a roll of the dice

You’ve no doubt seen the proposed question for the Australian cultural and ideological purity control test over the weekend: link here in case you haven’t.

Some of the questions are, as John Quiggan puts it, nothing but “Carmen Sandiego” questions like “Australia’s national flower is…”. It’s very hard to see what they have to do with anything, other than making potential citizens jump through a few hoops in order to become members of our glorious nation.

Other questions are, er, somewhat misleading. For example:

5. Australia’s political system is a …

a. Parliamentary democracy

b. Monarchy

c. Dictatorship

d. Socialist state

As with most of the questions on the test, one can immediately tell what the “right” answer is supposed to be - (a), parliamentary democracy in this case. The present government’s (mistaken) view that “socialist” means “totalitarian” is neatly built into option (d) with the inclusion of ’state’ - even though Australia has many features of socialism, especially relatively high taxes and high levels of government-funded services, government ownership and control of infrastructure, and many people living off government subsidies and payments. Option (c) is the only one which is clearly wrong… right? However, the correct answer is arguably (b), not (a) - as the test itself helpfully reminds us in a later question, the head of state is Queen Elizabeth II. Queen. Monarch. Monarchy. In fact, Australia can arguably be best described as a constitutional monarchy. That’s probably why our Constitution actually says:

one indissoluble Federal Commonwealth under the Crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and under the Constitution

It gets better, though. How about this one:

14. Which of the following are Australian values?

a. Men and women are equal

b. `A fair go’

c. Mateship

d. All of the above

Obviously we’re all supposed to answer (d) before performing a North Korean-style mass rally of 200,000 people marching in perfect lock-step waving banners to celebrate our glorious freedom. The aspiring citizen-to-be will need to overlook a few things though - particularly the obvious bias towards men in our parliaments, in the judiciary, in senior management, in corporate boardrooms, and in fact anywhere where real power is available, all of which might cause our ill-educated newcomers to think that (a) is not actually the case. The ‘fair go’ issue obviously excludes anyone accused of being a terrorist, or alternatively includes a process of torture and abuse in a foreign country for years without access to courts or evidence or the requirement that the accuser prove his or her case or even define it precisely. And of course it doesn’t include the right to strike or the right to collective bargaining or the right to protest except at strictly defined times and places. So (b) might be somewhat misleading for those not familiar with the local definition of ‘a fair go.’ And of course all wannabe Aussies will be able to define and live by the vague and empty notion of ‘mateship’, which to ill-educated foreign ears probably sounds more like a sailing term than the process of lending your gardening tools to your next door neighbour upon request (or whatever it actually means).

And so we come to the pièce de résistance - the ‘values’ question:

15. Australia’s values are based on the …

a. Teachings of the Koran

b. The Judaeo-Christian tradition

c. Catholicism

d. Secularism

Once again, well-indoctrinated Australians will realise that they are supposed to answer (b). Leaving aside the very questionable inclusion of ‘Judaeo’ (let’s be charitable, in accordance with the values of ‘mateship’ and ‘a fair go’, and assume it’s only there to encompass both books of the Bible), there is a strong argument that the correct answer, if any, is (d). Once again, let’s turn to that irrelevant scrap of paper, the Constitution:

116. The Commonwealth shall not make any law for establishing any religion, or for imposing any religious observance, or for prohibiting the free exercise of any religion, and no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the Commonwealth.

Hmm. That certainly doesn’t look like it’s compatible with question 15 of the “Dinky Di” test. Those blokes writing the Constitution obviously should have been required to sit a values test before they federated the nation. However, if (unlike the government) we remember our constitutional law, we will recall there is clear High Court authority for the proposition that trumped up, misleading and humiliating pop-quizzes overrule the Constitution when a conflict arises between the two. Or is it the other way around?

Perhaps the whole thing could be simplified. Here’s a simple three-stage test which more or less encompasses the unsubtle implications in the current proposal:

1. Are you white, Christian, and a native English-speaker with belief in a vaguely defined set of Anglo-Saxon cultural principles, preferably including a love of cricket?
a. Yes -> go to question 2
b. No -> go to question 3

2. Do you worry constantly about the types of people described in question 3, below?
a. Yes -> welcome to Australia
b. No -> re-read question 3 and repeat question 2

3. Are you a rabid islamofascist terrorist planning to destroy our civilization through a process of pack rape, refusing to learn the language, random bombings and religious indoctrination (with the wrong type of religion)?
a. Yes -> please return to your country of origin and create as much trouble as possible
b. No -> welcome to Australia (please note that some Australians may be under the misapprehension that you answered ‘yes’ to this question)

Current Australians celebrate the common values of
a fair go and mateship at the Cronulla race riots

Update: as pointed out by The Legal Soapbox, the government has disowned the ’sample questions’ doing the rounds in the media.  One would be forgiven for being more than a little skeptical of this - the article linked to above and several others in other print publications clearly indicated that the questions had been supplied by the government, and it would not be at all surprising if they had been withdrawn in light of the criticism of their more idiotic elements.