This act of constitutional vandalism needed stopping

Former Deputy PM Barnaby Joyce began his re-election campaign in a Tamworth pub immediately.

Tony Windsor and Justin Gleeson have done the nation a great service by smashing the government’s illegitimate effort to save Barnaby Joyce by vandalising the Constitution.

The move to have new words “read into” the Constitution has backfired spectacularly, with a unanimous denunciation by all seven High Court judges. The judges have gone out of their way to reject any suggestion they should tinker with the plain meaning of section 44(i) of the Constitution.

The outcome, when applied to the individuals at the heart of this affair, is harsh. But that is exactly what was intended when the framers of the Constitution approved this mechanism to keep dual citizens out of parliament.

This judgment shows an intense respect for the plain words and original meaning of section 44(i). The disastrous practical consequences for the Turnbull government are simply not the judges’ concern.

Just two of the “citizenship seven” have emerged victorious — Matt Canavan and Nick Xenophon. But even then, the reason they won is consistent with the respect for the written text of the Constitution.

Tony Windsor.

There was a possibility Canavan and Xenophon could have secured victory if the court had applied an existing mechanism that permits it to refuse to recognise foreign citizenship laws that overreach.

Instead, the court simply examined the respective citizenship law of Italy (for Canavan) and Britain (for Xenophon). It accepted Canavan was not an Italian citizen, and concluded that the diminished form of British citizenship unwittingly inherited by Xenophon did not give him the foreign rights and privileges targeted by section 44(i).

It is beyond irony that the High Court — which has been criticised for “activism” in the past — has preserved the Constitution from a self-interested attack by political conservatives.

Had that attack succeeded, the unanimous view of the seven judges is that it would have altered the ordinary and natural meaning of section 44(i).

The great victors are Windsor and his ludicrously high-powered legal team that includes former solicitor-general Gleeson and former Federal Court judge Ron Merkel. Their arguments were endorsed by the seven judges. They took on the best legal brains the government could muster and wiped the floor with them.