SBS broadcasted an interesting group debate last night about immigrants and Australian values. Apparently Australia is about to bring in a compulsory values test for Citizenship applicants. I don’t think any of the people involved were happy with the idea, whether they were immigrants or generational Aussies. I certainly don’t get the point. How can we test people’s values, and why should it be important, anyway?<\/p>\n
I’m proud of Australia’s multiculturalism. I do expect that anyone coming to Australia make an effort to fit in with our values and lifestyle, as I’ve done when I’ve lived overseas. I don’t expect anybody to accept those values unconditionally. If they can’t stand living in our society, then they should go home, but if they simply find it uncomfortable and have other ideas, why shouldn’t they share them and see waht happens? Some of us might agree.<\/p>\n
While I’m on this topic, I recall a conversation with a Japanese friend who is not a citizen, but has permanent residency. She was shocked to find that her 5 year old daughter didn’t make christmas decorations at school (pre-school?) last year because such cultural distinction was banned. That’s terrible! Multicultural doesn’t mean cultureless. It means we have people who all live different ways and have different religions and we accept them all. I’m not christian (neither is my Japanese friend), but Australia is traditionally a christian country and those traditions should be embraced and nurtured.<\/p>\n
That doesn’t mean we should exclude other traditions. I’ve been into schools recently and seen as many Indian, Asian and Hispanic teachers as white Australians. These teachers should also be encouraged to share their own traditions.<\/p>\n
Lets make christmas decorations and sing carols in December, but lets also celebrate Losa in February and Day of the Dead in November.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
SBS broadcasted an interesting group debate last night about immigrants and Australian values. Apparently Australia is about to bring in a compulsory values test for Citizenship applicants. I don’t think any of the people involved were happy with the idea, whether they were immigrants or generational Aussies. I certainly don’t get the point. How can… Continue reading Multiculture<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1770,"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284\/revisions\/1770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraygunn.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}