What does Parliament do?
Is it all right to use violence against people?
If you got three out of three, congratulations, you are on your way towards becoming a New Zealand citizen.
Those questions might seem absurdly simplistic — as might ‘‘What is Anzac Day?’’ and ‘‘What colours are used in the Tino Rangatiratanga flag?’’ — but they are localised rephrasings of questions in the practice test offered on Australia’s Department of Home Affairs website.
There are no in-depth questions about the country’s constitution. Perhaps our neighbours have taken for their inspiration the famous scene in hit movie The Castle, where the Kerrigan family’s lawyer, in trying to save their house, invokes ‘‘the vibe’’ of the constitution rather than than any specific section, and are hoping that a would-be citizen can ‘‘get the vibe’’ of being an Australian.
The United Kingdom and the United States count among the countries which ask migrants to take a test on the culture and laws of the nation they are seeking to move to, so New Zealand is not an outlier in this respect.
However, some citizens of the US might recollect the egregious literacy tests administered during the Jim Crow era to prevent African-Americans from voting and wonder just what the intent of such testing is.
Superficially, the idea sounds attractive. If you are going to jump in the deep end of the pool, it helps to have at least a superficial knowledge of how to swim.
However, any New Zealand citizenship test will suffer from the same inherent fault that bedevils all testing systems: they assess how good the person sitting it is at passing tests, rather than the sincerity and uprightness of the person being tested.
Internal Affairs Minister Brooke van Velden has said that New Zealand test would cover topics like the Bill of Rights Act, certain criminal offences, voting rights, democratic principles and the structure of government.
‘‘People seeking citizenship should understand New Zealanders believe in certain rights, like freedom of speech, or that no one person or group is above the law,’’ Ms van Velden said.
‘‘This test ensures people have sufficient knowledge of their responsibilities and privileges before receiving citizenship by grant.’’
All well and good, but it would not be beyond the realm of possibility that people born here and resident in New Zealand all of their lives might struggle to answer specific questions on some of those topics.
She also said that the test would ensure people understood, and were committed to, the values and democratic freedoms that made New Zealand wonderful.
Which raises the not unreasonable question of just what those values might be, and who gets to determine what makes the values list and what does not.
Presumably, given that the Bill of Rights Act is cited as one of the things to be tested, that might be the intended framework for what New Zealand’s values are, but the Act is a delicately balanced document which contains an exception for its rights and freedoms to be subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.
Just how many people know that is section 5 of the Act is a moot point. It is also worth noting that the legislators who passed the Bill of Rights Act in 1990 did not attempt to define what a ‘‘free and democratic society’’ actually was.
Immigration professionals have made the relevant point that many of the people targeted by this testing regime will already have been living in New Zealand for some years before having decided to commit themselves to applying for citizenship.
It will constitute an additional hurdle people will have to clear, having already made the life-altering decision to become citizens of another country — a step which it could be argued already showed a commitment to New Zealand and its wonderfulness.
Ultimately, it is hard to avoid concluding that this test is being imposed for the benefit of the people who feel that new citizens should take a test, rather than for the people who will need to pass it before adding to their already valuable contributions to New Zealand.
