What's the Aussie capital, immigrants to be asked

By James Grubel

CANBERRA (Reuters Life!) - Immigrants to Australia who think Sydney's the capital and the governor-general is the head of state will have to think again if they want to become citizens.

Modeled on similar citizenship tests in Britain, Canada and the United States, Australia plans to introduce a new quiz of 20 questions, drawn from a pool of 200 questions, by the end of the year in a move critics labeled jingoistic propaganda.

Under the new citizenship tests, people will be asked to name the nation's capital and Australia's head of state as part of the government's push to promote unspecified Australian values.

Sample questions were published in the Herald-Sun newspaper on Friday.

"The examples of test questions which have been released contain many questions which many Australian-born people would not be able to answer correctly," Australian Democrats Senator Andrew Bartlett said, adding the tests were "ideologically-driven nonsense".

Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews said the laws to enable the new tests would be introduced in national parliament within weeks, with the government also producing a booklet for immigrants to help explain Australia's way of life.

Australia's conservative government has been pushing for migrants to have a stronger recognition of Australian values, such as "mateship", and to learn English, to promote integration and avoid a repeat of beachside riots between groups of Muslim youths and non-Muslims in Sydney in late 2005.

Andrews on Friday said the government had not yet decided the questions to go into the citizenship test, but said they would be multiple choice questions focused on Australian values, history and culture.

"I think the majority of questions will be ones which most Australians would know the answers to," Andrews told Australian radio on Friday, adding people wanting citizenship would need a 60 percent pass rate.

He said the questions published in the Herald-Sun were devised by the newspaper and were not official questions for would-be citizens.

For the record, Queen Elizabeth II, also Queen of Britain, is Australia's head of state, although monarchists say she is only the monarch and that Governor-General Michael Jeffery is the real head of state. And Canberra is Australia's capital city.