WHERE will it end? On October 27th the High Court stripped four senators and an MP of their seats, adopting a strict interpretation of the rules on eligibility for parliament. The MP was Barnaby Joyce, the deputy prime minister, whose ejection has cost the government its majority in the lower house. Then on November 1st Stephen Parry, the president of the Senate, announced that he, too, suffered from the same affliction: he was a dual national, able to claim British citizenship as well as Australian. He resigned the following day.
Mr Joyce was one of the “citizenship seven”, parliamentarians who discovered that they were deemed to be citizens, variously, of Britain, Canada, Italy and New Zealand, even though they had not formally claimed citizenship. Australia’s constitution bans from parliament anyone who is under “acknowledgment of allegiance, obedience or adherence to a foreign power”, or who is a citizen of a...Continue reading
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