What is hard, is for people to get their heads around the idea that for more than 50 years at the heart of Australia’s immigration system was a fake test. Not a difficult and unfair test, as it is often mistakenly portrayed, but an entirely fake one. Given in a language of choice – official choice (as long as it was European) – but always chosen so that it was one the person being given the test would fail. To be asked to sit a Dictation Test meant the official had already decided to bar your entry to Australia and this was merely the legal means of turning you into a “prohibited immigrant”.
For an ABC interview on this subject see Radio National and for an account of one person’s dealings with the Dictation Test in its later stages see A deserter’s fate: the Dictation Test at work,.
