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Posted on 12/03/2017 4:46:57 PM PST by naturalman1975
MORE federal politicians could be caught up in the citizenship fiasco after MPs were told to disclose their spouse’s status, along with their parents’ and grandparents’ details by tomorrow.
FEDERAL MPs will be forced to disclose their spouse’s citizenship status, along with their parents and grandparents, in a directive that could see more politicians caught up in the ongoing citizenship fiasco.
The deadline for disclosure has also been moved back to 9am on Tuesday, rather than 8pm, in a bid to deal with outstanding citizenship issues as soon as possible.
MPs could be fined or face jail time if they make false disclosures on the register.
Parliament unanimously voted to implement the register this morning.
Government Minister Christopher Pyne said this morning it looked like at least three MPs will be referred to the High Court by the end of the week.
Labor MPs Susan Lamb and Justine Keay had a “serious cloud” over their status, he told ABC radio this morning.
There are also questions over Labor’s Josh Wilson and Glenn Sterle.
It comes after ousted dual citizen Barnaby Joyce was re-elected in a landslide at the New England by-election on Saturday.
Mr Joyce will be sworn in again this week.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.com.au ...
Section 44.i of the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia states:
44. Any person who -
(i.) Is under any acknowledgement 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 citizen of a foreign power:
.....
shall be incapable of being chosen or of sitting as a senator or a member of the House of Representatives.
When the Australian Constitution was written in the 1890s and took effect in 1901, Australians were British Subjects - a status they shared with other people throughout the British Empire. This was the only citizenship status that Australians had - there was no such thing as an Australian citizen. There was no such thing as a British citizen. And British law, and Australian law, didn't even acknowledge of dual citizenship in any form.
That started to change in the late 1940s when Britain, Australia, and the other 'Dominions' of the British Empire (like Canada, New Zealand etc) all adopted national citizenships, although citizens of each country remained British Subjects as well until the 1980s.
But the Australian Constitution has never been updated - it's a fairly difficult process.
Until the late 1990s, the idea that Australians who held a dual citizenship with another Commonwealth realm were ineligible to be in Parliament under Section 44.i was never really considered - after all, we shared the same Queen and under the law the allegiance is to the Queen, so the idea that being (for example) an Australian citizen and a British citizen created a conflict relevant to 44.i was regarded as odd. But a court challenge was mounted in 1999 to the election of a Senator, on the basis that she was a British citizen as well as an Australian citizen and to the surprise of many, the High Court of Australia ruled she was ineligible.
That ruling was fairly straightforward, even if it came as a surprise to a lot of people. But over the course of the last year, it's been a repeated problem for a number of Senators and MPs.
The problem is most of these MPs and Senators had no idea they held a foreign citizenship. Some of them at least should have known - the first two to be caught up in the problem were born overseas (in New Zealand and Canada respectively) but came here as children. They seem to have just assumed they lost their foreign citizenships when they became Australian citizens - which wasn't the case, because New Zealand, Canada, and Australia all allow dual citizenship - you have to specifically renounce your foreign citizenship to lose it. But in other cases - such as that of Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce, they were born in Australia and were Australian citizens from birth, but did not realise that having a foreign born parent entitled them to citizenship of their parents country.
In total:
Senator Scott Ludlam (Deputy Leader of the Greens), had to resign because he held New Zealand citizenship by virtue of being born in New Zealand.
Senator Larissa Waters (Deputy Leader of the Greens - their structure had two Deputies) had to resign because she held Canadian citizenship by virtue of being born in Canada.
Barnaby Joyce MP (Deputy Prime Minister and Leader of the National Party) had to resign because he held New Zealand citizenship by virtue of being born to a New Zealand father.
Senator Fiona Nash (Deputy Leader of the National Party) had to resign by virtue of being born to a British father.
Senator Malcolm Roberts (One Nation) had to resign by virtue of having been born in India to a British father, which made him a British citizen from birth - or if not, he would have been an Indian citizen from birth.
Senator Stephen Parry (Liberal and President of the Senate) had to resign by virtue of being born to a British father.
John Alexander MP (Liberal) had to resign by virtue of being born to a British father.
Senator Jaquie Lambie (Jaquie Lambie Network) had to resign by virtue of being born to a British father.
Senator Skye Kakoschke-Moore (Nick Xenophon Team) had to resign by virtue of being born to a British mother (as she was born after 1983, she acquired British citizenship from her mother - children born prior to 1983 could only acquire it from their father - her mother acquired British citizenship by being born in Singapore when it was still a British colony).
To add to all this - while if an MP resigns, a special election is held, in the case of Senators who were ineligible to be elected, they are having to go back and recount the votes from last years election to determine who was actually elected - and in some cases the replacement is also ineligible!).
Anyway, it's a mess - and there may still be MPs and Senators who aren't eligible sitting in the Parliament especially if they acquired citizenship from another country by descent or by marriage under those countries' laws. In particular, the Labor Party has been insisting all their MPs and Senators are eligible and have been refusing to even acknowledge there are definitely questions about some of them. The actions described in the article where all MPs and Senators have until tomorrow morning to table evidence of their citizenship statuses for examination will hopefully allow the mess to be sorted out - and if it proves that Labor does have issues, that's likely to be quite embarrassing for the Leader of the Opposition Bill Shorten, who has been playing politics with this issue for months now while insisting his own party didn't have any problems.
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My favourite hymn - despite the dubious historical accuracy :)
I never understood how it relates back to England but what the heck — it is as accurate as how the entire Empire holds together.
Of course the way to tell independence from the Olde Crowne is those who don’t waste time on that ghastly “sport” of Cricket.
I have visited a pair of small towns on the US/Canadian border that until our crackdown on border issues after 9/11 had a very close relationship.It's said that many people over a certain age who live in those two towns are dual citizens at birth (US/Canada) because the only hospital in the area was in the US and,as a result,many of the Canadians automatically got US citizenship at birth.And it's said that many didn't even know it until late in their lives.
I,too,only found out at age 40 that under Irish law I was considered an Irish citizen at birth because my mother was born there.
So from this distance it's tough for me to imagine how things are so strictly enforced.But I'll bet it's a lot easier for Auusies to do so.
Too bad the American Constitution doesn’t have language identical to the language in the Aussie constitution.
It is one of my favorites too. Also William Black is maybe my favorite poet but several others would be right up there too.
I doubt there is any evidence at all that Christ ever visited England. Maybe none that Andrew visited Scotland.
...at least for qualification for the US Presidency
I mean William Blake of course.
I don’t even know a William Black.
In general terms, there’s no real enforcement over issues of dual citizenship because there’s not seen as being any conflict. Somebody has dual citizenship - that’s fine. If they are an Australian citizen, it doesn’t matter what other citizenship they may hold as well.
It’s only section 44.i where it creates any issues - basically being a Member of Parliament is the only situation in which you can’t be a dual citizen. It’s fine for absolutely everything else.
Yes,I think I understand that part.I could be wrong but IIRC it was once prohibited for Australians to hold any other citizenship.IIRC the "penalty" for those discovered to have another citizenship was loss of their Australian citizenship.However,I believe the Australian Parliament repealed that law.
My point...badly presented for sure...is that it's often difficult to be certain that a particular country doesn't consider you a citizen through birth,parents,grandparents,etc.I suppose that under Section 44.i a person standing for Parliament is required to *actively* seek to determine if he/she is considered a citizen by any country but Australia.
According to wikipedia:
"Between 26 January 1949 and 3 April 2002, an adult Australian generally lost Australian citizenship automatically (section 17 of the Australian Citizenship Act 1948) upon acquisition of another citizenship by a 'voluntary and formal act'"...
The devil is in the details. Between 1949 and 2002, an Australian citizen who sought out foreign citizenship lost their Australian citizenship - but somebody with foreign citizenship who became an Australian citizen did not automatically lose their foreign citizenship - that only happened if the other country had laws that deprived them of citizenship, or they explicitly made a renunciation according to the laws of both Australia and the other country (in cases where the other country's laws did not allow for clear renunciation, a "good faith effort" has been deemed enough).
My point...badly presented for sure...is that it's often difficult to be certain that a particular country doesn't consider you a citizen through birth,parents,grandparents,etc. I suppose that under Section 44.i a person standing for Parliament is required to *actively* seek to determine if he/she is considered a citizen by any country but Australia.
Yes, that's the precise problem - many of the people caught up in this had no idea they held dual citizenship or that there was even any reason to doubt it (some of them, I think should have realised there was a problem - Scott Ludlam and Malcolm Roberts were foreign born and should have realised... Larissa Waters on the other hand was born the week Canadian citizenship law changed and she did apparently make a cursory check which made her think she was in the clear and it's understandable why given the complexity of her situation. Barnaby Joyce - born in Australia to a father who arrived in Australia from New Zealand before the concept of separate citizenships within the Commonwealth/Empire is another who I think deserves some sympathy for not considering the possibility).
The big problem though is - until now - there's actually been no sort of formal procedure at all about this. MPs and Senators simply decided for themselves if they thought they were eligible and nobody was under any obligation to check. Hopefully we are now going to get clearer rules on that out of this mess.
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