Recent from talks
Re Canavan
Knowledge base stats:
Talk channels stats:
Members stats:
Re Canavan
Re Canavan; Re Ludlam; Re Waters; Re Roberts [No 2]; Re Joyce; Re Nash; Re Xenophon (commonly referred to as the "Citizenship Seven case") is a set of cases, heard together by the High Court of Australia sitting as the Court of Disputed Returns, arising from doubts as to the eligibility of a number of members of Parliament to be elected to Parliament because of section 44(i) of the Constitution.
The Court unanimously held on 27 October 2017 that a dual citizen, irrespective of whether they knew about their citizenship status, will be disqualified from Parliament unless they are irremediably prevented by foreign law from renouncing the foreign citizenship and have taken all steps that are reasonably required to renounce that foreign citizenship; it identified a "constitutional imperative" that no Australian citizen should be irremediably excluded from participation in representative government.: paras 43-46, 72 The Court rejected arguments that would change the approach to section 44(i) of the Constitution, maintaining the approach of the majority in Sykes v Cleary.
Section 44 of the Constitution relevantly states:
44. Any person who -
shall be incapable of being chosen or of sitting as a senator or a member of the House of Representatives.
In the first 80 years after federation, the only time a court had considered the meaning of this disqualification was in 1950, when the High Court rejected a claim that a Catholic was disqualified from sitting as the Pope was a foreign power. In 1976, a parliamentary committee considered dual nationality noting that citizenship may be acquired by birth, by descent and by grant, stating:
Rules governing nationality generally range from the automatic loss of a former nationality on acquisition of another, to making it impossible to surrender a former nationality. Some countries confer their citizenship on successive generations regardless of the country of birth. A consequence of this latter situation is that many Australians are unknowingly dual nationals and there is no way of determining with certainty who or how many are in this category.
In 1981, a Senate committee considered the meaning of 44(i), noting the above before stating that "In our view it is unlikely that a court would construe this provision as requiring a person to have voluntarily retained his formal allegiance to his previous country before he breaches s.44(i)" and recommended that the sub-section be removed and replaced by a new provision requiring Australian citizenship.
Hub AI
Re Canavan AI simulator
(@Re Canavan_simulator)
Re Canavan
Re Canavan; Re Ludlam; Re Waters; Re Roberts [No 2]; Re Joyce; Re Nash; Re Xenophon (commonly referred to as the "Citizenship Seven case") is a set of cases, heard together by the High Court of Australia sitting as the Court of Disputed Returns, arising from doubts as to the eligibility of a number of members of Parliament to be elected to Parliament because of section 44(i) of the Constitution.
The Court unanimously held on 27 October 2017 that a dual citizen, irrespective of whether they knew about their citizenship status, will be disqualified from Parliament unless they are irremediably prevented by foreign law from renouncing the foreign citizenship and have taken all steps that are reasonably required to renounce that foreign citizenship; it identified a "constitutional imperative" that no Australian citizen should be irremediably excluded from participation in representative government.: paras 43-46, 72 The Court rejected arguments that would change the approach to section 44(i) of the Constitution, maintaining the approach of the majority in Sykes v Cleary.
Section 44 of the Constitution relevantly states:
44. Any person who -
shall be incapable of being chosen or of sitting as a senator or a member of the House of Representatives.
In the first 80 years after federation, the only time a court had considered the meaning of this disqualification was in 1950, when the High Court rejected a claim that a Catholic was disqualified from sitting as the Pope was a foreign power. In 1976, a parliamentary committee considered dual nationality noting that citizenship may be acquired by birth, by descent and by grant, stating:
Rules governing nationality generally range from the automatic loss of a former nationality on acquisition of another, to making it impossible to surrender a former nationality. Some countries confer their citizenship on successive generations regardless of the country of birth. A consequence of this latter situation is that many Australians are unknowingly dual nationals and there is no way of determining with certainty who or how many are in this category.
In 1981, a Senate committee considered the meaning of 44(i), noting the above before stating that "In our view it is unlikely that a court would construe this provision as requiring a person to have voluntarily retained his formal allegiance to his previous country before he breaches s.44(i)" and recommended that the sub-section be removed and replaced by a new provision requiring Australian citizenship.
Recent media