CHAOS IN CAPITAL
LAST DRINKS FOR BARNABY AS COURT RULING TRIGGERS POLITICAL TURMOIL
MALCOLM Turnbull’ s Government is hanging by a thread after the High Court sensationally booted out five sitting parliamentarians — including Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce — for being foreign citizens.
The Prime Minister, left, was dramatically forced to delay an overseas trip, with his Government left to deal with the fallout of the historic verdict.
The High Court ruled two of his cabinet members were ineligible to contest last year’s election under Australia’s Constitution.
Mr Joyce, the Nationals leader, will now fight a fierce and potentially messy by-election on December 2 for the New South Wales seat of New England, as the Turnbull Government faces at least four parliamentary sitting days with just 75 MPs in the House of Representatives.
The grim-faced Prime Minister said he would not be distracted from “the important business of government” and vowed to get on with delivering for the Australian people.
Critically, Mr Turnbull has secured the support of Victorian independent MP Cathy McGowan to safeguard the Government against any push from Labor to move a motion of no-confidence on the floor of Parliament.
Mr Joyce said it was a “momentous” decision by the court and conceded that his “gut” feeling was he would be ruled out. He apologised to his constituents for the inconvenience of returning to the polls, but pledged to fight hard to win back the seat.
In a major boost to his reelection chances, former independent MP Tony Windsor has ruled out contesting a byelection, saying he did not want to put his family through a potentially “grubby” campaign.
The Opposition has vowed to push the Government to its limits in the remaining two weeks of the year, with Deputy Labor Leader Tanya Plibersek declaring Australia now had a hung parliament with a minority government.
“Malcolm Turnbull stood up in Parliament and said that he was absolutely confident that Barnaby Joyce was eli- gible to be a member of Parliament and the High Court will so hold,” she said.
“I mean, extraordinary that the Prime Minister would be assuming what the High Court would find and in fact turning out to be utterly wrong in his assumptions.”
The full bench of seven justices ruled unanimously that five were in breach of section 44 of the Constitution.
The ruling will not affect the result of parliamentary votes held so far during this term of Parliament.
Nationals deputy Fiona Nash, who discovered in August she was a British citizen by descent at the last election, must now leave the Senate, while One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts was also disqualified from his seat.
Greens senators Scott Ludlam and Larissa Waters, who both resigned in July, were also found ineligible.
In the only positive for the Government, Queensland Nationals senator Matt Canavan — who was thought to have been an Italian citizen — was cleared by the court and was yesterday returned to Cabinet as Resources Minister.
South Australian senator Nick Xenophon was also spared but quit immediately to return to state politics.
Mr Joyce discovered in August he held New Zealand citizenship by descent through his father. He began his reelection campaign within moments of the ruling, putting himself forward as a candidate.
“I think I have worked pretty hard,” Mr Joyce said in Tamworth.
Mr Turnbull, who is still expected to travel to Israel early next week to attend events marking the centenary of the Battle of Beersheba, said it had been a “very stressful” few months for Mr Joyce, Ms Nash and Senator Canavan.
He said the Government and Solicitor-General Stephen Donaghue would closely evaluate the full implications of the court’s decision.
He said a joint parliamentary committee would now consider whether any changes to section 44 should be recommended, to minimise the risk of candidates being in breach.
Mr Turnbull was sworn in as Agriculture and Water Resources Minister yesterday by Governor-General Sir Peter Cosgrove, while Ms Nash’s portfolios will be shared by Mitch Fifield and Darren Chester. It is understood Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop will act as prime minister during Mr Turnbull’s trip.
THE opening election shots have been fired, with both major parties vowing not to do any deals if they do not win a majority. We will no doubt hear a lot more about the imagined horrors of a “hung” parliament. A few facts would do no harm: apart from a very few AngloSaxon countries almost all democracies work very well with coalitions as the norm; a single party majority has in- creasingly delivered the governance of the country or state into the hands of the extremists of that party, due to the way local branches and their systems for nominating candidates work.
As a consequence good, middle-ofthe-road consensus politics has become a vanishing dream as politics descends into hysterical accusations and blame games. The NBN is a current horrible example. We need to encourage and support good minor parties and independents so coalitions around the centre become the norm. Only then will we have a chance of seeing a focus on real long-term issues rather than point scoring and some continuity of direction beyond each election.