Australian politician resigns after being told she is Canadian

A second Australian senator in less than a week said yesterday she was quitting parliament after discovering she was a dual national and had therefore never really been elected.

The controversy has raised questions about how many other politicians might also have no right to be in parliament.

Larissa Waters, co-deputy leader of the minor Greens party, said she was quitting after six years as a senator after the Canadian High Commission in Canberra told her on Monday that she was Canadian.

On Friday, the Greens’ other co-deputy, Scott Ludlam, revealed that he was a citizen of New Zealand as well as Australia, which made him ineligible for the Senate job he has held since July 2008.

Australia’s constitution states that a “citizen of a foreign power” is not eligible to be elected to Parliament.

Ms Waters, who in May became the first lawmaker to breastfeed in Parliament, was born in the Canadian city of Winnipeg on 8 February 1977, to Australian parents. She moved to Australia before her first birthday.

She said she thought she had an option of becoming a Canadian citizen and did not take it. She has since found that the law changed a week after she was born, meaning she automatically became a Canadian unless she took steps to prevent it.

Ms Waters said other foreign-born lawmakers among the 226 in Parliament could find themselves in a similar predicament.

“There are many politicians in the Senate and the federal House of Representatives that were born overseas and it may well be that others have to make this embarrassing revelation as well,” an emotional Ms Waters told reporters.

“But I can hold my head up high knowing that the moment I found out, I have taken the step of announcing that I will sadly have to resign,” she added.

After Mr Ludlam’s resignation, government lawmaker and former Prime Minister Tony Abbott posted on social media a document confirming he had renounced his own British citizenship in 1993, a year before he was elected.

Sydney University constitutional lawyer Anne Twomey said Canada and New Zealand were not considered foreign powers when the Australian constitution came into force in 1901 because, like Australia, they were part of the British Empire.

The High Court ruled that Britain has been regarded as a foreign power since 1986.

One or two prime ministers might have been dual nationals in the past, but lawmakers’ eligibility was never tested in the courts until the 1970s, Ms Twomey said.