The former senator Scott Ludlam has had some bad luck. He found out he was a New Zealander. Boom, boom.
Things have moved beyond a joke since Friday when Mr Ludlam resigned immediately after discovering he was a dual citizen of Australia and New Zealand and so, ineligible to stand for Parliament, let alone sit in it. Now the Greens' other co-deputy, Larissa Waters, has gone the same way with the realisation that she is a dual citizen of Canada despite having left there as an 11-month-old.
Former Greens senator Scott Ludlam has resigned after discovering he held dual citizenship.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
"This was my error, something I should have checked when I nominated for pre-selection in 2006," Mr Ludlam said in a statement in which he apologised "unreservedly". Ms Waters, too, took full responsibility and apologised for her "grave mistake and oversight".
We could say mistakes of such magnitude are an insult to voters. The two senators have failed to uphold the exemplary standards we expect of our elected representatives and should pay back every cent they've earned from Parliament, where Mr Ludlam has served since 2008 and Ms Waters since 2011. But who among us is faultless when it comes to managing personal paperwork? To be sure, the flippant manner in which Mr Ludlam announced his resignation on Twitter – "hey everyone, i'm sorry about this, but it's a thing" – did not endear him to critics, even if it was accompanied by a rueful explanation and mea culpa. Ms Waters learnt the lesson and handled her resignation with appropriate gravitas.
Four down, more to go? Since the last election Family First senator Bob Day has been ruled ineligible over a conflict-of-interest issue and the One Nation senator from Western Australia, Rod Culleton, was turfed out after being declared bankrupt. Labor is seeking to wipe out the government's precarious one-vote majority in the House of Representatives by challenging the eligibility of Nationals MP David Gillespie under the same provisions that caught Mr Day in the Senate.
When the government is relying on the narrowest of margins to get its legislation passed, we can expect the validity of every vote to be scrutinised. More MPs will be scurrying to their lawyers over the dual citizenship provisions and also over the conflict rule that caught Mr Day. Tit-for-tat challenges can't be ruled out. But rather than risk all-out war, the parties would be better off strengthening their procedures so ineligible MPs don't get a start. They should place less trust in the honesty and administrative competence of candidates by requiring them to make statutory declarations certifying point by point that they are not going to fall foul of any of the ineligibility criteria.
Mr Ludlam's seat is likely to go to the next Greens candidate on the WA Senate ticket, 22-year-old youth and disability advocate Jordan Steele-John on a countback, and Ms Waters is expected to be replaced in the same way by the former Democrats leader Andrew Bartlett, now Greens convenor in Queensland. In that sense the changes of personnel are politically neutral, though the Greens will sorely miss the experienced contributions of their former co-leaders.
The Herald accepts that the mistakes were honest, though extremely careless. The rules on eligibility for prospective MPs are clearly set out in the literature for prospective candidates provided by the Australian Electoral Commission and on the Parliament of Australia website, not to mention in Section 44 of the constitution. Even so, fairness dictates that the Department of Finance waive Mr Ludlam's and Ms Waters' "debt" to the Commonwealth for their parliamentary salaries, as it did for Mr Day and Mr Culleton.
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