Sala Walter

One thing I didn’t realise I missed during quarantine were Tongan hymns. The church my family attends sits idly along Mt Druitt Road, and enjoys the shade of a gumtree much older and grander and holier than the church itself.  I’m not at all religious like my family, for I’ve found faith in plenty of ordinary things in life: letters from friends in the mail, cicadas singing in spring, that particular hue of aegean blue that allows you to see the contours of the mountains from afar.  But the last time the Tongans at my family’s church congregated was maybe in March, and for months the only Tongan hymns I was hearing were crackled through the static of the Tongan radio and my grandma humming an old tune alone in her room. Hearing their voices reunite in harmony so seamlessly, like silk, as if they weren’t apart for all these months, overwhelmed me.   Was it homesickness that made me miss the harmonies of Tongan hymns or did I just reach my limit hearing my grandmother sing ...

Announced in the Federal Budget last Tuesday, the government is to introduce an English language test for Partner visa applicants and their permanent resident sponsors in order to settle in Australia.   Sala-O-Vea Walter @salaovea   From 1901 until 1958, under the government’s Immigration Restriction Act , also known as the White Australia Policy, people migrating to Australia were required to complete a dictation test. In order to pass the test, migrants were to write fifty words in any European language under the provision of an immigration officer. The Australian government deported applicants that were unsuccessful in the test. This year’s Federal Budget amplified the need for increased funding in education since it is alarmingly clear that history classes have eluded the memories of certain people, as almost 120   years later, Australia still, evidently, has not managed to rid itself of its racist, colonial and Eurocentric past.   Acting Immigration Minister Ala...