‘Aussie values’

This article, by Fotis Kapetopoulos, who happens to be a Dad from our local soccer club in Darebin, captures something that most concerns me about Malcolm Turnbull’s recent announcements of changes to Australia’s citizenship laws.  And that is the dilution of our universal citizenship rights.

I believe this has been the key to our multicultural success since the lifting of White Australia in the late 60s and early 1970s.

Our universal right to citizenship was a deliberate message of inclusion, supported by four successive PMs and their governments in the 70s and 80s – it set the tone for a new society where multiculturalism was the norm.

There are no categories in Australia – no distinctions between migrants and the Australian-born when it comes to the right to be an Australian, unlike in so many other countries.  And that’s the way it should be, in a nation that prides itself on its egalitarianism and fairness.