes and changes the law, (b) is chosen by the Prime Minister, (c) is controlled by judges”.
Any conservatives should resist the temptation to think ‘stymied by judges’, more likely, particularly where illegal immigrants in detention are concerned.
“In Australia, the government (a) tells people which religion to follow, (b) is separate from any religion, (c) makes laws based on the official religion”.
Could Australia be having an issue with the more excitable religionists of a particular faith whose practitioners we have let in willy nilly?
“In Australia, the use of violence against a person is (a) acceptable if they are a different religion, (b) acceptable if they have a different opinion, (c) never acceptable and it is against the law”.
A bit of a Dorothy Dixer, quiz-wise, but devout followers of a certain Prophet might not get it.
“In Australia, we believe in mutual respect and tolerance. This means you can (a) physically fight someone when you disagree with them, (b) peacefully disagree with someone, (c) only agree with people from the same religion”.
Again, the certain religion angle.
“In Australian elections, (a) you are free and safe to vote for any candidate, (b) you must tell the police who you voted for, (c) you must write your name on your vote”.
Fairly straightforward, you might think, even to Blind Freddy if not to people from benighted countries, but presumably that is why they want to become Australians and this question should thus be a doddle in a test for Australian citizenship.
“Freedom of speech (a) underpins Australia’s democratic system, (b) is not an Australian value, (c) means people do not need to obey the law”. An earlier practice test had the variation as “freedom of speech means (a) everyone can peacefully express their opinions within the law, (b) people with different views from me need to keep quiet, (c) only approved topics can be discussed”.
A textbook example of leading the witness –even a fairly witless one, you might think, but apparently a real potential toe-stubber for some. A clue as to who such people might be is given in the rather copious explanatory material in the citizenship booklet (viz. “gatherings”, a form of free speech, “must be peaceful, and must not injure any person or damage property”) but some people might still be of the opinion that Jews (aka ‘Zionists’) are a legitimate target for a bit of speech silencing and physical intimidation whilst a certain ‘progressive’ political demographic of the citizenry might believe that some public statuary (of ‘colonial oppressors’, say) is politically due for a spot of woke vandalism.
The citizenship bar hasn’t exactly been raised to Olympic heights and even the baby clearance levels can be vaulted over by learning, or being coached in, the expected answers whilst still retaining any backward, illiberal, anti-democratic and un-Australian beliefs and cultural ways they are truly committed to.
Citizenship and wokery
The cinch of a citizenship test which makes it such a poor filter for identifying desirable citizens is a symptom of the broader problem with Australia’s immigration model. Our Common Bond, the test’s accompanying booklet, is woke, woke and more woke, with the usual prioritised identity groups held aloft as shining examples of a worthily woke Australia. Our Common Bond, its worth mentioning, is dutifully illustrated with Aboriginal motifs and hijabs and Afro hairstyles.
The test questions include such out-and-out woke signifiers as “What are the colours of the Australian Aboriginal Flag?” and “Who can deliver a Welcome to Country?” whilst those who pass the test are promised that at the subsequent citizenship ceremony for successful applicants, “you may be welcomed by a representative of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who are the traditional owners of the land in your area. This Welcome to Country protocol has been practiced by Indigenous Australians on their traditional homelands for thousands of years”.
As Tony Thomas put it in these pages, “there is no evidence the fashionably modern ‘Welcome to Country’ ceremonies were ever a part of traditional Aboriginal culture. Instead, as is well if not widely known, they were created as recently as the 1970’s by none other than Ernie Dingo and his cobber, Dr Richard Walley, after a visiting troupe of Pacific dancers brought their own ‘welcoming’ routine and a reciprocal ‘welcoming’ was conjured up “out of whole cloth”. Still, the ‘progressive’ school of thought has no problems with a bit of historical revisionism as part of being a fully woke citizen.
Our Common Bond further instructs us that “Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have age-old beliefs and traditions that still guide them today” although it is rather quiet on the Stone Age barbarisms that have been discarded thanks to the civilising effect of European settlement. That reality would undermine the myth of the ‘noble savage’ and that would be, all together now, ‘racist’.
Multiculturalism runs Aboriginalisation a close second, however, with Australia only emerging from its colonial, British darkness once immigration from the brown and black world got properly going (you can’t really trust the European immigrants to be properly enriching because they brought with them the values, traditions and culture of European civilisation). “Migrants from all over the world”, and not just the northern hemisphere, we are jubilantly told, “built this country” (on the foundations laid by “our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples” – never forget the obligatory Aboriginal reference) although the “democratic institutions we inherited from Britain” do get a guernsey but only in a three-way tie with the worthily woke builders of Australia.
Says our citizenship booklet as a running theme: “We celebrate our diversity”; “We are a young nation; a nation of migrants”; “European settlement in Australia began in 1788 and we continue to welcome new migrants today”; “People from more than 200 countries have made Australia their home” making our society “one of the most diverse in the world”; “Australia successfully combines ethnic and cultural diversity with national unity” – on and on the booklet goes in this vein to educate any sceptics of the diversity miracle that is Australia, and how bad and awful it would be for a ‘nation of immigrants’ to hypocritically deny admission to anyone who washes up on our shores or lobs into an arrivals lounge via the aerial route, even if they be reinforcements for African street gangs, ethnic enclaves or for roaming, fire-bombing anti-Semitic bigots.
English as she is spoke
At least there is still an expectation amongst the citizenship authorities that “prospective Australian citizens will have the literacy skills necessary to complete the citizenship test without help” because “Australia’s national language is English. It is part of our national identity” and English language is necessary to “participate in Australian society”.
We are not the US where the call centre asks you to ‘Press one for English, Press 2 for Spanish’. In Australia, one language is still fundamental to a nation whose citizens can talk to each other, exercise their rights and responsibilities and actually assimilate rather than just queue up for those Medicare rebates and free hospitals and all the rest of the social goodies on offer to the Australian citizen.
“It takes courage, endeavour and commitment to live in a new country and participate fully as a citizen”, says Our Common Bond, yet some who fail the citizenship test complain that learning passable English is asking too much and is ‘unfair’, a whinge taken up by the ABC, naturally. ‘Ungrateful’ is the adjective that comes to mind for such people.
When Messrs Dutton & Co. win at the coming ballot, then perhaps the victors could cast a critical eye over not just the easy-peasy citizenship test but at the citizenship booklet and the ‘progressive’ values it is pushing with woke arrogance. A little bit of the ‘Trump Vibe’ downunder would not go astray on the Big Fail. Starting at the top, that is Australian citizenship.
Nelle's journey 