Jacqui Lambie resigns over dual citizenship

OUTGOING Senator Jacqui Lambie has resigned her seat in a tearful address, thanking her dad whose UK citizenship forced her to quit.

OUTGOING Senator Jacqui Lambie has broken down in Parliament announcing her resignation from the Senate after discovering she held dual citizenship.

The independent Tasmanian representative gave a teary address to the upper house, thanking her constituents, staff and her father, whose Scottish heritage her forced her to give up her seat.

Ms Lambie told the chamber she “hadn’t slept for days”, and had received confirmation this morning that her grandfather had failed to renounce his UK citizenship when he arrived in Australia with her father, who was only one year old at the time.

“This makes my dad a Brit by descent and therefore it makes me one too,” she said.

“I love my father to death and hope to not blame him for this. He’s done nothing for which to apologise.

“It’s not because of him that I’m leaving this place, it’s because of him that I’m here in the first place.”

The emotional Senator’s voice wavered throughout the short address which saw her list her achievements during her time in Parliament, including securing a better funding deal for Tasmanian schools, winning a fair pay deal for the Australian Defence Force, and being “the single vote that torpedoed a save package of welfare cuts”.

But it was when Ms Lambie thanked her staff — “my bloody saving grace” — that she was reduced to tears.

“You have proven yourself to be loyal. You’re wonderful, hard working, and I would never have got this far without you,” she said.

Tasmanian Senator Jacqui Lambie broke down while thanking her staff and her ‘partner-in-crime’ father. Picture: Lukas Coch/AAP

As for her own future, the colourful crossbencher said she wasn’t sure what was in store for her, but that she hoped to return to Federal Parliament.

“I don’t know what will happen next personally or politically for me,” she said. “The truth is there is so much more I wanted to do here and I hope to get another chance to keep going at it.

“I do hope to come back and when I am, I hope that my dad is here cheering me on.”

Ms Lambie closed off her remarks saying: “It has been an absolute pleasure to represent my country again. Just not this time in uniform.”

Earlier, Ms Lambie said she received advice overnight from the United Kingdom Home Office that she was a UK citizen by descent through her Scottish-born father and announced she would resign from the Senate.

She said this morning that she “never thought” she had a problem with her citizenship, and that she believed her family had sorted it out in the past.

Speaking to Tasmanian radio station LAFM, the emotional Senator said the dual citizenship saga was “such a shambles” and would not “end well”.

“It’s going to be an absolute cluster,” she said.

Tasmanian Senator Jacqui Lambie will resign today. Picture: Mick Tsikas/AAP

‘OH GOD, I’M IN TROUBLE HERE’

The colourful crossbencher appeared to be crying throughout this morning’s interview. Her voice broke when she recalled a conversation she had with her father, Tom, last week after concerns were raised.

“Straight away I just thought: ‘Oh my God, I’m in trouble here’,” she told radio host Brian Carlton.

“I’m on the phone to dad, I’m going ‘please, what’s going on’. All this unravelled in about two or three days.

“By Thursday last week I just rang dad and said ‘I’m gone aren’t I?’. He said: ‘You know what sweetheart, I think we’re gone’.”

Ms Lambie said that conversation was the push for a “big shuffle with the lawyers”, that led to her decision to resign today.

But she vowed that “you can’t keep a Lambie down” and said she would run at the next federal election.

The outgoing parliamentarian said the first thing she would do after handing in her resignation was renounce her UK citizenship.

Jacqui Lambie with her Scottish-born father Tom in her office after delivering her maiden speech in 2014.

Questions were raised about Ms Lambie’s citizenship status last week after Tasmanian media dug into her past and revealed her father had spent his first year in Scotland before moving to Australia as a toddler.

At the time, the Senator said: “I’m happy to put on record that I’m satisfied that my parents are both Australian citizens and I have no concerns about me being a dual citizen because of where they were born or came from, in the case of my father, as an infant.”

But on Monday it became clear Ms Lambie had concerns as it was circulated she had been telling Senate colleagues she was awaiting urgent advice from UK authorities that could spell the end of her parliamentary career.

She told the Mercury: “If I am a dual citizen I will resign. If it is black and white there is no need to take it to the High Court, as simple as that.”

POLITICIANS NEED TO ‘SUCK IT UP’

Ms Lambie becomes the eighth parliamentarian forced out because of dual citizenship.

Rather than lamenting the section of the Constitution that disqualified her from running, she said politicians needed to “suck it up” and respect the law.

“We should not change the Constitution because some of us have gone down because of section 44,” she said. “It just doesn’t work like that, we suck it up, put our hands back up, and if we want to have another run, get back out there.

“That’s the Constitution and I respect that. That’s the way it is.”

The outgoing Senator didn’t hold back in her criticism of the way the citizenship saga had been handled. She said the situation was “an absolute cluster”, and that Parliament was in “shambles”.

“It’s such a shambles up here, you have no idea. I’m sitting here watching these people trying to cover each other up at the moment,” she said. “It’s very distasteful up here at the moment. It is shocking. To see what I’m seeing on the inside, it’s quite scary.

“I’m not too worried about actually walking out right now because it’s not pretty.”

Jacqui Lambie was emotional while announcing her decision to resign this morning. Picture: Annette Dew

Ms Lambie’s shock exit comes more than three years after she entered Parliament as a rookie Senator in 2013.

She entered as a member of Clive Palmer’s now defunct Palmer United Party before quitting to sit as an independent the following year.

Ms Lambie also registered her own party, the Jacqui Lambie Network, in 2015. The party is running candidates in the upcoming Tasmanian state election, but Ms Lambie herself has ruled out any intent to enter state politics.

Throughout her Senate career, the outspoken politician has been a feisty representative for the people of Tasmania.

Ms Lambie has been a committed advocate for victims of domestic violence, welfare recipients and veterans, particularly those suffering from PTSD.

Unlike other dual citizens to fail their constitutional requirements, the independent may not be replaced by those beneath her on her 2016 election ticket.

Devonport mayor Steve Martin is next in line, but Professor George Williams, from the University of NSW, said he could be in difficulty because of his local government position.

According to the constitutional expert, the High Court would need to decide if a local council position is an “office of profit under the Crown”.

The next person on the ticket, Rob Waterman, is CEO of Rural Health Tasmania Rural Health. Tasmania’s annual report for 2017 said it received funding from several federal government programs run by the departments of health and social services.