Testing time ahead for Labor P-platers


Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun Columnist

February, 2008

HOW odd. The Rudd Government claims it will keep the test that we make migrants sit to qualify as citizens. But there's a catch.

Because the test fails exactly the people you'd expect, Immigration Minister Chris Evans now wants to change the questions.

Yes, it's that simple and that stupid. Evans wants to make sure the kind of people who now rightly fail the test will pass it more easily, especially if they have no English.

So why have a test at all?

Here's yet another sign of what I suspect will be the defining trait of this government - a love of spin over substance, whether on global warming, a "sorry", or citizenship.

This citizenship test was introduced last year by the Howard government to sort out a growing problem and a deepening concern.

It wanted immigrants who applied to become citizens to show they at least had the interest and commitment to learn some important things about their new home and neighbours, including our language, values, institutions and history.

So this test was created -- and not just to check how easily these new citizens could fit in, or nudge them into getting better acquainted with us. It was also intended to show the value we put on membership of our community.

Citizenship wasn't just something you bought at the deli.

The test is not hard.

To pass, you just have to answer 20 simple multiple-choice questions, drawn from a booklet of 200, which you can study at home.

And if you flunk, you can take the test again -- and as often as it takes to pass.

Of course, if the Rudd Government supports a test, it must also support the idea that some people won't pass it -- at least not at first.

Otherwise the test is no test at all, right?

But that's precisely the bit the Government can't swallow. Some people are indeed failing this test. Awkward people.

There aren't many of them -- just seven per cent of all applicants -- and they can all sit the test again after rechecking the answer book.

Yet Evans is not happy and plans to review the questions in six months, especially because the people most likely to fail are refugees.

Indeed, in the first three months of the test a third of Sudanese applicants failed, as did a quarter of the Afghans and 16 per cent of Iraqis.

By contrast, only 2 per cent of British applicants and just 1 per cent of Indians bombed out.

But why is this a problem?

This test is meant to check the ability and willingness of citizens to fit in to our culture.

So, if largely middle-class and English-speaking British and Indian immigrants pass more easily than do often poor and undereducated refugees from foreign-tongued Sudan and Afghanistan, who on earth could be surprised?

Those results are exactly what you'd expect, or want. And if that's the case, then rewriting the test to "fix" this non-existent problem can only make it less useful or meaningful.

Or is that perhaps Labor's real agenda? Does it want to keep the shell of a test -- to show it's as keen as John Howard to get citizens who might fit in well -- while quietly gutting it?

Maybe I'm crediting Evans with too much of the Machiavelli.

The truth may be far simpler -- that he's simply confused. That's highly likely, after all, given how badly confused he is even about his own Prime Minister's view of the questions.

After all, Evans started this week by suggesting one question he'd like to scrap was the one asking which of the following was a great cricketer -- Don Bradman, Hubert Opperman or Walter Lindrum.

"To ask (immigrants wanting citizenship) to sit a test in English when they have very low or no literacy skills and then to ask them about Don Bradman and his cricket record for Australia, magnificent as it was, is probably a bit confronting for them," he said.

Oops. Actually, the Bradman question isn't in the test at all, and featured only in a sample test drawn up last year. But on Evans blundered.

This very question, he sniffed, was a symbol of "political interference" -- a symbol of former prime minister John Howard's meddling when the test questions were first drawn up.

But Evans quickly got a lesson on what "political interference" really felt like -- and not from nasty Howard, but from nice Rudd.

Up popped the Prime Minister on breakfast television declaring "the Don is safe", and down bobbed the blushing Evan, mumbling that on reflection, "the Don is safe and I won't be rewriting the test".

What was that about "political interference", Chris?

What a circus act. Here's Evans complaining about a test that is doing what it should, and about a question that isn't where he thinks, which he now says he'll keep right where it isn't.

So what do we conclude, once we stop laughing?

As I said, this may be yet another sign that Rudd will give us a government that's all gloss and no grit, leaving us unable to see the forest for the billboards.

But let me cling to some faint hope.

Maybe Rudd really did mean it when he promised before the election to be as conservative as Howard.

In which case the blush on Evans' face shows there's a promise that at least one Rudd minister didn't think his boss would keep.

Let the rest of them beware: Howard is back, and his name is Rudd.

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bolta@heraldsun.com.au