Dual citizen dodgers should go, hears High Court

Damn right they should. If you can’t fill in the application form then what right do you have to govern?

In a submission filed on behalf of a friend of the court, Sydney barrister Geoffrey Kennett SC says the relevant laws of Italy and the United Kingdom should be recognised and the parliamentarians disqualified.

…Attorney-General George Brandis argues Senators Xenophon, Nash and Canavan, Mr Joyce and Ms Waters should not be booted out of parliament because they had no knowledge of their foreign citizenship and did not voluntarily acquire it.

The friend of the court says the Commonwealth’s construction “would create a structural incentive in favour of prospective parliamentarians remaining ignorant of possible foreign citizenships”.

“All that the current references (Xenophon, Nash and Canavan) illustrate is the difficulty that is occasioned when individuals who wish to sit in parliament do not make any inquiries about relevant foreign citizenships, despite the electoral process requiring them to make a solemn declaration that they are not disqualified, which solemn declaration each of the senators made,” the submission states.

“In fact, the current references illustrate just how easily the affected Senators were able to ascertain their foreign citizenship status and take steps to renounce it when they turned their minds to it.”

The submission goes further, arguing it was “not only possible” but “remarkably easy” for the three senators to renounce their foreign citizenship, who at the very least had knowledge their family members had been citizens of overseas countries.

“Each senator should be treated as having voluntarily retained their foreign citizenship (when they nominated for the 2016 election) by virtue of their constructive knowledge of that status arising in each case from actual knowledge of at least circumstances which would put an honest and reasonable person on inquiry,” the submission states.

“The difficulty of ascertaining foreign law can be overstated. Even though a question of foreign citizenship turns on the content of foreign law, the question will be often be able to be answered sufficiently for nomination purposes by a simple inquiry of an embassy, without any need for detailed factual investigation.”

Get you gone.