Fair dinkum mate

What is really going on with these proposed changes to the citizenship test? It fills me with trepidation – that we may be heading back to the days of the Immigration Restriction Act's 1901 – Dictation Test. Why is the Prime Minister putting so much focus on language skills, when in the '50s and '60s and '70s many "New Australians" who came from Europe never mastered English and had incredibly successful lives?

These newcomers were encouraged by the government to take out citizenship – nobody worried how good your English was then. If an English test is introduced as a requirement of citizenship, we are going to deny our country some remarkable citizens.

There is speculation that the acceptable level for competent English will be an IELTS 6 – in speaking, listening, reading, and writing. That is the level needed for many university courses – a frightening prospect. In terms of "the key to a successful life ... being a competent speaker of English", I beg to differ (and I have spent 35 years as an ESOL teacher).

Among my own three children and their Iranian cousins there are the following: a surgeon (who is also a Rhodes scholar), a couple of training doctors, a lawyer, a senior TED executive, a dentist, a couple of CEOs, a photographer, an entrepreneur, a building construction engineer, a PhD candidate, a trainee teacher, a public health manager, an accountant and a couple still studying.

I think their grandparents feel a sense of achievement – I shudder to think of them being denied citizenship based on their language proficiency.

Margaret McBride, Fraser

To Mario Stivala's letter (Sunday CT, April 23) I say: spot on and well said. I would just add that progressive Victoria and the ACT are a little better than most and so perhaps do not deserve to be lumped in with the dinosaurs, although I never discount the possibility of spine-chillingly well-organised and hateful conservative heads being raised anywhere at any time.

As for Wilcox's cartoon: golly, was that also spine-chillingly accurate.

Aussies need to take a long hard look at their selfish and apathetic selves. Most won't put their beer down or lift a finger to insist that the good will and affirmation of harmless equal marriage be extended to all and that LGBT bullying be addressed in schools (for real, that is) – this apathy being a windfall for those suffering idiosyncratic fantasy and religious lunacy.

Meg Wilson, Queanbeyan

John Davenport (Letters, Sunday CT, April 23) refers to the proposed Gungahlin to Civic light rail as "progressive and innovative transport system". Research shows that trams are one of the oldest intra-city public transport modes in existence around the world. Trams are particularly useful in densely populated cities of traditional design (Canberra is not the case), where the relatively expensive and intrusive infrastructure required can be justified by its usefulness and financial return.

In Canberra, where this (usefulness and financial return) will not be the case, an alternative to the trams could have been replacing the current ageing bus fleet with a much more flexible, economical, low polluting and less obtrusive bus system. I understand we never even considered that option.

I am a lover of trams; I grew up in a city that had a comprehensive and effective tram network which was eventually replaced by buses and, more recently, complemented by an underground metro system. But, I do not think that Canberra is a tram city, whatever Walter Burley Griffith might have said.

John Rodriguez, Florey

There are some legitimate uses of the present tense to describe something that happened in the past ("Alert and alarmed at life's little irritations", April 22). One is what used to be called "the historic present", to make an account of a tense event more vivid: So I walk over to him and I say to him, "What are you up to, mate?"

Also very common today is what might be called "the historic perfect", the use of the perfect tense to describe accidents and scenes of danger: "It's [the car] gone over the median strip and it's actually gone airborne about six or seven metres and it's gone into the car park. I've run over to assist the driver."

Michael McCarthy, Deakin

A good start in addressing concerns about immunisation ("Push for GPs to address vaccination concerns", Sunday CT, April 23, p9) would be for GPs to stop labelling parents who ask, "Has this vaccine been safety tested like other drugs?" or "Can you show me the research that proves it is safe to give nine vaccines at once?" as "anti-vaccination".

If they asked if a car was tested like other cars, and safe to drive, they wouldn't be called "anti-car", would they? So, how can we get the message across to parents hesitant to immunise? Let's talk to parents who have nursed children through measles. I have, for one. They weren't babies at the time, because I still had maternal antibodies to pass on. It was inconvenient keeping them home from school, but certainly not life-threatening. Whooping cough? Most cases go unnoticed.

I can tell you about families who have vaccinated everyone to protect a new baby only to find they have all come down with cold symptoms. It looks like the most common form of whooping cough — no whoop, no struggle for air, just like any other cold except it lasts longer, and everyone gets it.

Another roadblock to GPs addressing vaccine hesitancy, or even mentioning it in a non-threatening way, is a health system that, in my own experience, terrorises GPs who exercise their professional judgment. If they decidea child is too vulnerable to be vaccinated — autoimmune disorders, previous registered reactions, epilepsy, etc — they risk censoring by their own doctors association.

If they come to the conclusion that risk outweighs benefit more than once, they risk deregistration hearings by the Australian Health Professionals Registration Authority.

This censorship and harassment is not conducive to good communication about any topic. So, bring on the debate, and please don't exclude manufacturers' product insert information about side effects or their reports showing inadequate safety testing.

Jennifer Heywood, Spence

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