The new citizenship test is still a flawed concept and open to challenge.
TWO years of the Howard government's controversial Australian citizenship test ended on Citizenship Day, September 17, when Labor announced a new test for aspiring citizens. The Government accepted 24 of the 33 recommendations made by Richard Woolcott's review, which was handed down in August 2008.
The major change is that the test will now focus on the ''rights and responsibilities'' of an Australian citizen. Gone from the testable information are cricketers' batting averages and the wine regions of South Australia. The test booklet Becoming an Australian Citizen has been re-drafted and has a new name, Australian Citizenship: Our Common Bond.
Unfortunately, the tone of cloying jingoism remains. The ''national gemstone'' is still testable, as are the concepts of ''mateship'' and ''a fair go''.
The new test is planned to begin in mid-October and will doubtless be welcomed by many, but it remains anchored to a flawed policy. There was never any sound reason given for why the previous, oral test needed to be changed. The best a recent Senate committee could come up with was the vacuous observation that the test might encourage some female permanent residents to learn English.
According to the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, front and centre in the new test will be the pledge of commitment, which reads: ''From this time forward, (under God), I pledge my loyalty to Australia and its people, whose democratic beliefs I share, whose rights and liberties I respect, and whose laws I will uphold and obey.''
One recommendation of the Woolcott review rejected by the Government was that the required pass mark for the citizenship test remain at 60 per cent - it was raised to 75 per cent to ''maintain the rigour of the test''. Many educational measurement experts, and language-testing professionals particularly, will attest that a 20-item multiple-choice test with a predetermined and seemingly arbitrary 75 per cent pass mark raises serious questions of rigour of its own.
Why, for example, does a candidate who scores 14 out of 20 not have the necessary skills and knowledge for Australian citizenship when a candidate with 15 out of 20 does? Linguists and educators more generally will also be curious as to how topics as broad and contestable as democracy, rights, liberties and laws will be presented, and tested, in ''basic English'' - as required by the act.
Although basic English is a fuzzy concept often used to describe a person's ability to communicate in day-to-day life, ''basic English'' is much more than a shorthand descriptor. It is a list of otherwise unrelated, beginner words first developed in the 1930s by Charles J. Ogden and still used in language classrooms today.
If we needed reminding about how committed the Government is to imposing values - as opposed to foregrounding the rights and responsibilities of citizens - it was made abundantly clear when Immigration Minister Chris Evans recently defended lowering the residency requirements for elite athletes and others (to apply for citizenship) from four years to two: ''The revamped requirements will create a fairer system for people who, due to circumstances beyond their control, are currently ineligible for citizenship. These changes will lead to more gold medals for Australia at sporting events, as well as providing a real win for the national workforce.''
If high-performing sportspeople can be deemed eligible to apply for citizenship after only two years in Australia, why is that not good enough for all permanent residents?
The fact that there needs to be seven categories of visa holders already exempt from taking the test as part of their path to Australian citizenship raises questions about the soundness of the whole process.
There is no way that this Labor Government will risk re-starting the culture wars by abolishing the test, no matter that it is an ineffectual waste of public money. But what is to stop someone who fails the test challenging it in the courts on the grounds that it and/or the new booklet is in breach of the ''basic English'' requirement?
Kerry Ryan is a language assessment specialist and Brian Costar a professor of politics in the Institute for Social Research at Swinburne University of Technology.
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