A group of 20 people from seven countries officially joined the Australian family at a special ceremony today in Burnie, Tasmania as Australian Citizenship Day 2010 was launched. The new Australians – who hail from countries including Japan, the United Kingdom, India and Korea – are the first of thousands of people across the country [...]
Preliminary estimates of Australia’s annual population growth rate slowed to 2.0% over 2009, according to figures released today by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The preliminary annual growth rate peaked at 2.2% in the year ended 31 December [....]
With Australia’s population growth rate now twice the global average, even surpassing that of countries with fast growing populations including the Philippines, Malaysia, India, Indonesia, and Vietnam, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd over the weekend created a Population Ministry [...]
Australia’s population reached 22,066,000 as at 30 September 2009, according to figures released yesterday by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. This is an increase of 451,900 people over the previous year, keeping the growth rate high at 2.1% [...]
The Rudd Government has put in place major reforms affecting Australia’s permanent skilled migration program. The reforms are aimed at ensuring that the skilled migration program is more responsive to the needs of industry and employers [...]
The new Australian citizenship test which assesses prospective new citizens on their understanding of Australian civics and the responsibilities and privileges of citizenship commenced yesterday, Monday, 19 October.
The Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, Senator Chris Evans, said the new test is based on the pledge of commitment that new Australians make when becoming citizens.
Topics include Australia’s democratic beliefs, laws and government as well as the responsibilities and privileges of citizenship.
The 20 multiple-choice questions in the new test have been written in plain English and will be conducted in English only. All test questions have been drawn from the testable section of the revised citizenship test resource book, Australian Citizenship: Our Common Bond, which was launched in September.
‘The new test is not a general knowledge quiz about Australia,’ Senator Evans said.
‘We want people applying for citizenship to understand the values of Australian society, our democratic beliefs, our rights and our system of law and what it means to be an Australian citizen.
‘All prospective citizens should understand those concepts so all of the questions in the new citizenship test focus on the commitments that new citizens make in the pledge.’
The new test was developed after an independent review of the old citizenship test last year found that it could be improved by focusing on the pledge of commitment.
People will now need to answer 75 per cent per cent or 15 of the 20 questions correctly to pass – up from 60 per cent under the old test. However, the mandatory questions have been removed to make the test fairer. All questions are now equally important and a person can no longer answer 19 out of 20 questions correctly and still fail the test because they answered one of the three mandatory questions incorrectly.
A citizenship course is also under development to help a small group of disadvantaged people, who for a range of reasons, such as limited literacy and schooling, are likely to struggle when preparing for and sitting a formal computer-based test.
‘This will ensure that we encourage people to become citizens without the test being a barrier,’ Senator Evans said.
The citizenship test resource book, Australian Citizenship: Our Common Bond, and practice citizenship test are available online at http://www.citizenship.gov.au/
Australia’s population increased by 2.1% for the year ending March 2009 according to statistics released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics yesterday. The last time Australia saw higher growth rates was in the 1950′s and 1960′s as a result of post war migration and high birth rates [...]
The Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC) recently announced the passage in Senate of the Migration Amendment (Abolishing Detention Debt) Bill 2009. The Bill abolishes the system of imposing charges on immigration detainees and waives all existing debts for current and former detainees [...]
In our previous article about Australia’s 457 visa program, we wrote that “Australia cannot be any different from other countries tending to be more inward looking in times of recession.” It looks like our apprehension came sooner than expected. During the weekend, it was reported that next week’s federal budget will reduce the general skilled migration intake for next financial year by about 7,000 to 108,000 [...]
The Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC) will apologise to a group of former Villawood Immigration Detention Centre detainees about arrangements it made for their identification interviews in the centre in 2005… Complainants are being offered between $4000 and $9000 in compensation[...]
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