I've been found speechless with regards the drama & political fall-out surrounding the parliamentary dual-citizenship debacle that might finally be coming to a close after months of stuffing about.
I think it's all over now, so I am less likely to stick my foot in my mouth as I pass comment on the shambolic sham that we occasionally refer to as the bicameral system of government.
I am politically biased - I dislike most politicians.
The problem is not just the politicking as each side has denounced the other's members, pursued their opposition whilst sheltering their own, making excuses or accommodations whilst exposing their own hypocrisy.
It's that we allow it.
I realise that an ability to attack someone with a differently-coloured tie (or dress) is not the key attribute I look for in my local representative, but the major parties only offer those skills, so we've become quite used to the circus that happens in the Canberra Big-Top.
However, it now appears that the Federal Court has been secretly wishing for its moment in the spotlight all these years.
Let's ignore the way in which government members' by-elections were rushed in, whilst opposition members' representatives were left dangling without the support of their constituents.
That's just the kind of thing one expects from party politics.
I want to get to the heart of the matter - the blanket ruling that anyone who may conceivably have been or become a dual citizen should have known & therefore should have known better than to go into politics in the first place.
Yes, there were quite a few who simply didn't know the law (& whose party had forgotten to remind them), but there were several who were genuinely surprised (& not delighted) to discover that they had acquired dual citizenship during their lives without having even gotten a hand-shake from the mayor.
In the worst of cases, some people had become citizens of countries that they had had no affiliation with, hadn't needed to visit, & were honestly mystified at how it was possible that such things could occur.
The most bizarre case, in my mind, was that of John Alexander.
Someone born here, whose father just happened to have been born in England & was therefore a British Subject resident in Australia before the concept of an Australian citizen even existed, found himself to have inherited British Citizenship, even having been born after the concept of Australian citizenship became possible.
In fact, his father could have sat in parliament without an eyebrow ever rising (as was fashionable before botox).
It could have been worse - John could have been born two years earlier as a British Subject at birth (not inheritance) - & still had no idea that he "gained" Australian citizenship.
My own father, born before the act, automatically became an Australian Citizen (only), & his English mother (& her father) unwittingly became a dual citizen ... but let's not get into gender politics here as well.
Oh let's ... my father therefore has cousins who have no idea that they are the only living dual-citizens in the family because their father (born here) inherited the dual-citizenship right & passed it on to his children.
I think I'm right here - it gets confusing - a man born in Australia to an English father can have British children, but his sister, born in England, has Australian children.
I am not concerned that people were taken by surprise at their new-found citizenship, it's more that the Fed Court has decided to interpret the law by the letter rather than the intent.
At the time of writing, the constitution was intended to preclude those whose allegiance was not to the British Empire (or the King/Queen) from sitting in parliament.
Foreign was a much broader concept in those days - & was never truly tested.
When the act of Australian Citizenship finally came about, some fifty years later, nobody was in the mood to shake the tree & see which members fell out of parliament - as I'm sure quite a few (if not most) would have.
It's a matter of history that most of our PMs had recent British ancestry.
If we start to "question" members who sat illegally & without their knowledge today, & the decisions of ministers who have since been designated illegally holding office, then we should go back in time to dismiss all of the decisions of all of the parliaments where the majority was held only with the help of those who were technically dual citizens, & any minister's actions where their allegiance could be brought into question.
Crazy talk.
To take this to the absurd, an act of parliament that effectively makes the passing of that act itself impossible through the ineligibility of the members in the majority to actually be present, never existed.
This means that the act of Australian Citizenship itself (1949), having just disappeared, could not have caused the chaos that this Super Saturday has become - with no appreciable change to the parliament - & we'll all accept that the whole thing is just politics.
