Matt Keogh (Burt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is deliberately hard. They are setting a standard that is deliberately hard to pass. In fact, it is a standard that, I would dare say, the majority of people in this chamber and those in the other place would have great difficulty in trying to pass, and we are the representatives of the Australian democracy. As we have heard from many contributions from this side of the House, and, in particular, the contribution made by the member for Sydney just a few moments ago, we should just think about what impact that level of snobbery, the setting of a standard that is so high, will have on our country. It would have excluded many people who we know have made a lasting positive contribution to our communities, and not necessarily those who went on to great things in the parliaments of our nation or as business leaders, though there are many examples of that. It would have excluded many who came into my area around Armidale and in the surrounding suburbs in the electorate of Burt—people who came out after the Second World War, lived in migrant camps and went and worked on the orchards, and who ended up buying those orchards and becoming employers of people who needed work during downturns in our local economy. They learnt a sufficiency of English. They worked their guts out to make sure their children could have a better life than the one that they had. They made sure that their children were at school; they made sure that they were getting a good education. And those people were critical parts of our community. They joined local government councils. They were members of Rotary. They would come and pay my grandfather, who was a lawyer, in oranges that they grew in their orchards, because that was all they had. They were the bedrock of our community. They are the exemplars of exactly what we want people in our community to be—people who would come together and work together and go to church together, who would join community organisations and help each other out when they needed it. They could communicate with each other. Some of them spoke broken English, but they all had conversational English; they understood what they were talking about. They didn't sit university exams—though many of their children did—but they were able to fully participate. They integrated into our society here. They are our society here. They are the people of Australia. On the point of citizenship, when we talk about the pledge, and the people that we are having join our society here: you want to become a full member of our society? Well, that's our society that you are pledging to join. So it seems completely antithetical to set a test that is so hard and so difficult that you would be actually excluding people like those who have made Australia great in the first place.

It has to be said that the test is removing us from a test—the test that we've been using to date, which has actually worked and has made our society the great society that it is now.

The legislation also establishes a pledge of allegiance for prospective citizens, who would be required to prove that they hold Australian values and have integrated into society. It is the pledge which, as I mentioned before, they all have to make when taking up Australian citizenship in the first place.

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