This is the sort of thing that’s much less likely to trip up a non-Commonwealth parliamentary member, actually. Sam Dastyari probably had to explicitly apply for Australian citizenship and for a lot of countries that process would automatically junk your former citizenship.
Now for the conspiracy theory part of the story. All this (the Scott Ludlum part of the CF anyway) was apparently instigated by a “constitutional enthusiast”, whatever that means (but presumably read "member of another political party) and was first raised as a query a couple of years ago. It’s only now that it’s come to a head because said "constitutional enthusiast " threatened to expose Ludlum. And as it happens there was a very unedifying stoush in the party just last week over education policy. So…was the timing deliberate? Has someone been sitting on this info till the most damaging time?
The process is not entirely insane. But close to it. Why should the Australians insist that I have to pay cash to the American government to be permitted to run for the Aus Senate? What is a ‘reasonable’ amount of money required to relinquish citizenship? What if the Norks unilaterally decided to make all Australians “citizens” and required $100K cash each for any citizen who wanted to run for Australian federal parliment?
And will they come for the Jews next? Jewish people have automatic rights to residence in Israel (the Law of Return). Are they going to have to prove that they’ve requested renunciation of their “rights or privilege” under Israeli law?
I would lkie to think that one effect of recent events would be a return to a more reasonable interpretation of the rules, but it won’t work like that: the issue plays into some other important Australian beliefs.
When I was a kid, that would have been true about the USA: if I’d taken out Aus citizenship, I would have automatically lost my American citizenship. Although I now understand that they did not necessarily enforce that.
I don’t think that will happen. The Israeli right of return is not exactly a citizenship right. In any case, it would be in effect a “religious test” explicitly banned by s. 116 of the Constitution:
Well, I don’t think it will happen either. I think it just points to the ridiculessness of the present interpretation. But clearly the test as written does not require citizenship: “or entitled to the rights or privileges of a subject or citizen”.
Does that mean “entitled to /all/ the rights and priveleges of a citizen”? Because I don’t have the right to vote in American elections: I haven’t established residence. And I know for a fact that many /other/ American citizens are under the voting age. Where is the line drawn, and will it continue to move south?
I’ve long argued the Constitution should be read in the modern era to not consider citizens of Commonwealth Countries with Queen Elizabeth II as head of state as “foreign powers”.
So in the last couple of days, another pollie got caught out by this arcane law - Liberal (ie, kinda conservative) Senator Matt Canaven.
His case is even pickier than Larissa Waters’ - his mother applied for Italian citizenships on grounds of descent for multiple family members including him, without (he says) his knowledge
According to this article, however, as the law is written, it may not matter whether he knew or not! :eek:
Just a little statistics to make this funner. In Australia right now:
28% of Australians were born overseas
49% of Australians have a parent born overseas
So maybe as much as half of parliament may suddenly be at risk from this sneaky little provision, and are probably right now scrambling around phoning embassies of countries they have ancestors from saying “are you SURE you’ve never heard of me?”
The other challenge is the Constitution was written in 1900 so it was clearly never intended to exclude members of what was then the British Empire - it would more have been aimed at Russians, Chinese, the French, the Dutch, the Americans etc.
I’m not usually a fan of “What would the drafters of the document want?” because they’re dead and it’s not their world anymore, but it’s pretty clear excluding people from countries with the King/Queen as head of state was not the intent of that provision.
If the high court were to decide, f’rinstance, that being a citizen of another country is fine just as long as they have the same head of state as us (which is certainly among the moderately sensible arguments for ‘why this provision of the constitution is looney’) then the net result of that would be that Ludlum and Waters would be back in, and Canaven would be out.
Pretty sure the Libs wouldn’t tolerate that quietly!
Since you’re in the thread, as someone with experience of the matter, what do you need to do as a Kiwi to get Australian citizenship? I have a feeling that the rules are more forgiving than they are for other nationalities, and that 40 years ago they were especially slack.
I’m sure they wouldn’t, and while I am not a fan of the Greens at all, I think what’s happened to their senators is unfair and should be rectified immediately. Further, given Canaven apparently had no say in being an Italian citizen he should have the option to renounce it and carry on as if nothing had happened - the fact he didn’t know meant he clearly wasn’t a double agent for the Italian Secret Service or anything.
As for a Kiwi getting Australian Citizenship: It depends when you moved here. When I moved here (2000), all you had to do was wait two years, then go to the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs and say “Hi, I want to be an Australian.” They’d check your passport (or call the details up on their immigration computer" and then book you in for an interview (I think mine was a week later?)
Said interview was basically to make sure you A) Were entitled to be an Australian citizen B) Spoke English and C) Weren’t wanted by INTERPOL. Assuming everything was OK (which it was in my case), they booked me in for a citizenship ceremony a month later at the town hall, I went along, pledged my allegiance to Australia, whose values I share and laws I will uphold, enjoyed a complimentary lamington and some party pies, shook hands with the mayor, got my citizenship certificate and my native plant, then went out for a celebratory drink with the family.
It’s a lot harder now - you need to apply for permanent residency under the same criteria as anyone else so most NZers don’t bother (they can live and work here without needing any visas etc).
Of course, if one of your parents was New Zealanders by birth and you were born in Australia, you could be a New Zealand citizen without realising it; there’s probably a few people in that category.
I don’t buy Ludlum’s argument he thought getting Australian citizenship cancelled his New Zealand citizenship; NZ has always allowed multiple citizenships (one guy I went to high school with had four) and the most common reason NZers have for not getting Australian citizenship was, until 2001, there wasn’t much point - they had the same rights/entitlements as Australians.
My understanding is that the “constitutional enthusiast” was actually investigating whether Derryn Hinch was eligible to stand for election as a Senator because the Human Headline was born in New Zealand. However Derrryn had renounced his Kiwi citizens ship and the trawling investigation found out the others.
I expect there will be several more, with almost 1/3rd of Australian being born overseas and almost 2/3 have at least one grandparent born overseas.
The next stage of the process will catch up members who by birth of their parents/grand parents have a right to apply for dual citizenship, even if not exercised. Enter into this increasing pedantic question Julia Banks. Born in Australia with a Greek born father who has never applied for Greek citizenship though she would retain that right.
The greater context for any non-Aussie still reading this thread is the Liberal government have a single seat majority and the Senate is hung. So any resignation from this affair could lead to a change of government.
The only fix is a Constitutional amendment, which would only succeed if bipartisan and only 50:50 then. The patch could be a High Court ruling but where that line would be drawn from the current candidates in clear breach to a those in a potential breach is a doozie.
You keep saying this but there’s no textual support for it at all, is there? And unless you are suggesting the drafters of the constitution were remarkably daft, they must have realised that the wording of s44 would catch out members of the British Empire.
Not only that, but even if those who drafted the Constitution intended to exclude Commonwealth nations from this restriction, the fact is that Australia’s relationship with those nations, and with the Commonwealth, has changed considerably in the last century or so. Sure, we still have many close ties to places like England and Canada, but i doubt that anyone would seriously argue that they are not foreign powers, or that their interests always align perfectly with Australia’s.
I have no doubt that the Senators who have lost their jobs as a result of this rule were just as loyal to Australia, and just as committed to doing their jobs properly, as any other member of parliament. I would also be in favor of changing the Constitution to allow dual citizens ot serve, or at least to set some more reasonable limits as to what constitutes conflict of interest. But i don’t think the way to fix it is simply to make the argument that the framers of the Constitution really, truly didn’t mean to exclude Commonwealth countries, even though they made no such assertion in the text of the Constitution itself.
There was no such thing as “Australian Citizenship” until 1948. Up until around World War II, British subjects could more or less move around the Empire as they liked - especially if they were white.
From what I recall, the process for a European to become a permanent resident of the Straits Settlements (Now Malaysia and Singapore) basically consisted of going to the British Resident or his authorised representative and saying “FYI I’ve been living here for a year or two and I’ve decided to stay”.
You’re even more Australian than I am and you know as well as I do that Gallipoli (1915) is the point Australia was really considered to become its own nation. There’s no way, in 1900, the Australian Constitution was intended to stop a white Briton or New Zealander or Canadian, or a European Indian from being a member of the Australian parliament, since England (and by extension) the rest of the Empire wasn’t seen as a “foreign power” the way Russia or Germany or France or Holland was.
So yes, I’m saying the drafters of the constitution made an error - not out of ignorance or stupidity, but because there was no possible way for them to envision a modern world where the British Empire had fractured, America was the pre-eminent superpower, India & China were vying for the second place spot there, and the Dutch East Indies were independent and also the world’s largest muslim nation.
Yeah, in a debate over legal and Constitutional issues, let’s rely on references to a vaguely-articulated and overly-masculiinized sense of national identity based on a military defeat that took place over ten thousand kilometers from Australian shores. That’s sure to clear things up!
Including some odd electoral rights, often attributed to the fact that at federation, some people still hoped that NZ would later join the Australian Commonwealth.
As I recall, apart from just being able to vote and stand for parliment by default, they were also explicitly included in the people who could nominate a candidate for election in my state.
