Why has the Albanese government lowered the minimum English requirement for would-be immigrants?

To replace the population with left wing voters more quickly?
Because better educated people don't wish to live in Australia?

Assimilation and employment suitability are clearly not a requirement for the far-Left government.

The reduction is a “significant drop” in English ability requirements from being “able to understand sentences and frequently used expressions” to a person who “can only understand and use familiar, everyday expressions and VERY BASIC PHRASES".

The move is “reckless and out of touch with the pressures facing Australians”, according to Andrew Hastie, who has apparently forgotten that his own party previously hankered after a Big Australia.

But, the Albanese government imported a million people in its first two years in government - 70% more than any other two year period.

Instead of moderating immigration, Labor is increasing immigration; worse, it is increasing numbers with people who are not proficient in the language of the country they wish to live in.

Multiculturalism, ghettos, identity politics have now made it easy for a political class, interested only in creating opposing groups they can control, and encouraging those separate groups to operate and seek favours unavailable to others, to continue, on a large scale, to steadily increase the Balkanisation of Australia.

In the 1980s, American author William Lind, evoked the idea of “fourth generation warfare”: where the distinction between war and peace would be blurred. China's treatment of Australia and the rest of the West almost half a century later is fourth generation warfare.

Australia and most other Western countries have allowed their enemies, Chinese Communists and Islamist through their gates without a shot being fired. Mass immigration has played a part in conquering Western values and culture; particularly as unprincipled politicians view immigrants, no longer encouraged to assimilate, only in terms of votes and taxes.

Given time, and unless more people start taking notice of what is also called ‘grey warfare’, the West will disappear; Australia and other countries will be just like those the immigrants came from.

Who needs a conventional war to get what they want! China knows it has Australia where it wants it. The recent mischievous naval demonstration by CCP naval units off our coast, and Albanese's excuses for it, clearly showed Xi that he has Albanese in his pocket, and that there is no reason to threaten Australia physically. China’s fourth generation war victory is almost won already. Total victory will occur sometime in the future, unless Donald Trump and America lose all patience and rescue us from Albanese and the likes of the diffidently grinning, gawky-looking schoolgirl supposed to be opposing Albanese.

WTF?

It has been pointed out to ttbn many times in the past that English is not Australia's official language.

Australia has no official language but it is difficult to navigate through society if you struggle with English.

Thousands have learned their English after arriving in the past and many more will in the future.

Regardless of one's position on current immigration numbers any regular readers on this forum see this for what it is.

Just another opportunity for ttbn to rage against those who are different to him.

ttbn,

The “lowering” you’re talking about applies only to certain temporary visa subclasses. The English requirements for students and graduates have actually increased. Your CEFR “significant drop” example is cherry-picked without context, and higher-proficiency requirements remain in other streams.

The changes are a refinement to better meet our needs, not a loosening of requirements.

Permanent residents can’t vote, and it takes years to gain citizenship - so the idea of “importing more Labor voters” doesn’t hold up. By the time new citizens can vote, their political leanings are shaped by years of lived experience here, and many migrant communities lean socially conservative. They’re also overrepresented among small business owners, who tend to favour the Coalition's economic policies.

The “million people in two years” figure reflects pandemic catch-up and includes large numbers of temporary entrants like students and working holiday makers - not just permanent settlers with low English. Australia remains a top destination for skilled migrants and students. The challenge is processing times and global competition, not a lack of interest from the “better educated.”

Speaking of which, aren't you lot always banging on about how the "better educated" vote Green and Labor anyway?

Ironically, these changes could just as easily create more future Coalition voters as Labor ones.

Something about Multilingual Australia.

Obviously, they acknowledge the ‘traditional owners’ of Boorloo: which is what the people they acknowledge call Perth, the place where MA gathers.

They announce that 429 languages are spoken in Australia; that 183 of them are indigenous languages, and 16,000 people use ‘Auslan’ at home. Auslan, is not so much a ‘language’ as it is ‘signing’ as used by deaf people.

English doesn’t get a separate mention even though 72% of Australians, 18.3 million, speak only English.

Multilingual Australia is “dedicated” to creating a “language-friendly Australia”, bless them.

They are supposed to have been founded by “parents” in 2002, but don’t seem to have expanded beyond Perth since then. They are funded by the state government.

Apart from amusing themselves, they don't seem to have achieved much. The 2024 Census revealed that only 24.8% of people in Australia were bilingual - let alone multilingual, and only 22.3% of them spoke a language other than English in the home.

Nick Cater realises that relaxing English requirements is an “act of national self-harm”.

It is. But the Australian political class will benefit. They are interested in what they can squeeze out of the nation before they have to escape to somewhere nice, like Switzerland.

Nick thinks “thoughtlessness” is the kindest explanation for the Assistant Immigration Minister's trashing of the importance of the English language in an English-speaking country.

On the contrary, I think a lot of thought has gone into the decision, in the quest for more ignorant people who will vote Labor out of gratitude.

Note “assistant” . Think: the monkey doing the organ-grinder's job; or, why does it take two to make such a mess of the portfolio? Or, are two ministers needed to speed up the population replacement policy?

A person who can score only the new requirement of 24 out of 30 has only a “rudimentary” knowledge of English; which wouldn't get him into even wet-Left Canada on a work visa.

They couldn't get into the UK either, if they tried the legal way.

Worse than ‘not much English’ is some fool's recent suggestion that “ … the Australian citizenship test be conducted in languages other than English”!

Apparently, a group of Fifth Columnists called itself ‘Multilingual Australia’ has deemed that there is a “tendency” to view Australia through the “narrow prism” of an “English-speaking society” which is muddying the waters of cultural, ethnic and religious inclusion,