Misnamed test
I have just read the review in the January–February 2005 edition of the book Kisch in Australia.
I was somewhat surprised to read two references in that article to the ‘diction’ test, formerly administered by Australia’s immigration authorities. It should, of course, be the dictation test. It’s not clear whether the test has been incorrectly named in the book, misdescribed by the reviewer or is simply a typographical error. In any event, it’s unfortunate that this notorious and arbitrary means of excluding potential immigrants from landing in Australia has been erroneously named in this way.
I’m not sure whether there is any corrective action you can take at this point; but I thought it was worth drawing to your attention as an unhappy slip of the pen in such a fine journal.
Christopher Fogarty
via email
Thanks for picking this up, Chris. You are quite right. We apologise for the error. —Ed
A mean mandate
Perhaps the Howard Government feels in addition to everything else that it now has a mandate for an increasing lack of compassion towards asylum seekers.
Not only are asylum seekers being deported to countries with repressive regimes and a record of human rights violations on political, religious and gender grounds, but the governments are being given personal information about those being returned.
Most of us do not need too much imagination to realise what is likely to be their fate.
Noelleen Ward
Albert Park, VIC
Unborn victims
Firstly, I assure Kerry Bergin (Eureka Street, November 2004) that, as a Catholic, I do not believe that the world was created in six days about 5700 years ago. Or in many of the other things that the correct use of the term ‘fundamentalist’ implies. Nor do most other Catholics.
Secondly, I assure her that nowadays I?justify my belief that induced abortion is wrong without reference to my church’s teachings.
I believe that abortion is wrong for the same reason that the average non-religious believer believes that murder is wrong. We belong to a society of human beings, and we believe that one human being does not have the right to kill another except in self-defence. (Different people will have different ideas of what self-defence means.) Certainly no human being has the right to kill an innocent fellow human. This belief came from a religious source but is accepted now as a fundamental value by most human societies.
Bergin mentions rape and other abominations, but if we deplore the practice in