Who is qualified to call Australia home?

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has unveiled the biggest overhaul in Australia's citizenship standards in decades. Migrants hoping to call Australia home will now be tested on their English skills, as well as questioned about their cultural values and attitudes towards women. People and communities around Australia are trying to come to terms with changes to Australia's citizenship requirements, with many now facing a much longer wait for citizenship than they were expecting.

Mayor Ben Keneally and a family of new Australian citizens at the Botany Council citizenship ceremony (ABC) Source: ABC Australia

The Turnbull Government is tightening the screws on immigration.

Its new citizenship test will place a huge emphasis on what the Government is calling Australia's shared values and responsibilities.

It will include questions like, "Is it permissible to force children to marry?" and, "Under what circumstances can you strike your spouse in the privacy of your own home?"

Under newly announced changes to the citizenship requirements, anyone who fails the test three times will have to wait another two years before taking it again.

Permanent residents will face a longer wait, too.

The current requirement to sit the citizenship test is only one year of permanent residency.

That will now go up to four years.

The idea is residents can prove they have tried to integrate into and contribute to Australian society by working, becoming part of community groups and sending their children to school.

Currently, the test consists of 20 multiple-choice questions, with the pass mark at 75 per cent.

On average, more than 13,000 people from more than 200 countries become Australian citizens each year.

The Refugee Council is warning the Turnbull Government's toughening of the citizenship test will have a disproportionate impact on refugees and the elderly.

One Iranian refugee in Western Sydney tells SBS she struggles with English herself.

But she doesn't mind the test getting harder.

"I think language is very important. That's what I think but i know a lot of people, they're struggling to learn language. I'm one of them, I'm still struggling to learn language but still language is very important to getting a job, or communicating with the people living here."

The changes are not only affecting those who speak English as a second or third language.

Even people from British will need to wait extra years before they can apply for citizenship.

The tougher citizenship test will also include questions on Australian values, with some designed to pick up on a tendency for violent religious extremism.

But political observers say, most would-be terrorists are ideological young men who would have no trouble lying in the test.