The Australian Citizenship Test: Process and Rhetoric

In late 2007, Australia's relatively liberal citizenship eligibility requirements were modified, ostensibly to improve the value of citizenship by restricting access to it. A key change involved the introduction of a citizenship test. This article tracks its development and implementation. We challenge claims of overwhelming support for the test, explore the discourses around the “Australian values” being tested, and outline the process by which the legislation was enacted (during which a number of principles of parliamentary democracy were compromised). Using evidence from politicians' speeches, we argue the citizenship test served to re‐direct the Australian imagination away from a nascent “multicultural” identity, back to one redolent of the times of the “White Australia Policy”, confidently celebrating connections with an Anglo‐Saxon heritage, the European Enlightenment, and Judeo‐Christian roots. As such it was a key aspect of the 1996–2007 Howard Government's retreat from multiculturalism.     

Making History: the Australian history curriculum and national identity

History is a key site for the negotiation of national identity, with the ability to define the past shaping the national narrative on who “we” were, who “we” are, and, crucially, who “we” should be. As such, the teaching of history is a site of intense political debate. This paper examines the history module of the Australian Curriculum to understand the extent to which the history curriculum moves beyond Eurocentric, colonial imaginings of Australia's history towards a more inclusive, multi-cultural, globally-oriented, cosmopolitan vision of society. Both the curriculum and teaching resources were examined to ascertain the identities and orientations these materials could provide. The research finds that — despite improvements in presenting a diversity of representations, in particular a positive focus on the rights and contributions of Indigenous peoples in Australia and some orientation to diverse migrant histories, the environment, and Asia — the main thrust of the curriculum is a focus on the nation-state at the expense of global engagement. The funnel structure which deals with broader world history in earlier years, relegates the rest of the world to a temporal and spatial distance, leaving a somewhat myopic narrative that perpetuates traditional, Anglo-centric narratives, maintaining the perspectives of “Others” as peripheral.     

Algeria Unmasked: The fiction of Rachid Mimouni (1945-1995)

The Impact of Microelectronics. J Rada, Geneva: International Labour Office. 1980. 109pp. £4.40

Self‐Reliance: a strategy for development. Edited by J Galtung, P O'Brien and R Preiswerk, Geneva: Institute for Development Studies. 1980. 422pp. £5.25

Nuclear Energy and Nuclear Weapons Proliferation. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute London: Taylor &; Francis. 1979. 462pp. £14.00

Urbanisation, Housing and the Development Process. David Drakakis‐Smith, London: Croom Helm. 1980.234pp. £15.95

The Crises of Power: an interpretation of US foreign policy during the Kissinger years. Seyom Brown, New York: Columbia University Press. 1979. 184pp. $10.95

Paper Heroes: a review of appropriate technology. W Rybczynski, Chalmington, England: Prism Press. 1980. 181pp. £3.95pb

The Origins of the Economy. Frederic L Pryor, London: Academic Press. 1977.475pp. £12.70

Research in Economic Anthropology, Vol 1,1978; Vol 2, 1979. Edited by G Dalton, Greenwich, Connecticut: JAI Press. 1978. 388pp. 1979. 390pp. $14.50 each

Conquest of World Hunger and Poverty. Douglas Ensminger and Paul Bonami, Iowa State University Press. 1980. 107pp. $5.00

Beyond the Green Revolution: the ecology and politics of global agricultural development. Kenneth A Dahlberg, New York: Plenum Press. 1979. 256pp. $17.95

A World of Women: anthropological studies of women in the societies of the world. Erika Bourguignon, New York: Praeger (distributed in the UK by Holt Saunders). 1980. 364pp. £6.50

Women and Colonisation: anthropological perspectives. Mona Etienne and Eleanor Leacock, New York: Praeger (distributed in the UK by Holt Saunders). 1980. 339pp. £ 16.00. £6.50pb

Comparative Perspectives of Third World Women: the impact of race, sex and class. Beverley Lindsay, New York: Praeger (distributed in the UK by Holts Saunders). 1980. 318pp. £ 14.25

Tourism ‐ Passport to Development?. Emmanuel de Kadt, Oxford University Press. 1979. 360pp. £5.95. £2.50pb

Oil and Class Struggle. Edited by P Nore and T Turner, London: Zed Press. 1980. 307pp. £12.95. £3.95pb

Distance Teaching for the Third World: the lion and the clockwork mouse. Michael Young, Hilary Perraton, Janet Jenkins and Tony Dodds London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. 1980. 259pp. £6.95

Distributional Consequences of Direct Foreign Investment. Robert H Frank and Richard T Freeman, London: Academic Press. 1978. 157pp. £9.75

Developing Country Debt. Edited by Lawrence G Franko and Marilyn J Selber, Oxford: Pergamon. 1980. 309pp. $40.00

Economic Development: an introduction. Clarence Zuvekas, London: Macmillan. 1980.433pp. £10.00. £3.95pb

Directions in Economic Development. Edited by Kenneth P Jameson and C K Wilber, London: University of Notre Dame Press. 1979.256pp. £3.00

The International Monetary System and the Less Developed Countries. Graham Bird, London: Macmillan. 1978. 339pp. £12.00

Finance in Developing Countries. Edited by P C I Ayre, London: Frank Cass. 1977. 174pp. £11.00

The Political Economy of Botswana: a study of growth and distribution. Christopher Colclough and Stephen McCarthy, Oxford University Press. 1980. 248pp. £12.50

Human Resources and African Development. Edited by Ukandi G Damachi and Victor P Diejomaoh, New York: Praeger. 1978. 378pp. £17.75

Employment and Income Distribution in the African Economy. James Fry, London: Croom Helm. 1979. 177pp. £9.95

The Political Economy of Underdevelopment: dependence in Senegal. Edited by Rita Cruise O'Brien, London: Sage. 1979. 288pp. £12.50. £6.25pb

Introduction to Nigerian Law. Edited by C O Okonkwo, London: Sweet &; Maxwell. 1980. 444pp. £14.00

The Kenyatta Succession. Joseph Karimi and Philip Ochieng, Nairobi: Transafrica. 1980. 195pp. Sh.44

China: liberation and transformation, 1942–62 Vol 1 China: radicalism to revisionism, 1962–79 Vol 2. Bill Brugger, London: Croom Helm. 1981. Vol 1,288pp. Vol 2,276pp. Vol 1, £6.95. Vol 2, £5.95

Continuing the Revolution: the political thought of Mao. John Bryan Starr, Princeton University Press. 1979. 366pp. £11.40. £3.45pb

The Urban Origins of Rural Revolution: elites and the masses in Hunan Province, China, 1911–27. Angus W McDonald, Jr, London: University of California Press. 1979. 369pp. £12.25

The Irony of Vietnam: the system worked. Leslie H Gelb and Richard K Betts, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution (distributed in the UK by Basil Blackwell). 1079. 387pp. £12.50. £4.95pb

Back to the Front: the unfinished story in Vietnam. R Pand S Kaushik, New Delhi: Orient Longman (distributed in the UK by J K Publishers). 1979.120pp. £5.00

Mrs Gandhi. Dom Moraes, London: Jonathan Cape. 1980. 336pp. £9.60

Development Strategy of Bangladesh. Nurul Islam, Oxford: Pergamon. 1978. 109pp. £6.35

Emergence of a New Nation in a Multi‐Polar World. Mizanur Rahman, Dacca, Bangladesh: University Press. 1979. 189pp. Tk 54.00

The Western Saharans. Virginia Thompson and Richard Adloff, London: Croom Helm. 1980. 348pp. £13.95

Frontiers of Theology in Latin America. Edited by Rosino Gibellini, Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books. 1979. 321pp. $9.95

Christology at the Crossroads: a Latin American approach. Jon Sobrino, Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books. 1979. 432pp. $12.95

Churches and Politics in Latin America. Edited by Daniel H Levine, London: Sage. 1980. 279pp. £11.85. £6.25pb

The ‘Young Towns’ of Lima: aspects of urbanisation in Peru. Peter Lloyd, Cambridge University Press: 1980. 160pp. £15.00

Internal Migration Policy and New Towns: the Mexican experience. P G Bock and Irene Fraser Rothenberg, London: University of Illinois Press. 1979. 156pp. £6.00

Environment, Society, and Rural Change in Latin America: the past, present, and future in the countryside. Edited by D A Preston, Chichester, England: John Wiley. 1980. 256pp. £14.50     

Employment Niches for Recent Refugees: Segmented Labour Market in Twenty-first Century Australia

A survey of three refugee groups (ex-Yugoslavs, black Africansand people from the Middle East) in Western Australia indicatesthat the recent humanitarian arrivals are concentrated in labourmarket niches such as cleaning services, care of the aged, meatprocessing, taxi driving, security and building. Apart fromthe building industry, these employment niches are situatedin the ‘secondary labour market’ comprising low-statusand low-paid jobs that locals avoid. This article identifiesseveral interrelated mechanisms through which the recent Australianrefugee intake has been relegated to undesirable jobs: non-recognitionof qualifications as a systemic barrier, discrimination on thebasis of race and cultural difference by employers, ‘ethnic-pathintegration’ and the lack of mainstream social networksthat could assist in the job search, and the recent ‘regionalsponsored migration scheme’ through which the governmenttries to address the shortage of low-skilled labour in depopulatingcountry areas. The data show massive loss of occupational statusamong our respondents and confirm the existence of the segmentedlabour market, where racially and culturally visible migrantsare allocated the bottom jobs regardless of their ‘humancapital’. Changes in the nature of the segmented labourmarket in the increasingly mobile global workforce are analysed.Some of these insights are drawn from two other research projectson Bosnian and Afghan refugees in Australia undertaken by theauthors.     

“Team Australia”: Cartoonists Challenging Exclusionary Nationalist Discourse

In the context of the “war on terror”, Australian leaders announced that an increased threat of terrorist activity existed within Australia in 2014, which was generated by young people travelling to engage in military activity in the Middle East and returning “radicalised”. The prime minister at the time, Tony Abbott, called on Australians to rally together, in the face of such a threat, as “Team Australia”. This article analyses the responses by cartoonists to this call, focusing on the way the notion of Team Australia is portrayed as a challenge to core aspects of Australianness, such as mateship, multiculturalism and the “fair-go”. Frame analysis is used to explore how the cartoons connect with the broader populace and represent, challenge, reconstruct and rely on implicit and explicit understandings of Australianness. The cartoons frame Abbott’s Team Australia as exclusionary, unfair, politically elitist, anti-multicultural and “un-Australian”, even while pursuing a nationalist project.