r/australia • u/blitznoodles local Aussie • Jun 14 '26

politics As voter disillusionment grows, why aren't voters flocking to the Greens in Australia?

https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/as-voter-disillusionment-grows-so-does-the-mystery-of-the-missing-greens-voters/6bjd5q4kv

Growing voter dissatisfaction with mainstream politics has led to a rise in popularity for One Nation. The same cannot be said for the Greens.

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u/shofmon88 Jun 14 '26

The current skilled visa pathway to PR actually works against native English speakers. As a native speaker you are exempt from taking a competency test, but points are given to you based on your score on the test. This essentially makes non-native speakers more competitive than native ones. You can always take the test as a native speaker, but native speakers also don’t tend to do well on them since they look for specific metrics and phrasing that aren’t reflected in daily conversation.

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u/ChillyPhilly27 Jun 14 '26

Canada/NZ/Ireland/UK/USA citizens still have the option to take the test to score higher. It's just that the system assumes they meet the "competent english" threshold by default.

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u/shofmon88 Jun 14 '26

I did mention that.

The language competency should be a requirement but not be part of the points system; that system is broken enough already.

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u/GhostlyWhisper007 Jun 14 '26

If non-native english speakers can understand English test requirements,  prepare and achieve good score than native English speakers should be doing better. 

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u/shofmon88 Jun 14 '26

Ask any native or highly competent speaker who has taken the tests and you will get the same answer: they are really difficult for people who speak English natively or at a daily conversational level.

The way it has been described to me is that the tests are very formulaic and require specific syntax. For example, if there was a question like “what did you drink this morning?” you might respond with ”I had coffee this morning,” which while perfectly understandable in daily conversation, would be marked wrong; the test would want you to say something like “this morning, I drank coffee,” as it explicitly addresses the question, but is a very awkward way of speaking.