....... If it seems curious that (a) an Australian politician would not have checked their constitutional compliance before seeking public office and (b) nobody else did so throughout Ludlam's nine-year tenure as an elected member of the federal Parliament, the surprise has continued apace: Up to 30 other parliamentarians have since come under scrutiny for possible breach of the rule against dual citizenship and government. Opposition leaders have given senators until December 1 and members of the House of Representatives until December 5 to declare that they are not a citizen of any country other than Australia.
......... Meanwhile, nine officials have resigned or been ruled ineligible.
An 'imagined' community
The criteria for legally belonging to this country, which is enshrined in the Australian constitution, has always been narrow. Australia was founded in 1788 on the fiction that it was once a "terra nullius" (nobody's land). First Nations people, who had sovereign belonging to the land for at least 60,000 years prior, were not permitted to become citizens of the nation until 1967, and the country operated with a "White Australia" migration policy for most of the twentieth century. Under the White Australia policy, marked in particular by the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901, people of non-European descent were systematically deterred from migrating to Australia.
Keine Kommentare:
Kommentar veröffentlichen