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Australia toughens its citizenship test

Australia announced plans to toughen its citizenship policies yesterday but denied that new demands requiring immigrants to pledge allegiance to Australian values were aimed at Muslims.

Immigrants will have to sit a 45-minute test covering their competency in English and issues such as democracy, the rule of law and the equality of men and women.

If the proposals become law, the time immigrants have to live in Australia before they can become citizens will be doubled to four years.

The blueprint comes after repeated complaints made by Prime Minister John Howard that some members of Australia's 300,000-strong Muslim community refused to fully integrate into society.

Howard has also expressed the fear that Australia could be subject to a terrorist attack launched by its own citizens.

But Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration Andrew Robb, who released the government's "discussion paper" yesterday, denied that Muslims were a specific target.

"This initiative for a citizenship test is not designed to deal with any particular segment of our community; it's not an initiative which grew out of issues to do with the Muslim community," he told reporters.

He also said it was not specifically aimed at combatting terrorism.

"This is not an anti-terrorism initiative. This will help, I think ... unified societ[ies] can deal more fully with terrorism," he said.

The proposals were aimed at giving comfort to Australians who felt their sense of identity was being threatened by increasing immigration from "non-traditional source countries," Robb said.

On Saturday, Robb urged Australia's Islamic leaders to preach in English, adding that they could not ignore the "vile acts" that were being committed in the name of their faith.

Robb told a gathering of more than 100 imams that while many in the Muslim community had spoken up, "too many are silent."

Howard said on Friday that people who genuinely wanted to fit in the Australian society would have no problem with the government's blueprint.

"Certainly we are going to lift the waiting period to four years. There will be a fairly firm English language requirement and the paper itself will contain quite a number of issues," he said.

"It won't become more difficult if you're `fair dinkum' [genuine], and most people who come to this country are `fair dinkum' about becoming part of the community," he said.

Howard's use of Australian slang highlights some of the pitfalls immigrants might face in taking the "Australian values" test, and newspaper satirists have had a field day with the concept.

A cartoon in The Sydney Morning Herald showed immigration officials timing how long it took new settlers to finish a six-pack of beers, with worried Muslim men and women waiting in line.

The paper also reported that Howard had not ruled out the possibility of his major sporting passion, cricket, being included in the test.

A government advertising campaign began appearing last night on TV, in newspapers and the Internet, encouraging eligible people to take up citizenship.
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