Nataliya Ilyushina, writing in Spectator Australia, believes that Labor's “citizenship blitz” is a master-class in “misreading” migrants, and demonstrates their disconnection from them.

. Labor has no clue about the migrant electorate, which still has to enrol to vote like everyone else; like everyone else, some will not bother, and the AEC is to incompetent and lazy to track them down. Voting can be enforced only when people are on the roll.

. Ilyushina writes that new citizens will be warned by already naturalised migrants to “avoid enrolment at all costs”.

. Migrants, like anyone else, could be insulted by being expected to trust people who just show up once at a citizenship ceremony.

. The first thing many migrants hear about is not the value of democracy, but the rumours of hefty fines for failing to vote.

Ilyushina has been an Australian citizen for only 10 years, and looks at things from the migrant perspective, not from Tony Bourke's self-serving ideas, which are a “complete farce”.

Immigrants are not embedded in the Australian political system, and it takes years - a lot longer than the four needed prior to citizenship - to work it out.

. Even with good English, it is hard to work out the system.
. Most migrants speak their birth language at home, and take their news from the old country's news in their language.
. Four years is not long enough to adjust, or to distinguish between the political parties.
. The preferential voting system is a nightmare (to non-migrants as well).

The author's final word on the citizenship blitz - “a terrible misjudgment and an astonishing disconnect with the migrant electorate”.

Indyvidual

A country that has driven out its industry to other countries, and has become reliant on imports of goods and people to tax, is unlikely to care about people in Australia sending what they have left after taxes back to their countries of birth. We have to accept that Australia is rooted, and that too many of the people, voting only because they are forced to, don't seem to care.

A country that has driven out its industry to other countries,
ttbn,
Let's just say it wasn't "the Country" as such. It was power-crazed, economic illiterate Unions who did that by exploiting feeble-minded yet money lusting fee paying members. Many still can't see that to this day & most likely never will.

Dear Ttbn,

As a migrant I can confirm that Nataliya Ilyushina is absolutely correct.

I wish I was also advised at the time to “avoid enrolment at all costs”.

Preferential voting is indeed demanding, but is one democratic island in an otherwise undemocratic electoral system. In order to prevent both the dilution of donkey-votes and forcing voters into moral dilemmas, it should not be compulsory to fill in all the numbers in all the boxes, yet this baby should not be thrown along with the bath-water.

Yuyutsu

No voting should be compulsory. The preferential system is a protection racket for the major parties. While people should vote for their own sakes, compulsory voting is simply undemocratic.

Australian politicians seem to think that all immigrants are the same. All Muslims are the same. All Jews are the same. How insulting! But, that is what identity politics is about.

It is Australian politicians who are all the same: incompetent, self-serving and totally useless; full of wind and slogans.

Last night , I heard Dutton recite the old slogan, ‘Australia is the best country in the world’.

Australia is not the best country in the world. There are no “best” countries. It's the population that counts; and Australia’s multicultural mess, and its political class keep it well down on the list.

I know nothing about Poland or if the Poles have been brainwashed into to thinking that their country is ‘the best in the world’, but, while we are seeing Australian taxpayer funded TV ads telling people it's OK to be queer, a court in Poland has found against IKEA for sacking an employee who criticised the company for sending staff an email saying that they had to be LGBTQ inclusive,

The court also found that IKEA was going against its own ‘rhetoric of inclusivity’ by firing someone due to his religious beliefs and differing worldview.

We don't get that sort of common sense and freedom from our unelected, activist judges in Australia. In fact, although Dutton tries to make out that Australia is the best country in the world, the government declared, idiotically, that his intention of getting public servants to actually pretend to be working in the offices provided for them - not at home in their pyjamas - was discriminating against women!

Also in the ‘best country in the world’ Albanese and Dutton are obsessed with suffocating speech on social media while actual criminals roam the streets, often in gangs, terrorising the general public. And both parties have been buddying-up on Net Zero and pouring our money into renewable energy projects that wouldn’t survive in a true free market.

On Bowen’s watch, household electricity prices have risen by approximately $1,000 and are likely to rise by another 50% or more in the relatively near future.

People should be thinking about these things, and a lot more about what is happening to Australia, in the lead up to the coming election.