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May 1, 2006
There is an article by Natasha Cica in The Age on the events of the last post.
She is referring to the proposal in a speech by Andrew Robb, the parliamentary secretary to the Immigration and Multicultural Affairs Minister, for a compulsory citizenship test for prospective migrants to measure their grasp of our language and culture. Speaking to the Sydney Institute Robb said that for 'those seeking to take out citizenship should pass a compulsory test, a test which ensures that applicants have a functional level of English language skill, and a general knowledge of Australian values and customs.'
Cica gives the background to the speech---the pre-eminent contemporary threat to Australia's social cohesion: 'the importation of a fundamentalist streak of Islam and infecting local Muslims with an inability to lead peaceful and productive lives as Australians.' She says that there is still scant empirical proof of that claim and rightly states the vast majority of Muslim Australians are, like non-Muslims, law-abiding citizens.
However, as Robb points out most of the Australian community 'are filled with anxiety and uncertainty about how to deal with the reality of random terrorist acts, ostensibly in the name of Islam.' Robb tied the citizenship test proposal to integration (not assimilation) and to being connected to the mainstream Australian community. He said that Australia has been:
....very effective at integration, as distinct from assimilation, is an approach which has helped us successfully combine people from over 200 countries into one family, with one overriding culture---yet a family made up of a very diverse and rich set of communities drawn together by common values. Values such as our respect for the freedom and dignity of the individual, our commitment to the rule of law, our commitment to the equality of men and women and the spirit of the fair go, of tolerance and compassion to those in need. They're the sort of key values that I think draw people to the Australia to which we are all in one way or another committed.
'Aussie values' keep changing don't they, depending on who is speaking. I note that there is nothing here about liberal democracy or rights. These are not part of our common values? Let's take rights.
It's a good speech. Robb's conception of multiculturalism strikes a balance between "the right" of the individual to religious freedom---eg., to wear the Jilbab, a full length dress which covers the whole body except for the hands and face--- and the policy requirements of social cohesion and social integration. As Cica points out it is to be contrasted with Keith Wiindshuttle's conception of integration as assimmilation, which would refuse the right of Muslims to wear a Jibab because it represents a divisive tribalism.
Robb however, does not use the word 'rights' at all. Citizens are not rights holders. The policy emphasis is on values as integration. The liberal political language of interests protected as rights (such as freedom of speech, association, religion and privacy) is absent; a conception of liberal political rights that is variously conceived as having special weight when competing with policy goals of integration and social cohesion. The idea is expressed, for example, by Ronald Dworkins conception of rights as trumps and the corollary distinction between principles and policies, or by what Rawls calls the 'priority of the right over the good', or by Habermas description of rights as firewalls. Ultimately these ideas can be traced back to a theory historically developed by Immanuel Kant, grounded in the twin ideas of dignity and autonomy as side constraints to the collective imposition of 'the good'.
Even though there are significant differences betweenconceptions of rights in the liberal tradition, they generally share the idea that something protected as a matter of right may not be overridden by ordinary considerations of policy. Circumstantial all-things-considered judgments on what is in the general welfare are generally insufficient grounds to justify infringements of rights. Reasons justifying an infringement of rights have to be of a special strength.
The silence or absence in Andrew Robb's speech is the basic liberal idea that rights protect the individual from strong paternalist impositions relating to how they should live their lives, in particular with regard to dominant religious practices. What we have is the policy emphasis of the collective imposition of the good---integration justified, presumably on utilitarian grounds of the greatest happiness for the greatest number. So we get the imposition of adherence to Australian values of the mainstream community without any protection for those who want to wear a Jibab.
The inference is that law abiding Australian-Muslim citizens would not be able to wear a Jibab.This expression of religious freedom must be sacrificed for the sake of integration to ensure the general welfare of the nation.
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