Citizenship

Around Australia today as the snags sizzle and the beers flow cold and bitter, people will also be becoming Australian citizens.

The Government says a bunch of boring questions plus a bit of pomp and ceremony allow someone to declare ‘I am Australian’. Which is a great thing, don’t get us wrong. We just thought the questions are probably due for a revamp. So here’s our Alternative Australian Citizenship Test.

Answers are in! Yet-to-be-confirmed prize at this stage goes to S.L because he looks like he needs some cheering up!

Continue reading "How Australian are you? Take our test…" »

Norman Tebbit - a key confidante of Margaret Thatcher entirely ignored in the recent film The Iron Lady - is commonly remembered for two prescriptive statements. The first was that, instead of complaining or rioting, the unemployed should get on their bikes and look for work.

The second article of Tebbitism is that immigrants should take a ‘cricket test’ of national loyalty and identity.  If you’re living in one country but decline to support it against your nation of origin in an international sporting contest, Tebbit implied, you have failed that test.

Australia had its own less strict but more formal version of a cricket test in the sample question about Don Bradman in the original Australian citizenship test under the Howard government.

Continue reading "Is it unAustralian to barrack for the other team?" »

When UK expat and young mum Jessica Green stood up at her Australian citizenship ceremony at Sydney’s Petersham Town Hall a few weeks ago to sing the national anthem, something quite bizarre happened.

It didn’t have anything to do with her singing (although she says she hates singing). A few “suggested videos” popped up on the big screen near the new Aussie citizens when the YouTube clip playing the national anthem finished. One of which was the Nazi national anthem.

“Everyone was staring at it, like: are you serious?” Jessica laughs. “That was slightly awkward.”

Otherwise, she says, it was a really nice ceremony. People of all backgrounds, many dressed in green and gold and some draped in the Australian flag, pledged their allegiance to Australia. In ceremonies like this year-round, people who have successfully completed the mountains of paperwork and passed the test required to become a citizen take an oath of loyalty to Australia. And now a prominent Gillard Government minister has floated the idea of getting kids to take the same pledge of citizenship at school.

Continue reading "Should we have a pledge of allegiance at schools?" »

Pride in Australia comes easily to Australians.  There’s nothing forced or contrived about the positive feelings we all have for our sun-drenched land or its egalitarian values when thoughts turn to Australia Day every January.

Perhaps it comes a little too easily.  Australia Day produces an almost Pavlovian reaction in most of us: instinctive, familiar, warm, but also static and unchanging. 

It’s an emotional response, rather like our feelings toward Christmas – we feel before we think. But the things we celebrate on Australia Day are very unlike those we celebrate at Christmas: the national values we celebrate are dynamic, changing, and sometimes confronting. 

Continue reading "National pride should not preclude hard conversations" »

As our annual obsession with national identity reaches its peak, after weeks of debate into the meaning of red meat, high carb beverages and the quaint French phrase ‘oi, oi, oi’, here is one more idea to think about.

On Australia Day 1999 the Coalition Government introduced the reaffirmation ceremony to mark 50 years of Australian Citizenship. It’s a pretty simple idea where natural born Australians join with those who are taking up citizenship for the first time to recite the pledge together:

“As an Australian citizen, I affirm my loyalty to Australia and its people, whose democratic beliefs I share, whose rights and liberties I respect, and whose laws I uphold and obey.”

Continue reading "It’s time we took our own pledge of allegiance" »

A few days ago on this website, editor David Penberthy wrote to explain why, as he put it, “Australia Day is rubbish”. Well, not to come across all Sam Kekovich, but I reckon he’s full of it.

According to Penberthy, this annual celebration - which nicely bookends a silly season that begins with the running of the Melbourne Cup - is a shallow glorification of all that’s wrong with this country, “a half-witted contest to see how much meat you can eat and how much grog you can sink.”

As if there’s anything wrong with that.

The fact is that no free country spends its national day navel gazing. Instead, they hook on to some element of their individual creation story and use it as an excuse for a piss-up.

Continue reading "We can’t spend our national day bemoaning our history" »

They take on the privileges of Australian citizenship with little real knowledge of, or attachment to, our key values and institutions.

I’m not talking about migrants, who at least have to pass a minimum test for citizenship.

I’m talking about young Australians who are ‘born’ into citizenship and who receive the full privileges of a citizen on their eighteenth birthday.

Continue reading "Let’s stop taking our citizenship for granted" »