Parliament loses eighth legislator
Australia premier’s conservative coalition could lose two seats in by-elections next month
An independent Australian senator who is British by descent yesterday became the eighth lawmaker to leave Parliament in recent months over a 116-year-old constitutional ban on dual nationals running for office that threatens to bring down the government.
Jacqui Lambie tearfully resigned a day after the Senate set a December 1 deadline for Australia-born senators to provide documented evidence that they had not inherited the citizenship of an immigrant parent or grandparent.
Lambie said the British Home Office advised her yesterday that her Scottishborn grandfather had not renounced his citizenship after migrating to Australia, making her and her father British.
“It is with great regret that I have to inform you that I had been found ineligible by way of dual citizenship,” Lambie told the Senate.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s conservative coalition could lose two seats in by-elections next month after government lawmaker John Alexander resigned from Parliament last week because he had likely inherited British citizenship from his Englishborn father.
Kristina Keneally, a Las Vegas-born former New South Wales state premier, announced yesterday that she would run as a candidate for the opposition Labor Party against Alexander in a December 16 by-election for his Sydney-based seat, having renounced her US citizenship. Alexander must shed his British citizenship by then.
Australia is rare if not unique in the world in banning dual nationals from sitting in Parliament.
The eight lawmakers who have lost their jobs so far were dual citizens of Britain, Canada and New Zealand. Like Australia, those countries are members of the British Commonwealth and share a head of state, Queen Elizabeth II.
When the constitution came into effect in 1901, decades before Australian citizenship existed, any British subject was entitled to stand for the Australian Parliament.
Suvendrini Perera, a professor of cultural studies at Curtin University, said the lawmakers snared by the dual citizenship ban indicated that “white people have a sense of entitlement” to stand for Parliament.