Canavan has to go

The balderdash is flowing:

Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce has defended his friend and colleague Matt Canavan after the Queensland senator resigned from cabinet as resources minister pending a High Court challenge over his apparent Italian citizenship.

Senator Canavan stood down yesterday, after revealing his mother had applied for Italian citizenship on his behalf in 2006.

He was born in Australia, as were both his parents, but his mother’s parents were both born in Italy.

Mr Joyce, who is Acting Resources Minister while Senator Canavan’s case goes before the courts, said the 36-year-old Nationals senator was a person of “exemplary character”.

He said he had learned of Senator Canavan’s situation last Tuesday the 18th of July, the day after Larissa Waters resigned as a Greens senator after finding she had Canadian citizenship, and four days after Ms Waters’ colleague Scott Ludlam resigned over his New Zealand citizenship.

There is no difference between the sloppy Greens and the sloppy Canavan. None of them can be held accountable in terms of volition. But all three stuffed up.

Canavan has to go or The Greens be allowed back in.

The former is obviously preferable. No dual citizenship is an important rule designed to protect the national interest and has to be defended. We are reaching a point in globalisation in which traditional Australian alliances are under immense strain from all kinds of global integration. No duel citizenship is a nice big and dumb rule that prevents those that are conflicted about various national interests from gaining power.