This whole dual-citizenship thing

I don’t know how big a policy it is, but I think it’s a fairly easy sell at this point. If we have other things we want to run a referendum on that might be a bit more controversial, this could be used as a bit of a lever. “We’ve got to have a referendum on this anyway, so why not including all these other things we want on the same ballot and save some money?”

(As it is, I won’t be able to stand for PPAU again because of this rule. While I was aware of the rule before, I’d always been under the impression I was only an Aussie citizen. Following Ludlam and Waters resigning, I did some digging into my own family history, and discovered that I was a British dual citizen after all.)

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Ah, whereas my own decision not to run may or may not have been good for the same reasons (I’m not sure if I qualify as a dual citizen of Kiwi-land or not, it depends on how many generations the rule that caught Barnaby out applies to).

One generation, i.e. your parents

At the last election one of our candidates gave up their NZ citizenship before they nominated, our processes catch it, because it is clear.

However even that appears to not be enough. For future elections I think we will now have to thoroughly check the entitlements of parents and grandparents of people nominating, and also have each candidate give a general / public / statutory declaration they renounce any other unknown citizenships or foreign “entitlements” to privileges.

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Cheers. That’s the site that wasn’t loading for me last night (presumably because half of Australia was double-checking whether or not they were in the same boat). It looks like I’m not, but Mum is.

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I just did the British ‘Check if you’re a British citizen’ and according to the check I am. The laws must have changed as I didn’t qualify after the changes made on 1 January 1983. The old system said I had to register before turning 21 as it was my mother who was a British Citizen. I never did and thought that was that.

Looks like half the country would qualify for another citizenship…

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I’d rather not, this current government would use it as an excuse to drag out Marriage Equality even further.

I guess if you want to run for Parliament, it’s better to check more thoroughly, renounce if you are. If you don’t want to, suck it up, being Aussie on it’s own is good enough and becoming Australian is a dream to many. Our passports are accepted everywhere.

Wow, if the 1983/84 changes are no longer as limited as everyone believed … that’s going to be a lot of people.

Maybe it’s finally time to dump this nation-states nonsense and switch to a global citizenship. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m from Earth.

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Not me though, I’m very Australian for multiple generations on both sides of the family. Which is annoying because the shitty government here has already gone past the point I can tolerate and I’d rather live somewhere else.

There’s the bill of rights, citizens initiatives, ATSI recognition, parliamentary oversight on treaties, and possibly also electoral reform. The current platform mentions the constitution quite a bit.

None of things will ever come until the Government in power is friendly to these ideas, which the current government is not.

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Joyce as, bro

Also http://www.theshovel.com.au/2017/08/14/jacqui-lambie-may-be-dual-citizen-of-tasmania/

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Another one!

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Elections in the future might be closer than they appear.

If the High Court ruling on s44 topples the balance of power, the Governor General might step in. I don’t think that changing the Government on a technicality would go down too well… Plus many elected representatives have already resigned (or may be forced out by the High Court) because of it, so it’s not really reflecting the wishes of the electorates too well.

Also the floodgates have been opened to foreign citizenships which may not have actually registered with that government that they are a citizen (because they didn’t know) but actually they still are because of a parent. What about people who are estranged from their parent or don’t even know who their parent is, then that parent could come back into their life and reveal that they are of a nationality they don’t even know about, even though there would have been literally nothing they could have done to know about it without being able to find their parent before then.

I don’t think people really understand the serious nature of the situation. It’s a constitutional disaster and could have the potential to stuff up our democracy.

If for say a foreign adversary decided to change their citizenship laws to say give all Australian Parliamentarian’s the entitlement of citizen ship (once elected or whatever) of said state then we are F@#$ed. That is if the court rules in such a way…

Looking at the actual clause:

Any person who:
(i) is under any acknowledgment of allegiance, obedience, or adherence to a foreign power, or is a subject or a citizen or entitled to the rights or privileges of a subject or a citizen of a foreign power; or

I don’t see how a court could rule otherwise. Mere entitlement is enough to disqualify you, and any foreign nation can effectively declare you an actual citizen (as NZ apparently does for children of citizens),. They could even just declare you entitled to the rights of a citizen, so that’s three different ways that a foreign state can at their whim, make anybody in Australia ineligible for election.

It’s just really badly thought out as a constitutional clause.

And its gets worse - If another state was to declare us as citizens and ruling us out legally to be able to stand then would the foreign state be able to walk in and apply their laws?

I can’t see how that follows.
We’d just have a hard time forming government.

Just a hypothetical - I would hope the Commonwealth Act would have provisions. But you have to remember the Law is an Ass at the best of times.

The nightmare scenario would be New Zealand declaring every Australian a citizen of New Zealand, and our parliament would cease to function or we would have to operate extra-constitutionally (which would be the more common sense response).

We would be able to sort out our Constitution at least… LoL

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