Tony Abbott and Angus Taylor have argued we must prevent entry of people who do not share our “Australian values”. Abbott wants a return to immigration policies of the 50s, 60s and 70s but without specifically mentioning the White Australia policy. Beyond the strengthening of the character test through potential listing of hate groups that was recently passed by parliament, what would that involve?
At present, when a person is granted a permanent or temporary visa, they must digitally sign off on an Australian values statement. This includes values such as respect for the freedom and dignity of the individual, freedom of religion, commitment to the rule of law and parliamentary democracy, equality of opportunity, a “fair go” for all and recognising English as the national language.
When a person signs off on these, they acknowledge and undertake to conduct themselves according to the values. The aim is “to help new residents understand the values that have helped to create a society that is stable and cohesive but, at the same time, dynamic and diverse”. At present, a visa holder cannot have their visa cancelled if they don’t fully live up to these values unless they also breach the character test.
Permanent residents also have to sit a test that goes to these values if and when they apply for Australian citizenship.
So how will Taylor strengthen the test of Australian values?
While it’s possible to consider requiring permanent and temporary visa applicants to sit a more searching test of Australian values before they are granted a visa, that is unlikely to result in many people failing, assuming the test was conducted in a language of their choosing. If it was run only in English, many more people would fail not because they didn’t support Australian values but because of the complexity of the language.
The test would have to be conducted at a physical location to prevent people using AI to answer the questions. The cost of operating such a test would be large and most likely clog up an already heavily backlogged visa system. Other than an opportunity to run some political rhetoric, little would actually be achieved.
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A leaked Liberal party immigration plan, drafted under the former leader Sussan Ley, proposed banning migrants from specific regions of 13 countries – including from Gaza, Afghanistan and Somalia. The policy would also see some migrants on temporary visas deported for breaching “Australian values”.
Three problems arise with this. First, how do we judge if a visa holder has breached an Australian value but has not also breached the character test which would enable visa cancellation anyway? Second, many people who do not live up to Australian values are citizens. Cancelling citizenship is very difficult as Peter Dutton found out when his laws were overturned by the high court. Third, such a policy could result in sending people back to places where they may be persecuted or even killed – is that really something the Liberal party is willing to support?
Pauline Hanson’s chief of staff, James Ashby, has suggested copying Donald Trump’s approach of suspending visa application processing for 75 listed countries (or at least using that as a starting point). Interestingly, that list of countries does not include India, which was the birthplace of the older of the alleged Bondi terrorists. India may have been too big a country to be included in the banned list.
The Liberal party’s plan proposed a similar approach but for a smaller number of countries, and would essentially mean abandoning the non-discriminatory migration policy we have had in place since the mid-1970s as affirmed by a parliamentary motion introduced by Bob Hawke in 1989 in response to John Howard’s comments that we were receiving too many migrants from Asia.
Banning permanent and temporary migration from certain countries would require amendments to both the Migration Act and the Racial Discrimination Act. Essentially, it would mean abolition of our humanitarian program as most of this is currently sourced from the listed countries. It also means that if an Australian citizen or permanent resident marries someone from one of these countries, they could not live together in Australia unless an exemption was provided.
Finally, we have to consider what such proposals would do to social cohesion. While Abbott and Taylor may not like it, Australia is a multicultural nation. Nothing is going to change that no matter what rhetoric politicians use or what laws they introduce. It will be seen by migrants from many nations, not just from the targeted nations, as making them second class. It will traumatise the second and third-generation children of migrants.
Ironically, Taylor and Abbott’s rhetoric is itself contrary to a number of Australian values including the “fair go” for all that embraces mutual respect, tolerance, compassion for those in need and equality of opportunity for all. One would have thought that if politicians wanted to promote Australian values, they would try to exhibit some themselves!
But then, political expediency always trumps the importance of social cohesion – and indeed logic.
• Abul Rizvi is a former deputy immigration secretary
