Dual Citizenship


There is no doubt that the dual citizenship saga in recent months has been a major distraction, and a huge waste of money. There is no doubt that it was a very confident Bill Shorten who started rolling jaffers down the aisle. Of course in the last couple of days this has come back to bite him.

No one has suggested that anyone who has been caught in this saga has ever acted in a way that was outside the national interests of Australia.

At the time that the Constitution came into being there was no such thing as an Australian Citizen. As such members of any country with allegiance to the King/Queen was eligible. We have in fact had New Zealanders and Canadians in our Houses and Cabinets.

Following the introduction of Australian Citizenship around 1949 there has been an incremental shift in the operation of the Section 44.1 of the Constitution. Following Britain joining the European Common Market in 1984 Australians ceased being British Subjects. This led to further incremental shifts in the interpretation of section 44.1.

In July 2016 was the last general election. Following that election a senator from WA (Family First) was deemed ineligible and a recount gave the seat to Lucy Gichuhi whose eligibility was questions by Bill Shorten. In April 2017 this objection was overturned by the High Court and she was declared elected.

On the same Day Rodney Culleton was deemed ineligible as a result of an outstanding charge on a matter carryinging a possible jail term in excess of twelve months.

Following this the matter erupted and Bill Shorten announced that Labor was clean of dual citizens and the Government ranks were full of them. This backwards and forwards for a while, as seen in the chart.


Interestingly, not one of these people has been accused of acting against the interests of a foreign power, or any anyway of having compromised the welfare of Australia. The High Courts new hard line in reading the constitution is possibly unreasonable and represents the court changing the meaning of the law without changing the words.

Perhaps the most offensive thing about this is that it breaches the democratic tradition - Government of the People by the People with one law for all. It seems that the new reading somehow requires politicians to be in a special class of Australian.

The correct approach would seem to be, in the interests of consistency would be to require people wanting Australian Citizenship to renounce any other citizenship. Of course people value the benefits it brings and would not regard such a change well.

Anyway it has been a huge expense for something that is essentially 'no harm done'.