How ban vexes Australians
The 116-year-old constitutional ban on dual citizens sitting in Parliament is a problem Australia didn’t know it had until recently, but now it may struggle to fix it.
Seven lawmakers have revealed since July that they might have been citizens of another country
when they stood for election last year. They include three ministers in a minor coalition party, The Nationals. The opposition has now dubbed the party “The Multinationals.”
Before the current crisis, only two dual-citizen lawmakers had ever been caught out by the prohibition.
Critics say the ban no longer suits modern multicultural Australia, where almost half the population was born overseas or has at least one overseas-born parent. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull says he is confident that the High Court won’t disqualify any government lawmaker. Two of the three ministers under a cloud remain in the Cabinet. But constitutional lawyers are less certain and warn that any unpopular government decision could be challenged in the courts if made by a minister who is later disqualified. The problem of lawmakers with foreign allegiances has long been almost invisible because for a long time Australians rarely looked for it. A founding father, King O’Malley, is widely regarded as an American who lied about being Canadian to escape the ban and was never challenged. Canadians in those days were British subjects like Australians and therefore not considered foreigners. But
the problem came into sharp focus after the election in July last year when lawyer John Cameron started investigating whether two New Zealand-born senators were dual nationals.
One of them, Scott Ludlam, revealed on July 14 he was still a Kiwi and had been unlawfully elected for the minor Greens party three times since 2007. Six senators and one House member — Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce — are under court scrutiny.
A parliamentary committee recommended 20 years ago that the constitution drop the dual national ban
so that candidates would need only Australian citizenship to qualify. But no government ever followed through with a referendum. Australians are notoriously reluctant to change their constitution and many voters might agree with its stated purpose to “protect the parliament system” against lawmakers with conflicted loyalties. Of the 44 referendums Australia has held since 1901, only 8 have been carried and none since 1977.