This is Australian
Minister for Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs, Liberal MP for Aston and child of British migrant parents, Alan Edward Tudge, quoted by ABC
News on 14 June 2018:
The Federal Government
is considering new English language requirements for anyone seeking permanent
residency, with figures showing close to 1 million people in Australia cannot
speak basic English.
Australia accepts up to
190,000 permanent migrants each year and while they need to prove they can
understand English, their spouses, children and extended family accompanying
them do not.
Multicultural Affairs
Minister Alan Tudge argued this had created the "concerning
situation" where "close to a million" Australians now do not
speak the national language.
"That's not in the
interests of those migrants but nor is it in the interests of social cohesion,
because if we can't communicate with one another, it's very difficult to
integrate," he said.
So there are “close
to a million” Australians who don’t speak English, are there?
Although the
article mention the 2016 Census it is unclear if Alan Tudge has actually read
the English proficiency data released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
As is usual
for a Coalition minister, he is applying a dog whistle to his lips and blowing
hard.
This is what
that census actually revealed:
*In
the Australia in 2016 there were 2,071,384 females and 1,997,244 males who
spoke another language at home who reported they spoke English well or very
well;
*Another
460,039 females and 359,882 males who spoke another language at home reported a
degree of difficulty in speaking English;
*That’s
a total of 819,922 people stating a degree of difficulty or 3.5% of a population of 23,401,907 persons counted
at the 2016 Census; and
*Of
the number who had difficulty in speaking English only 193,036 (aged 0 to 85
years and over) spoke no English at all - that’s 0.82% of the entire Australian
population.
So what any reasonable person can say with regard to English proficiency is that a total of 193,036
people from a non-English speaking background, ranging from newborns up to the very old do, not speak any English.
That number is 806,964 short of being one million - it's not even "close to a million".
As a ploy for presenting yet another bill to parliament which allows denial of permanent residency or denial of citizenship to migrants from non-English speaking countries, Alan Tudge’s argument is
full of holes.
