Australian Senator’s sin: she was born here
Larissa Waters was a popular senator in Australia, earmarked as a future contender for the leadership of the Green party. But, on Tuesday, she resigned. In a tearful, televised apology, she revealed she had committed a career-ending sin. She was a Canadian.
“It is with great shock and sadness,” she said in a statement on Tuesday, “that I have discovered that I hold dual citizenship of Australia and Canada.”
Waters, a 40- year- old c hampion f or women’s rights who garnered international attention in May by becoming the first to breastfeed on the floor of Australian parliament, was born in Winnipeg to Australian parents who lived there briefly to study and work.
Until recently, Waters said, she was under the impression that she had to actively seek Canadian citizenship. She didn’t seek it. She hasn’t even been back since she left, with her parents, as an 11-month-old.
“I have lived my life thinking that as a baby I was naturalized to be Australian and only Australian,” she said.
She was wrong. She was, in fact, a dual citizen of Australia and Canada serving as an Australian senator — a violation of a 116- yearold section of the country’s constitution designed to stop foreign influence from creeping into parliament. Section 44( i) bans anyone “under any acknowledgment of allegiance, obedience, or adherence to a foreign power, or is a subject or a citizen ... of a foreign power” from sitting as a senator or member of the house of representatives.
Waters had been a senator since 2011. She only started l ooking i nto the question of her citizenship after a similar scandal forced her New Zealandborn colleague, Greens Senator Scott Ludlam, to resign last week.
Ludlam was a 10- year veteran in parliament, and only realized he held New Zealand citizenship when a “very interested” citizen did “some digging,” according to the Sydney Morning Herald.
“After Scott’s shock discovery,” Waters said, “I immediately sought legal advice. Canadian law changed a week after I was born and required me to have actively renounced Canadian citizenship.”
It appears her confusion stems from changes to the Canadian Citizenship Act in 1977. In the previous incarnation, from 1947, the Citizenship Act didn’t recognize dual citizenship. If a Canadian became a citizen of another country through “any voluntary and formal act,” they would cease be- i ng Canadian. The 1977 act — which did come into force exactly seven days after Waters was born — recognized dual citizenship, meaning becoming a citizen of another country didn’t automatically cancel out Canadian citizenship.
Canadian citizenship experts suggested the changes in the act, a week after her birth, might not have actually been Waters’ undoing. Under the 1947 act, Waters could have still been considered a Canadian, even though she took Australian citizenship. If she became an Australian citizen simply because her parents were Australian, that, arguably, wouldn’t be considered a “voluntary and formal act,” noted Phil Triadafilopoulos, a University of Toronto political science professor.
The 1947 act does make mention of a citizen’s obligation to formally declare their citizenship by age 21 — explaining Waters’ misconception — though that provision j ust applies to those born outside Canada. Another provision says only those over the age of 21 can renounce citizenship.
In Waters’ and Ludlam’s resignations, t he party lost its two deputy leaders — both of whom were the Greens’ most promising parliamentarians, said Andrew Banfield, a Canadian- born professor who teaches political science at the Australian National University.
Waters signalled plans to renounce her Canadian citizenship. If she does, she can run again, Banfield said.
Her statement, however, had a sense of finality. “Farewell dear friends,” it said.