Lawyer expects further victims
PERTH The man who set in motion the Australian citizenship scandal that has now claimed five political careers says he expects more heads will roll.
New Zealand-born West Australian lawyer John Cameron outed Greens senator Scott Ludlam as a New Zealand citizen in July, leading to an eventual constitutional crisis for the Australian government.
Ludlam’s resignation resulted in the status of other politicians being questioned, which culminated in Friday’s High Court decision disqualifying five federal MPs.
In the months that followed Ludlam’s resignation, Cameron kept silent, but following the court’s decision he has spoken to AAP about his motivation to dig into the background of Australia’s elected representatives.
Cameron, who voted for Ludlam, applied to New Zealand’s Internal Affairs Department to search its register for the Greens MP, and found he was in fact a Kiwi citizen.
From there, he contacted the Australian Senate to alert it to the fact that Ludlam was a dual citi- zen, before contacting Ludlam’s office.
Cameron said he was ‘‘invariably surprised’’ at how quickly the citizenship scandal had snowballed. He also said he expected more politicians to fall foul of section 44 of the Australian constitution in coming months.
‘‘There will be others,’’ Cameron told AAP just hours after the Australian High Court disqualified Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce, who was also found to be a New Zealand citizen, and four other MPs.
‘‘This opens up a huge can of worms,’’ he said from Perth.
Section 44 bans anyone holding dual citizenship from sitting in parliament, to ensure MPs do not hold split allegiances.
Cameron said that of the additional MPs he expected would lose their jobs, many would be British citizens.
While not religious, Cameron said a prayer was his principal motivation to pursue to the citizenship story. ‘‘God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I can- not change, courage to change the things I can and wisdom to know the difference.’’
‘‘There are those in parliament who think that they are above the law. A correction is required.’’
The Perth-based lawyer said he began digging in 2011, starting with then-prime minister Julia Gillard and opposition leader Tony Abbott. ‘‘I wasn’t having much joy getting the evidence, or I wasn’t getting much joy in the High Court accepting the evidence that I had from the British border authority.’’
Instead, Cameron turned to his home country for information about Ludlam. Five months later, Joyce, Ludlam, Nationals MP Fiona Nash, One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts and Greens MP Larissa Waters have been booted from office.
Cameron said the citizenship scandal highlighted a need for a national anti-corruption commission. AAP