Judgment day as High Court rules on senator’s citizenship
THE High Court is set to hand down a judgment that will be scrutinised as thoroughly as the Federal Budget.
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TODAY in Canberra, the High Court will hand down a judgment that will be scrutinised as thoroughly as last night’s Budget.
The fate of Labor senator Katy Gallagher will be decided in the latest instalment of the citizenship saga that has plagued the 45th Parliament.
Ten MPs and senators have already been toppled by Section 44 of the Constitution, which bans dual citizens from standing for federal public office.
But if Senator Gallagher is found to be ineligible, it could herald a domino effect which will see at least three Labor MPs and one crossbencher go to the courts, and reignite the debate over another four Government MPs.
While the Coalition will be eager to see Labor lose some skin over citizenship, after Labor used the issue to attack the Government for months last year, it won’t want to see the debate restarted.
The Turnbull Government has finally started some getting clear air after the smog generated by the citizenship ruckus — which claimed even deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce as a Kiwi — threw it off course last year, while the first part of this year was dominated by infighting and scandal.
If Gallagher loses her job she will be replaced by the next Labor candidate on the Senate ticket from 2016.
But Member for Longman Susan Lamb, as well as Labor’s Justine Keay and Josh Wilson and crossbencher Rebekha Sharkie, have similar cases and are expected to be referred to the High Court if Gallagher is found to have been ineligible.
The paperwork showed that the UK citizenships of Member for Mayo Rebekha Sharkie, and Labor MPs Justine Keay and Josh Wilson were not officially renounced until after they had nominated.
Lamb submitted her renunciation form but was told to provide more information to UK authorities including her parents’ marriage certificate.
She claimed she couldn’t obtain the certificate as she was estranged from her mother, who abandoned her at school one day as a child.
But the The Courier-Mail later revealed family members disputed some of her claims, saying she had lived with her mother as a teenager.
Labor has a narrow margin in Longman and Keay’s seat of Braddon, leaving it vulnerable at a by-election, though the LNP is not certain of its chances in Longman, despite only losing it to Labor in 2016.
The citizenship saga began after West Australian lawyer John Cameron investigated Greens senator Scott Ludlum and found he had retained his New Zealand citizenship.
Ludlam resigned and Queensland Greens senator Larissa Waters, who was born in Canada during a brief visit by her parents, soon followed.
But minister and Queensland Nationals senator Matt Canavan, discovering he may have had Italian dual citizenship, triggered a chain of events which saw the so-called “citizenship seven” front the High Court.
Joyce, as well as One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts, another Nationals senator Fiona Nash, Ludlum and Waters all went down, while Nick Xenophon and, ironically, Senator Canavan both survived.
Since then, senators Stephen Parry, Jacqui Lambie and Skye Kakoschke-Moore, as well as Lower House MPs John Alexander and David Feeney, have all fallen foul of the citizenship requirements of the Constitution, though Alexander, like Joyce, was re-elected at a by-election.
While it won’t happen today, both sides of politics will be relieved to see the end of this epic and distracting affair.
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