I live in a nation of ghosts and spirits, of Anzac martyrs and rural massacres. The damp soil of Gippsland, the haze of her mountain ash - I was born here; but if you think that being Australian is a birthright, you do not understand my country. My country is wattle and blood.

Melbourne is all around me, the ferns protecting William Ricketts, the river whose Yarra water draws up the clay, the bindi-i in the summer grass, and the two-dollar buskers and cafes edging the wide streets.

The magic of my land whispers deeper than prawns on barbies and bikinis in utes. I have lost patience with displays of bloody-minded jingoism. Posts are for football, not for displaying the flags of patriotic insecurity.

Leaving Bendigo in 1916, my great grandfather’s mining lungs could not contend with the poison air of the Somme fields. He died on a hospital ship, never to return. He had marched under the flag and sung the anthem; they were rags and noise compared to the children he left orphaned at home. The entrepreneurs of war lied to him, but his intention was true.

I am a part of the Australian community. Do not glibly say “one nation”: our country longs to be as one.

We slag on the vacuous slogans of politians and the questionnaires of immigration bureaucrats. Our parliament mound infested with termites. They rejected our values when they took office shaking the hands of the perentie clans, their business mates. Leadership must be earned. Our Kelly sons went way too far in their war on the authorities, but we felt the injustice that took them to the edge.

Nor do we fear religion. We have been inside temples and churches, listened to humanists and prayed in mosques. Our feeble attempts to understand the transcendent only gives us affection for our fellow peoples, and a desire to depose the little kings of racism and fear that threaten their peace.

We celebrate our failures. Peter Lalor’s wounding at Eureka stockade, the betrayal of Nancy Wake in resistance France, Albert Namatjira despondent in prison; these people are our characters. To be ‘true blue’ is not the ashes of success; it is to have integrity.

We demand a fair go for all humans, for family and friends and especially strangers. We barrack for the underdog (even at times for Collingwood!). We want to hear the stories of the refugee children, to decide for ourselves. And we know that it is never too late to engrave a treaty, to admit our past failures.

For I am an Australian, my culture the bastard child of indigenous and intruder civilisations. Not until I acknowledge our rainbow heritage can I know who I am. Only when I understand that this ground cannot be bought and sold am I truly at home. The home that I love.

Coburg, June 2007

Labor would have won most of the recent federal elections.

Is this good or bad? I have my own view, but I’m not convinced that this trumps an argument for civics education.

But we do still have to deal with what is actually being put forward, which is a new type of citizenship test, which on current indications won’t sit too neatly with a civics education test (although perhaps the Senate inquiry will clarify that).

At the moment, there are three main issues which stick out to me:
1. will migrants have to know a bunch of stuff (even if it is civics in its narrowest sense, rather than ‘values’) that many Australian born people don’t in order to become a citizen;

2. many migrants I’ve heard from see this whole exercise as sending a signal that we’ve got a problem with migrants who are ‘unAustralian’. Given that this whole thing is being allegedly done to improve national cohesion and identity, I’m not sure this is a terribly helpful outcome (although I’m not in a position to judge how widespread this perception is)

3. Why are we creating more bureaucracy and spending a not insignificant amount of money on developing and administering this thing, unless there is a currently significant problem? If there is a problem currently, what is it and where’s the evidence that shows this will help fix it - rather than for example putting the $100+ million into, say, civics education (or more English language funding, or other settlement help) for new migrants. If there is a problem, it would seem to make sense to address it when people first arrive, not when they’ve already been resident here for at least 4 years.

I can’t see the issues of “aussie values” or “aussie culture” tests being any different to the beat up over gay marriage. It’s just another dog whistle to the hounds of ignorance, yet will make absolutely no difference to the makeup of immigrants turning up in Australia. That’s always been governed by tweaking the parameters over skills tests, family reunions and arbitrary decisions about what constitutes a refugee anyway.

It’s stupid distractions like this that make the Howard government so untrustworthy, Beazley was a fool for taking the bait when he was leader of the ALP.

- Conrad, 18 June.

“migrants were more likely to lodge informal, or invalid, votes.”

- The Age, 19 June.

Conrad - I doubt there are many monolingual Australians who are citizens of and permanently living in non-English speaking countries, and if they are citizens this would be by birth or descent. I think the requirement to speak the national language is unremarkable.