Something to like about The Greens today:
Larissa Waters and Scott Ludlam, the Greens senators who resigned after becoming aware of their citizenship conflicts have argued “ignorance or wilful blindness” should not be used as an excuse to save parliamentarians in potential breach of the constitution.
In a marked departure from the arguments of Barnaby Joyce, Fiona Nash and Matt Canavan, as well as the attorney general, George Brandis, on behalf of the commonwealth, Waters and Ludlam argue in a joint submission that they were right to resign when they became aware of their dual citizenship status.
The government MPs and Nick Xenophon all agreed with Brandis’s argument in their submissions to the court that they were ignorant of their citizenship issues, despite their parents’ heritage, and therefore should not be found ineligible for parliament as they did not acquire or retain the status voluntarily.
However Waters, who was included in Brandis’s submission as deserving of being excused for the potential breach, and Ludlam argued that ignorance of “foreign citizenship status, is not supported by the text, context, history or purpose of s 44 or of the constitution itself”.
They accused the parliamentarians before the court of “ignorance or wilful blindness” of their dual citizenship status, saying these were not an excuse from the constraints of the constitution.
“In complying with obligations under the constitution, negligence should never produce a more favourable result than diligence,” they argued.
The Greens submitted it was reasonable to enquire into one’s status as a dual citizen when put “on notice by reason of the person’s foreign place of birth or the foreign citizenship status of that person’s parents or grandparents”.
The fact that a parliamentarian is a citizen by descent rather than birth should be no excuse, they submitted, as both are barred by section 44.
AdvertisementWaters and Ludlam said the purpose of section 44 was to bar people with “foreign loyalties and obligations” and it was a “real possibility” that a foreign power could call upon a citizen’s duty “even if it had never done so in the past and even if the person concerned was hitherto unaware of the citizenship”.
QED. Rub them all out.
