Here’s a tip for Stephen Parry: don’t wait for the Brits. Quit now. The Brits might decide you’re not one of them and you can remain. But no matter what advice comes back from the Home Office, your staggering lack of judgment is indisputable.
Quite what possessed you to keep your possible dual nationality a secret is a political mystery for the ages. As senator after senator informed you they believed they had a problem with their citizenship under section 44 of the constitution, you stayed silent, apparently hoping the High Court would spare you the embarrassment of putting your hand up as well. While the entire country obsessed over foreign citizenship laws and Fiona Nash rose to explain how her British father had given her British citizenship, you pretended everything was OK. Now, just days after we thought the whole saga was over — and the government leadership thought it was over, for better or worse — you’ve restarted it.
Malcolm Turnbull can’t take a trick. It’s not enough that Tony Abbott keeps hurling bombs at him, he can’t even leave the country for an apparently risk-free foreign trip without some galoot in his own ranks blowing themselves up.
And spare a thought for the voters. How much longer do they have to endure politicians who can’t, or won’t, fill out forms properly? It’s not as if Australian voters are exactly enthralled by their elected representatives as it is.
The bloke who started all this, Scott Ludlam, at least showed how it should be done — cop it sweet and get out with your dignity intact. Parry, like his Nationals colleagues and Malcolm Roberts, failed to heed his example. A belated but immediate bail-out by Parry will at least do the right thing by the government.
But if he KNOWINGLY broke the law AND occupied a senior position in the Parliament; isn’t there some penalty to be paid?
You’re expecting a member of this government to do the right thing? I’ll have some of whatever you’re smoking, injecting or ingesting.
I wonder how many of these very confused people revived their dual citizenships as a mate of mine did in order to slip in and out of Europe and miss those terribly inconvenient queues marked ‘Aliens’.
It’s interesting that the Greens, the political party sometimes mocked as being idealistic ratbags, have shown themselves to be the most responsible mature polticians in the room. And, unlike their colleagues in other parties, totally ethical.
That can’t be right, the PM said they were sloppy. He also said ” .. and the High Court will so hold”. Whoops.
Will we ever get to see the Solicitor General’s advice to the Government?
Paraphrasing a comment I’ve heard elsewhere, but those are the same people who delight in coming down on you like a tonne of bricks if you fail to cross a t properly at Centrelink…
Or, imagine the consequences if one of us peasants (ie: Oz voters) failed to provide accurate information on a passport application.
One wonders if Parry would have stayed quiet had not Richard Di Natale begun stirring for a citizenship audit of all MPs. Better to out oneself than be compulsorily outed.
I’m wondering if Parry was pressured not to come out of the dual closet at the same time as the others. It would have caused a lot more grief to have the Speaker ousted.
Elsewhere in Welfare World it’s all “Lifters vs Leaners” and Debt Recovery.
This mob areso flat out at the trough they’d be buggered crossing any I’s and dotting the T’s re their own responsibilities.
Can’t the Productivity Commission – or Centrelink – take a look at this “work farce”?