The White Australia Policy Returns

Back in the Fifties Australia introduced a white Australia policy whereby they made it possible to filter out any immigrants they didn’t like by conducting literacy tests. The policy was scrapped years later for being discriminatory. Now the Howard government is looking to reinstate it with a few alterations. The proposal now is that all immigrants must sit a written and verbal literacy test also they will be tested on Australian history and culture. Should they fail the test their application also fails.

I can’t see how this is of any benefit. Surely people shouldn’t be discriminated against because they can’t read or write English or because their knowledge of Australian history is poor. If these rules were applied to many Australians now half the population would be kicked out of the country. How many natural born Australians have literacy problems? How many natural born Australians are completely ignorant to Australian history and culture? If our own population is lax in the knowledge we are now expecting immigrants to have then what hope is there for them. It’s just another way that racist, war mongering Johnnie Howard is fucking our country.