The Australian Government has released a list of ten values it considers essential to being an Australian citizen.

While these principles are relatively inoffensive, letting the government prescribe what values citizens should hold is a frightening road to be going down! The point of democracy is for citizens to decide what the government’s values should be. This means nothing if the government chooses citizens’ values.

Incidentally I don’t value any of those listed per se. Only as general principles that are usually upshots of what I do value. There are times I would act against most of them for values not on this list. I also don’t know what our national flower is (though I’ve never found that a barrier to integrating with Australian culture). I hope I get deported to somewhere where policy is less of a joke.