Florid Citizenship

The full-page ad in question appeared in October 21st edition of the Sun-Herald’s “Sunday Life” magazine

What particularly struck me was the example question that appeared in the ad. To truly appreciate its banality I’ve typed out the question and sample answers below:

Question 3: What is the floral emblem of Australia?
* Waratah
* Banksia
* Wattle

Now, I don’t know about you but I certainly don’t want people calling themselves “Australian” if they cannot even name our floral emblem. Can you imagine how awkward daily life must be for those poor souls who took up citizenship before the test was in place? They must walk past groves of wattle completely oblivious to precisely how symbolically important the yellow fuzzy blossom is to the deeply botanical real Australians around them. So sad.

Seriously though, isn’t that an utterly ridiculous question to have in a citizenship test? Even if it’s just a sample question and doesn’t actually appear in the real test using it as representative of the test as a whole doesn’t really inspire confidence.

To give the whole test the benefit of the doubt I moseyed on over to the citizenship website mentioned in the ad to find out more about it. I few clicks later and I was able to evaluate my Australianness by taking a sample test. Sure enough, question 3 of the sample test does ask “What is the floral emblem of Australia?”. To top it off, the following sample question is

Question 4: Which one of these Australians is famous for playing cricket?
* Rod Laver
* Sir Donald Bradman
* Sir Hubert Opperman

Did Howard have a hand in the sample questions? For a PM that has eschewed the symbolic gesture of saying sorry to indigenous Australian he or his Government seem pretty big on making sure new Australians know what flower represents us.

I’m not completely opposed to the idea of a citizenship test. I’ve been on the fence about the whole idea ever since I heard Bernard Crick give an excellent public lecture about citizenship in Britain and his role in designing their test. Although he was somewhat critical of the final implementation of the test he helped develop he made some good points for tests in principle. At the very least they can be used to convey useful information to future citizens about day-to-day life in their newly chosen country. Making sure people know that if you spill someone’s beer in the pub you should buy them a new one was one of the examples Crick used.

To be fair, the other sample questions did ask relatively useful things like “What is a bill?” and “Which one of these is a responsibility for every Australian citizen?” Some of the resource book has relevant information too. It’s a shame one the sample questions - and the one chosen to represent the test in a major Australian paper - gives the impression that flowers are an equally important part of Australian citizenship.