Recently Rich Paschall wrote an interesting post about the test that would be US citizens must pass and included some sample questions. I decided to have a go at answering and out of the ten got nine correct although to be fair one answer was a complete guess and for another I was dithering between two answers and really wasn’t sure. Still I hadn’t studied for it and have no desire to become an American citizen anyway. I just thought it would be interesting to see how much I knew.

Australia also has a Citizenship Test which would be Australians must pass. I am not an Australian citizen myself. In the 1960s when my family came to Australia British migrants were not required to pass a test, they automatically gained the right to vote in elections in Australia. I was a child then but when I grew up I too received these rights automatically. This was because Australian Citizens were considered to be British subjects.

This changed in the 1970s I think it was and at that time I know that some of my extended family chose to become Australian citizens. You have to be an Australian citizen to join the defence forces or work for the Commonwealth Public Service. From time to time over the years I have considered taking out Australian Citizenship because although I am proud of my British heritage and don’t want to renounce my British citizenship I do identify more with Australia (especially during the Ashes cricket series)

I remember that in the 1990s I received a letter from the Australian Government encouraging me to take out citizenship and I was quite interested in doing so until I discovered how much it was going to cost me. I felt all the fees and charges were unreasonably high considering that I was working and paying tax. I’d lived here most of my life and I couldn’t see that I had a lot to gain by changing.

Anyway, enough about me. Could you pass the citizenship test? There is a website where you can take a practice test comprising of 20 questions. You have to get 75% correct to pass. The website says that there are 390 questions altogether and offers an option to try to answer them all for a practice. I decided that I would do that.

I discovered that it takes a long time to answer 390 multiple choice questions even if you skip the few you have no clue about. These mostly were about the Torres Strait Island flag colours and their meanings. Several questions appeared more than once so by the end I was able to answer some of those too.

I did find some of the questions badly worded or that the answers were ambiguous. An example of the latter is one asked where you would find fine examples of colonial architecture. I think the choices were Adelaide, Perth, Tasmania and Brisbane. The only acceptable answer was Adelaide. I was annoyed by this because there is some colonial architecture in every state capital and Tasmania has several towns with Georgian buildings as well as Hobart so I felt that should not nave been a wrong answer.

Here are some of the questions and if anyone wants to play I’ll include a link to the website so you can try the full test.

Which arm of government has the power to interpret and apply laws?

a. Legislative

b.Executive

c. Judicial

d.None of the above

What constitutes Commonwealth of Australia?

a. Federation of States

 b.Territories

 c.All of the above

 d.None of the above

How many official flags are there in Australia?

 a.1

 b.3

 c.2

 d.4

Where does 75% population of Western Australia live?

 a.Rockingham

b. Perth

 c.Mandurah

 d.Bunbury

What is the capital of Australia?

 a.Sydney

 b.Melbourne

c. Canberra

 d.Perth

Here are links to the main test page and the study guide. I have also added a couple of visual clues that might be included in the questions. https://immi.homeaffairs.gov.au/citizenship-subsite/files/our-common-bond-15112020.pdf

https://www.easydrivingtest.com.au/citizenship-test

The answers to the above questions are c,c, b,b,c. If you are wondering how I did on the 390 questions I got 92% right but 20/20 when I attempted the first practice test.