Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's a privilege to stand today to speak on this legislation. I obviously don't support the legislation, but it brings me to the chamber to speak about Australian citizenship. It always makes me centre myself to think about my Australian citizenship. I am not Australian by choice; I was born in this country. When I was preparing today, I went through my memory for some important moments. Some of the most important moments in my life were to stand here and deliver my first speech, to listen to other members of the class of 2013 give their first speeches and, since then, to listen to members of the class of 2016 give their first speeches. My impression across those speeches was that in this chamber we carry with us the Australian story, from listening to the member for Barton deliver her first speech to remind us of the long trajectory of the first Australians present on this land to listening to my classmates of 2013 as we delivered our speeches that spoke of our history in this country. I got to listen to my colleague on my right over here deliver his second first speech in this place and talk about his family history in this country. There is no getting past that we are a nation of immigrants.

When I gave my first speech in this place, I talked about the diaspora at Ballarat and Peter Lalor leading the Eureka stockade and I made reference to how similar the electorate of Lalor now is with the representative diaspora from across the world just like Ballarat was then. These are things that celebrate in our homes and in the classrooms across this country, and I feel this piece of legislation is a direct threat to the pride we have in who we are and to the pride we have in who we're still to become.

We have had controversy over the citizenship of members of parliament and, you know, people in my electorate are confused. On the one hand, our parliamentarians know that we are all Australian citizens and proud to be Australian and that we've rejected citizenship in other countries. On the other hand this week, our parliamentarians are asking people who want to become Australian citizens to wait longer and to have a mastery of a language they don't see reflected in this chamber, day-to-day. It's an extraordinary thing that we are asking.

Like others, I want to speak about the citizenship ceremonies that I attend, because I have been struck. They are now almost supersede visits to schools in my electorate. Knowing my love of education and schools, that's saying something. What I see in those citizenship ceremonies are the tears, the smiles, the joy, the absolute commitment and shared joy in that moment when they become Australian citizens, when they finish that pledge and are told, 'You are now Australian citizens.' A cheer goes up around the room and it is an extraordinary moment.

When I go to those citizenship ceremonies, I speak about Australian values. I take our national anthem as something to share with that audience that day and I talk about the values that are reflected in our national anthem. I talk about the notion of Australian values that are embedded, particularly, in the second verse—let's face it, the first verse is a celebration of land and certainly doesn't talk about values, but the second verse speaks to values. It talks about 'toiling with hearts and hands'. I tell the brand-new citizens that day that. in Australia, we value hard work, we value diligence, and we value our heartfelt commitment to those things.

The second verse speaks of welcome, the universal value of hospitality. I know as a student of classics, how important hospitality was in ancient Greek culture. There's been a continuous importance around hospitality—the hearth, the fireside—welcoming a stranger. That's there in our second verse. It says:

We've boundless plains to share;

Many people have spoken about this and that speaks to our generosity and that that's an Australian value. Most importantly, it speaks to courage:

With courage let us all combine…

And that's an Australian value.

In those citizenship ceremonies, I speak about the courage that I know nothing of, personally. It is generations since my family, the individuals in my ancestry, left their homes to come to this country. I am not an Australian by choice. I was born here and I stand in that room with people from around the world who want to be Australian by choice and who have shown extraordinary courage in leaving their home to travel to another part of the world to set down roots and to determine to have children and create a future somewhere that they have often never been to—a stranger's land—and that is an Australian value. That courage is something we all value in Australia because we all have it in our history.

I tell people at citizenship ceremonies about one of my ancestors, who was a 16-year-old girl, who left Ireland to escape poverty. She got on a boat on her own and did that journey, got off in Geelong and found herself a job in domestic service. I think about the courage of that young girl and I am overwhelmed by those thoughts. Then I look at the people in the citizenship ceremony and I know that they are replicating that journey from a different place in a different time. But their courage is the same.

In the electorate of Lalor, we have many new citizens join us every month. Generally, across the month, we have four citizenship ceremonies—so around 1,000 new Australians a month in my electorate so it is reflective of an international diaspora. There're many conversations that I have had with people about citizenship. I am worried about this particular piece of legislation, particularly around the extension of time, because I know when I shake hands with every new citizen at a ceremony, I ask that question: how long have you been in Australia, and at what point did you make the choice to become an Australian citizen and put down roots here? I have never heard anyone say, 'Less than four years.' So it is my general observation that it takes four years to become an Australian citizen, because they say, 'Four years ago, I decided I wanted to become a citizen, and it has taken me four years to get to this day.' So I think that four years is a reasonable amount of time for people to become Australian citizens after seeking that. Many of them tell me about becoming permanent residents.

I've had many conversations with people in my electorate about the IELTS testing, which is already controversial on the ground. It is already controversial. The cost of the IELTS testing is generally around $330 per test, and many residents in my community have come to speak to me because they may have sat that test three, four or five times. Some are very concerned because they considered themselves proficient in English when they arrived. They applied to be international students, and they walked through the door having passed tests that said they were proficient in English to study in Australia. They sit that test and then, a couple of years later, they sit it again and find their English has gone backwards, and they are studying in our universities. So it is already controversial. There are already people in my community who are not trusting that testing system.

I want to speak directly about this English test because it's the other obstruction here that I find most concerning. I've taught English all of my adult life, until the last four years spent in this place. Many of those years I spent teaching teenagers who were children of new arrivals, refugee families, humanitarian intake families and some others who were here through other immigration processes. I have taught English as a second language to people from all around the world, so I understand the time it takes. I understand the very critical things about teaching English to people of other languages. One of the most important things that a lot of people do not understand is that it's not actually your skills in English that assist you to teach other people in a classroom; it's your understanding of their languages and their difference between their base language, or their first language, and the language that you are trying to teach. And of course we all know, or we all should know, in this place that English is one of the most difficult languages to learn, because of the complications around tense in particular that are not reflected in other languages.

Deputy Speaker, I want you to think—I want everyone in this chamber to think—about some of the kids that I have taught across the years, who came to Australia preliterate, with no written language at all. They had to learn what language is in the first instance. They had to come to grips with an alphabet that is supposedly phonetic but turns out not to be when they get involved in it. English has complex tense structures, complex grammatical structures and complex language that they need to pick up.

I might note too today that the most fun that can be had in an English-as-a-second-language classroom is teaching Australian colloquialisms. They're the things that most people want to learn first. That is because, as a nation, we are not hung up on the correctness of language. In Australia, we use language to communicate. We use language to comprehend, but we are not stuffed shirts about language in this country. Pedantry went out the window a long time ago in this country. We see language as living and changing, and our colloquialisms are reflective of that.

Introducing an IELTS 6 test seems extraordinarily harsh to me. It seems extraordinarily harsh to people who might come here with refugee humanitarian support, where they might get 14 weeks of language support to help them learn the language. I have spent time in my electorate in recent times in classrooms with settlement support and have watched people in their 30s and 40s who may or may not be literate in another language—people who speak three languages and are now about to learn to speak their fourth, read their fourth, write in their fourth and come to grips with a whole new alphabet. It's a difficult thing. Level 6—university language—is extreme.

This is absolute snobbery, and it is absolute snobbery because in this chamber, where we are sent to represent our communities, I see examples every day of people who would be in breach in an IELTS 6 test that is about correctness. It is absolutely about correctness—not about communication, not about comprehension, but about correctness.

In this chamber, we sometimes hear soaring rhetoric—soaring rhetoric. At other times, we hear absolutely butchered sentences—and I would be guilty, just like everyone else in this chamber, of both. On the notion that we are going to test people for the correctness of their language: I have heard many speakers, particularly on the other side, talk about the length of time we want people to be in the country before they become citizens, and they have listed other countries and how long those other countries ask people to wait. In other countries, nobody asks for level 6 in their language. The UK, Germany and a lot of the EU require level 4; Spain and the Netherlands require level 3. There are classes of visas in this country which do not require that—in fact, an executive is required to have level 5. Generally, level 4.5 is required for different visas in this country and now we are going to up it to level 6, a university level, and one that I think is a bridge too far for most.

I did a bit of research yesterday in my office. I went to the minister for immigration's Facebook page. I am rarely a pedant about language, but if the minister is going to set a standard for new Australians then the minister should certainly meet the standard himself. What I found was absolutely disappointing—absolutely disappointing! I found example after example where commas were missing, where capitalisation was misused and where phrases were butchered. I found sentences with six phrases and without a comma . My favourite sentence from a short study of the minister's Facebook page—and I will share this sentence—was the sentence written:

The Government passed our Gonski needs-based school funding plan this morning.

That sentence had no commas—no commas! That sentence also presumes the government passes legislation in this place, when we know the parliament passes legislation in this place. So I have rewritten the sentence for him. It should read: 'The parliament passed the government's Gonski, needs-based, school funding plan this morning.' In this place we shouldn't set a standard we cannot meet ourselves. And before everyone goes rushing to my Facebook page, yes, you will find errors, as you will find on all of the written material produced by people in this place—as we hear every day when we are on our feet. Let's not set a standard that we ourselves cannot seek to meet. Thank you.

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