James Campbell: Origin battle the Libs do not need
IN an astonishing development in Australian politics, the High Court could be about to rub out their seventh MP this year, writes James Campbell.
James Campbell
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IN WHAT could be one of the most astonishing developments in Australian politics, right up there with the return of Pauline Hanson to the centre of our national life, the High Court could be about to rub out the seventh MP this year.
Already this year the court has ruled that Family First’s Bob Day and One Nation’s Rod Culleton were ineligible for election last July.
And now, following a referral from the Senate, they will soon be called upon to decide if four more senators should have been scratched before polling day, along with one MP in the House of Representatives.
The two Greens senators up before the beaks, Larissa Waters and Scott Ludlum, have already gone quietly, like Day, and resigned before they were booted out.
But the LNP’s Matt Canavan and One Nation’s Malcolm Roberts are not going quietly, though one would imagine they will put up a better show in court than Culleton, who went down screaming after representing himself.
The Lower House MP under the pump, Assistant Health Minister David Gillespie, also plans on fighting to stay in parliament.
JULIA BANKS NOT IN THE CLEAR OVER GREEK CITIZENSHIP ENTITLEMENT
ANOTHER FEDERAL MP DRAGGED INTO CITIZENSHIP DEBACLE
The section of the Constitution causing the carnage is 44, which deals with disqualification and rules out anyone from standing who is, among other things, either insolvent or an undischarged bankrupt, or has been attainted of treason or convicted and is under sentence, or subject to be sentenced, for any offence punishable under the law of the Commonwealth or a state by imprisonment for one year or longer.
This is what ended the short career of Culleton. Day fell because Section 44 bans you from standing if you have a pecuniary interest with the Commonwealth.
Labor is challenging Gillespie’s right to sit in parliament because a shopping centre he owns has a tenant that is also an Australia Post outlet.
The government has been given legal advice which indicates its man will be OK. But some observers think the court ruling in Day’s case means the law on pecuniary interests is now much tougher than it was at the time of the last election.
Labor wouldn’t be having a go if it didn’t think it was in with a show.
The other cases all flow from Section 44’s insistence that any person is disqualified from standing if they are “under any acknowledgment of allegiance, obedience, or adherence to a foreign power, or is a subject or a citizen or entitled to the rights or privileges of a subject or a citizen of a foreign power”.
The two Greens cases seem open and shut.
Ludlum was born in New Zealand to New Zealand parents who later brought him to Australia. His excuse — such as it is — is that he never realised he retained his Kiwi status when he became a naturalised Australian.
Waters’ situation is slightly different. She was born in Canada to Australian parents, and was brought to Australia as a baby and has never been back.
Her excuse is she thought she her right to a Canadian passport needed to be claimed before she was 21 and didn’t realise by this she was automatically a Canuck.
This sounds feeble and is certainly negligent but, to be fair, the law there apparently changed a week after she was born.
Matt Canavan’s case is more complicated. He acknowledges he is registered with the Italian authorities as a citizen but claims his mother did it without his knowledge. Surprisingly, however, the outcome of his case is actually not likely to hinge on whether or not he knew his mum was putting in his papers as the forms she put in were only to register a citizenship to which he was entitled.
As far as the experts I have spoken to can see, his only get-out would be if his mother’s parents became naturalised Australians before her birth, in which case she was never an Italian because in those days that Act would have extinguished their Italian citizenship, preventing it from being passed to baby Matt.
Roberts’ case seems to hinge on whether he ever renounced the British citizenship that he so reluctantly admitted having.
He claims he wrote to UK authorities renouncing it before the election but has so far failed to produce any evidence of that. The court might find his explanations plausible. Stranger things have happened.
Lurking in the background are concerns about the status of Liberal MP Julia Banks. Banks is of Greek descent — her father was born there, her mother was born here. Unlike Italy, however, the entitlement to Greek citizenship by descent is not extinguished by the acquisition of another passport.
Unlike Canavan, however, neither, she nor her mother ever enrolled her with the Greek authorities.
What I haven’t been able to get a clear answer on is whether Greece is like Italy in that the application you make to the authorities is for recognition of Greek citizenship by descent that already exists in the minds of the Greek authorities, or a whether it is an application to become a Greek citizen.
If it is the former, she could be in real strife, especially as there is no evidence she has renounced Greek citizenship, as other MPs of Greek descent such as present MP Maria Vamvakinou have done and former Indi Liberal Sophie Mirabella did.
It could hinge on what the Greeks meant when they told the Liberal Party a few days ago that “according to records” she is not a citizen or entitled to be one.
At the moment Labor is saying in private it has no intention of testing the question in the High Court as it would open a can of worms. Ireland hands passports to anyone with an Irish grandparent.
Who knows how many people there might be in parliament eligible for one of those. But if the High Court comes down hard on Canavan someone else might decide to chance their arm with Banks. This could get really messy for a government with a one-seat majority.
James Campbell is national politics editor
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