Dear Readers,

Professor Williams is a member of the Australian Labor Party who is actively seeking pre-selection. Everything that the good Professor writes must be understood with that fact firmly in mind.

I've got an idea, let's just ALL be bad Australians, but good people! Last time I checked, the world was sphere shaped. As long as that remains the case, I see no need to identify ourselves by where we happened to be born.

Thank God, The Skeptic has outed Professor Williams as a member of the ALP, and warned us that everything that Williams writes "must be understood with that fact firmly in mind". We could so easily have been fooled with his dangerous ideas

Until Skeptic's timely warning I only knew Williams as the Director of the Centre of Public Law at the University of NSW - and before that as an academic at ANU and at universities in Toronto, New York and London. Oh, yes, I nearly forgot, I heard that he has written 11 books and edited 8 others. And been an Associate Associate to Justice McHugh of the High Court and appeared as a barrister in a number of important High Court cases.

So we readers are deeply grateful to The Skeptic. Without his warning, we may have been seduced into thinking that Williams knew something about constitutional law and public policy and could write objectively on those topics. Just goes to show: you can't be too careful whose ideas you read.

Now it's time for The Skeptic to out those other closet party members like Kevin Donnelly, David Flint, Gerard Henderson, Andrew Bolt and Des Moore. If I knew what political party they belong to I could understand their articles with that fact firmly in mind. What about it Skeptic?

So a member of the Labor Party reckons we should know how our system works. What rubbish will the ALP come up with next? Probably something stupid like public health and education. Sneaky devils.

Shock, horror the last opinion poll I saw had the ALP 11% points in front of the rodents government. Could this possibly mean that there are more people around who just happen to know what is going on....ummmmm

Thanks FrankGol for your usual injection of sanity into the thread. I generally agree with Williams' analysis, despite (or regardless of) the fact that he is apparently a preselected ALP candidate.

As expressed here, his views would be attractive to this voter if I happened to live in his electorate. I would give his party my second preference, behind the Greens.

I agree with George. Our education system does not teach anywhere near enough Austrakian history or geography.

For part of the hols, we have a granddaughter staying with us. she is bright as a button, is 11 years old and completed year 5. Lives in Melbourne.

She can name the states, knows who Cook was,but not much of his discoveries. She thinks she knows what the Vic flag looks like but could not describe it. Does not know what the floral emblem of Vic is. Does not know who the Vic Governor is or when Melbourne was settled. Could not give the year of the first fleet or the year of Federation. Did not know who Lawson or Paterson were, or Bass and Flinders and could not name any other explorer.
She said they were only taught a little bit about Australia at school

She asked me to spell Dimethylmitrosamine, which is a bad chemical in cigarettes, she informed me. I failed,of course as never heard of it.

I seem to remember all the above, except the chemical, from primary school. I think Australia is not given much time at schools these days. This is not the first occasion I have had reason to think this.

I can't comment on how much kids get taught about these things today. However I can tell you I was taught this when I was at school. I like history and politics so I remember these things, most of my class mates don't and would fail the questions asked by the Author. I would not blame the education system. Rather our media and government for this. To many Americans and not enough Aussie shops on telly and the movies.

Silly Mr Williams, Mr Howards citizenship test is only for wogs and darkies - he and i qualify automatically, as we're anglo's.
Two questions tho, will my citizenship be revoked if i admit to thinking that Warnie is a moron, and to which US Consular office do i apply to get my serf-dom formally recognised?

Thank you to Frank for presenting us with Mr Williams’ CV. What an impressive legal pedigree he has. However, I am somewhat disturbed by the professor’s myopia. If he has written 11 books as you say why have none of those books touched on the matter of a high court judge who, despite offending the NSW Crimes Act for 13 years, continues to sit in judgment of others. And will Mr Williams as an MP answerable to the voters unseal Lionel Murphy’s file? Surely someone as impeccant as Mr Williams is concerned with the appearance of the law. Let’s test his alleged knowledge of the law because it is little understood by the current Canberra camorra.

Sage, my point in touching on George Williams' c.v. was to challenge The Skeptic's illogical thinking that, because Williams was allegedly a member of the ALP, he was somehow disqualified from making comments on the citizenship debate - or that his comments are less worthy of readers' proper consideration. (I love Richard Wagner's music, but his politics were putrid.)

Now you perpetuate this sloppiness by taking us on an irrelevant excursion to the High Court and old allegations about Lionel Murphy, another ALP member (long dead, so unable to defend himself). What has the Lionel Murphy issue got to do with William's paper on citizenship? Why belittle Williams for what Murphy may or may not have done?

Sage, you say you are "somewhat disturbed" by Williams' "myopia". You clearly haven't read any of his 11 books (nor the other 8 he has editied) yet you are able to say absolutely that none of those books touched on the matter. You clearly can't suffer from myopia. Your far-sightedness enables you to know the contents of that number of books without even rustling their pages.

A disclaimer: I am not a member of the ALP so I'm not defending that political party. Neither do I have a strong interest in the citizenship debate. I think it's a red herring and we've many bigger fish to fry. But it does concern me that some posters on this site think they are adding something meaningful by trying to blacken the name of a contributor while failing to get to grips with the substance of their article.

Free advice: if you're going to show off your dazzling vocabulary, please provide a glossary. I'll give you 'myopia'; but 'impeccant' and 'camorra' are a bit self-conscious. Big words don't make small ideas any better, even for a Sage.

To play the ball and not the man ie, to take the article for what it says, I find the argument succinct and to the point. Well written.
Thankyou.

Good to see the warriors being challenged Frank. Lovely !
A friend who rarely watches TV taught in schools for years and was regularly puzzled by the strange ideas so many students had about how our society works. Usually they were thinking and talking like Americans and assumed that we operated the same way.
After the Referendum I worked for a survey about how people voted.
Many conversations went like this -
"And why did you vote NO?"
"We ought to elect our President."
"Why?"
"The Americans do."
"Yes, but....."

Max Harris used to use unusual words. He thought it was his readers' job to understand him, not his to talk down to them.

"Most if not many would fail a test of our history,law and Govt."

Now I wonder what politically correct left wing education system was responsible for this sad state of affairs?Perhaps two wrongs make a right, ie just let anyone into Australia,or is it too many lefts make us totally bereft?

Arjay,
It would have to be a "left wing" system, wouldn't it which is why it has churned out voters who vote for extreme "right wing" Howard Governments for the past decade, sometimes Arjay you come up with really good arguements, this is not one of those times.

Professor, you are so right "One of the reasons why governments fail to do their job is because people do not know enough to hold politicians to account." Most don't even know their rights when questioned by a policeman about a traffic offence. And is this not the fault of the people? They are apathetic. She'll be right?
But are you going to be different? Should you get into Parliament will you represent the people or the Party? If it is the former you'll not last long - the Labor Party is past master at hatred. If the latter then what use will you be to the people. I suppose that that sounds defeatist. Not quite.
Take a look at todays press! That bastion of public input, that pillar of democratic thought, that foundation of our Judicial system, the jury, doesn't know. And that strengthens the hand of those who wish to destroy the JURY system. For who wants to tell a magistrate or Judge that his directions are not agreed with?

In the 1940s all those fact were taught, and had to be learnt by rote. The highly-educated university-trained people who populated the "curriculum branches" followed revolutionary thinking -- learning by rote was wrong.
They had another item of doctrine. Everyone was equal. So everyone would know the subjects. Ergo -- there was no need to mark people by percentages.
Not for them social studies theories that people had different levels of intelligence, different levels of "stickatability", and so on. No, every child must be promoted every year, and all undergraduates SHALL graduate at university.
The generations that learnt by rote had developed the atom bomb and flown men to the moon, had conquered infectious diseases (well, many of them), and invented the motor car, aeroplane and computer.
I recommend that politicians and others declare that learning the alphabet, grammar, the tables, formulae, etc, is RIGHT, right, right, and that not everyone can or ought to graduate, and then send all the curriculum branch people out to teach in classrooms.
-- John Massam 46 Cobine Way, Greenwood, WA 6024. 08 9343 9532

johnmassam,
So what is your point, in regards to the 21st century mate?

Funnily enough I could answer most of those questions without thinking too hard (I didnt get the aboriginal vote one, but was able to pick the middle of the 20th century, so not too bad). What are the other questions that are proposed? Are they equally outrageous?

I am really not sure whether I leant this stuff at school or not (am only 10 years out of school, so definately in the period where factual teaching was not so important). I did my schooling by correspondence for the first 3 years, so got plenty of one-on-one assistance, which no doubt helped. I dare say that it was a mixture of this, what I was taught by my parents, and what I learned by copious amounts of reading, that armed me with the knowledge that I have.

However, just because our schooling system is failing this generation of Australians, is no excuse not to expect our prospective citizens to do some research on the country that they want to belong to. As with most things, you cant right the wrongs of the past, but you can see to it that issues identified are addressed in future. That's all this is doing. Stop scaremongering. Those that truly want to become Australian citizens will brush up on some history if they are expected to do so. I would suggest those that dont, cant be too interested in joining us as citizens - their own loss.