Olrence
GCM
We have had an increasingly absurd situation here over the past few months, where current sitting members are being ousted due to falling foul of a poorly expressed section of the Australian Constitution.
The Constitution was cobbled together in the 1890's to meet the aspirations and protect the interests of five of the six separate colonies (Victoria, New South Wales, Tasmania, South Australia, Queensland). Western Australia opted in at the last minute, and IIRC doesn't get mentioned in the document itself.
Anyway, Section 44a of the Constitution denies membership of either house if a member 'is beholden to a foreign power'. At the time it was written, there was no such thing as Australian citizenship, nor New Zealand or Seth Efrican either. We were all British. The section clearly meant to exclude Germans and the French and Russians etc etc. And modern Australia has over 40% of citizens were either born overseas themselves, or had min. one parent that was.
But now we have the bizarre situation of a large number of MP's being adjudged by our High Court no less, to have infringed this provision of the Constitution because they had a parent born overseas or were born overseas themselves, never mind they've never held a foreign passport or even been aware of their 'entitlement', and being forced to resign, renounce the contentious entitlement and re-contest their seats in a by-election.
2017 Australian parliamentary eligibility crisis - Wikipedia
I particularly feel sorry for the deputy PM Barnaby Joyce, who was born in Australia as was his mum and even her parents. His problem arises from his dad being born in NZ and emigrating to Australia as a lad years before there existed either Australian or NZ citizenship.
It's not like there's nothing of greater importance our parliamentarians could be focussing on, FFS.
The Constitution was cobbled together in the 1890's to meet the aspirations and protect the interests of five of the six separate colonies (Victoria, New South Wales, Tasmania, South Australia, Queensland). Western Australia opted in at the last minute, and IIRC doesn't get mentioned in the document itself.
Anyway, Section 44a of the Constitution denies membership of either house if a member 'is beholden to a foreign power'. At the time it was written, there was no such thing as Australian citizenship, nor New Zealand or Seth Efrican either. We were all British. The section clearly meant to exclude Germans and the French and Russians etc etc. And modern Australia has over 40% of citizens were either born overseas themselves, or had min. one parent that was.
But now we have the bizarre situation of a large number of MP's being adjudged by our High Court no less, to have infringed this provision of the Constitution because they had a parent born overseas or were born overseas themselves, never mind they've never held a foreign passport or even been aware of their 'entitlement', and being forced to resign, renounce the contentious entitlement and re-contest their seats in a by-election.
2017 Australian parliamentary eligibility crisis - Wikipedia
I particularly feel sorry for the deputy PM Barnaby Joyce, who was born in Australia as was his mum and even her parents. His problem arises from his dad being born in NZ and emigrating to Australia as a lad years before there existed either Australian or NZ citizenship.
It's not like there's nothing of greater importance our parliamentarians could be focussing on, FFS.
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