If I were applying for Australian citizenship today I would fail the test, since I don't subscribe to Australian values — at least those espoused by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull (the inhumane treatment of refugees, the refusal to legalise gay marriage, the deviousness of dog whistle politics).
Our discord on what constitutes Australian values is irrelevant, of course, since I am the sort of migrant Turnbull would approve of: white, English-speaking, hard-working, law-abiding, adaptable and of Christian heritage.
But if we forget for a moment my skin colour, mother tongue and religious heritage, we are left with the attributes that the vast majority of migrants, by their very nature, possess: a willingness to work hard, to abide by their adopted country's laws and to adapt to their new circumstances.
It's these very characteristics that have helped to build Australia — a nation of migrants — into the powerhouse it is today. And it's those attributes we don't necessarily share — race, ethnicity, culture, language and religion — that have transmuted Australia from a country colonised by whites into a multicultural melange.
Australia has long had a successful migration program, and the country's economic success is proof of this. So when Turnbull calls a press conference to impart the news that 'membership of the Australian family is a privilege and should be afforded to those who support our values, respect our laws and want to work hard by integrating and contributing to an even better Australia', he is making a redundant point. The vast majority of migrants and new citizens already do this.
Moreover, his newly announced citizenship test is not going to improve the calibre of migrants, for Australia already ensures its migrant intake is largely well-educated, skilled and experienced. Nor is it going to weed out those with nefarious tendencies — after all, who would admit in a citizenship test that they don't hold Australian values dear?
Of course the real purpose of this policy change is to reassure right wing voters that the government has the power to refuse citizenship to people feared by them: Muslims, refugees, Sudanese gang members.
But there's another sinister message implicit in this statement: migrants will be held to higher standards than Australian-born citizens. They must be skilled and fluent in English and willing to work on school P&Cs and other volunteer positions to prove their commitment to their new country.
"If migrants must submit to a citizenship test designed to 'contribute still further to our social cohesion', they should expect in turn that their prime minister and his immigration minister demonstrate their own contribution to this ideal."
They must maintain flawless police records and so should their children. They will be barred from practising their profession in metropolitan areas if their profession — such as medicine — is overrepresented there, but will be encouraged to fill roles in remote areas where Australians refuse to practice. Moreover, they should not take jobs away from Australians.
Turnbull wants to have his cake and eat it, to cherry-pick migrants and then dictate to them special terms of citizenship that are not applicable to regular Australians. But if migrants are good enough to help build the Australian economy — and to do low-paid dirty work like cleaning offices and toilets and slaughtering animals in abattoirs — then they are good enough to receive the same benefits, rights, respect and autonomy as Australian-born citizens.
Moreover, if migrants must submit to a citizenship test designed to 'contribute still further to our social cohesion', they should expect in turn that their prime minister and his immigration minister demonstrate their own contribution to this ideal.
Instead, these leaders do the very opposite, creating social tension and unease by perpetuating the 'us-and-them' mythology and so playing right into Pauline Hanson's bigoted hands. Turnbull, ever disingenuous, conjures Australia as a crime-free, sexism-free, racism-free, egalitarian, religiously tolerant paradise at risk from migrants. Dutton is more strident, demanding that migrants 'abide by the law and if you're not going to abide by the law, or you're not going to work if you've got a capacity to work, if you're going to spend your time on welfare, or your kids are involved in Apex gangs in Victoria, for instance, then really we need to question whether that person is the best possible citizen'.
These words are an insult not just to the people singled out by Turnbull and Dutton (welfare recipients, parents of gang members who are apparently responsible for their children's offences) and those targeted implicitly by them (Muslims), but to all migrants, who are rigorously assessed in the first place for residency and citizenship. We must pay large sums of money to have our applications and qualifications assessed, provide police clearance certificates proving we are not criminals, undertake English proficiency exams, subject ourselves to tests for diseases such as HIV and tuberculosis and our children to scrutiny for potential developmental problems, uproot our families and start over in a foreign country that is not always as accommodating as it believes itself to be.
If, after undergoing all this in order to make a better life for ourselves and our children, we do by some slim chance commit a crime, then we shall be dealt with in precisely the same manner as regular Australian citizens: before the courts. Until then, let us be wary of politicians sowing seeds of discord and fear by making a new enemy of the migrant.
Catherine Marshall is a Sydney-based journalist and travel writer. Originally from South Africa, she has lived in Australia for 15 years and has been a citizen since 2005.