Mr Dutton, you’re wrong. The Constitution is right
SURE, Australia’s an immigrant country but that doesn’t mean our MPs shouldn’t be solely focused on doing right by our country, writes Peta Credlin.
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I DON’T normally disagree with Peter Dutton but he was dead wrong to suggest that the Constitution is to blame for the citizenship crisis.
No, we do not need to change the Constitution to allow dual citizen MPs. All candidates just need to ensure, before they nominate for election, that the only citizenship they have is Australian.
The rules of Section 44 are well known to anyone in politics but looking at this rolling trainwreck, you can see that so many of them thought they could get around the Constitution with questions now threatening even more MPs.
The list now includes John Alexander (who has now resigned from parliament), Josh Frydenberg, Alex Hawke and Julia Banks on the Coalition side; Justine Keay, Madeleine King, Susan Lamb and Josh Wilson on the Labor side; and Jacqui Lambie and Rebecca Sharkie from the crossbench.
These MPs are only the ones that the media have figured out, not the ones who might turn up after Mr Turnbull’s Clayton’s audit.
Sure, Australia is an immigrant country and nearly half of us were born overseas or have a parent born overseas.
That doesn’t mean that Australian MPs (regardless of where they were born) shouldn’t be wholly and solely focused on doing the right thing by Australia.
Far from failing to appreciate how Australia might evolve in the century ahead, yet again, our Constitutional founders had it exactly right.
The only allegiance an MP should have is to Australia and we water that down at our peril.