citizenship – Is This Thing On?

I just scraped in. Tomorrow I become an Australian citizen and — thanks to the special provisions that allow new citizens to provisionally enrol to vote — on Saturday I’ll get to exercise my civic duty in the 2013 Australian Federal Election.

I’m taking this seriously, even if I might just be in it for the sausages.

I’ve studied the advice from Dennis the Election Koala, I’ve read the only real guide to the election that anyone could ever need, and listened to the months and months of empty rhetoric, lies, half truths, and outright bullsh*t.

So tonight I fired up belowtheline.org.au/editor/melbourne and had my first crack at putting together my ballot paper.

Back home it’s just an X in a box and you’re done, but with preferential voting here in Australia you have to put them all in order. Yes. All of them.

The House of Representatives is reasonably straightforward, because there’s only 16 to choose from, but the Senate vote is for the whole of Victoria. That’s a whopping 97 candidates to put in order. (I mean you *could* vote “above the line” and let someone else choose for you, but where’s the fun in that?)

Some tough decisions to make, though. Given that I fundamentally disagree with the entire platforms of well over half of the senate ballot paper, how am I supposed to decide which ones are least worst? Family First, One Nation, Rise Up Australia… how do I decide which of these utterly objectionable groups goes last last, and which goes least last?

[Rise Up Australia did provide the most obviously ironic candidate, so maybe they should get points for that. This would be the ultra-nationalist, staunchly anti-immigration, anti-multiculturalism party; their candidate for the House of Reps in Melbourne? Joyce Mei Lin Khoo]

Well anyway. I have made my choices, unless I change my mind again, I’ll be the one numbering 113 boxes on Saturday morning…

So this morning I popped into the city to sit the Australian Citizenship Test. It turns out there are some, um, interesting sections of the test material.

To prepare for the test, they give you this book to read — Our Common Bond — and can ask you questions on anything featured in the “testable section”.

While the non testable section does at least acknowledge some of the more questionable aspects of Australia’s recent history (such as the White Australia Policy and the stolen generations), the testable part includes frankly astonishing statements like this:

Um. Really? Are you sure about that?

I think I sort of understand what they were going for, but I can’t help thinking this might come as news to the people who were already living here when the white man arrived. Federation might have happened without bloodshed, but I don’t think you can just quietly forget about 1788 – 1901…

My first question on the test itself was this:

Where did the earliest free settlers to Australia come from:
• Europe
• Great Britain and Ireland
• Torres Strait Islands

Hmm. There’s something missing from that list, isn’t there…

Once again, I know what they mean — and what they wanted me to answer — but I can’t help thinking that the first people to settle in Australia freely might be the ones who were already here when the country was renamed around them…

Other sections of the testable content are just amusing. There’s a whole bit on the apparently uniquely Australian concept of mateship, although I’m not sure which roads the authors have been driving on judging by their example:

I don’t think I’ll be trying that in rush hour Melbourne…

Oh. And there’s this. The Union Jack? Really?

Anyway. I passed. It took me all of 2 1/2 minutes, out of my allotted 45, to answer all my twenty questions correctly…

Think I prefer this test instead, mind. And I still don’t know the answer to the bring your own meat barbie question…