Should councillors have to resign their positions to run for federal office? What about teachers, or firemen?

Section 44 of the constitution prohibits those who hold “any office of profit under the Crown, or any pension payable during the pleasure of the Crown out of any of the revenues of the Commonwealth” from running for federal office. The major parties ruthlessly enforce these rules, requiring candidates to retire from all such positions — with the exception of those who are sitting parliamentarians — before the election. And the rules come down especially hard on independents — who frequently have little realistic chance of winning and yet, being civic-minded types, are likely to hold all sorts of civic positions.

Crikey founder Stephen Mayne, who is running in Menzies, has yet to resign from the Melbourne City Council. “It has never been tested as to whether local government councillors are profiting from an office under the crown,” he wrote in a piece in Crikey.

And in South Australia, we’ve heard another argument in favour of councillors keeping their positions until, and if, they are elected.

The Nick Xenophon Team’s Andrea Broadfoot, the candidate for the lower-house seat of Grey, sits on the Port Lincoln Council. In March, the council got legal advice, which Crikey has seen, on whether she’d have to resign to run with Xenophon.

The answer was: no. Or, not yet. Under the South Australian Local Government Act (section 54), a casual vacancy on a council automatically arises if a councillor “becomes a member of the Australian parliament”. Until then, provided council resources aren’t used in campaigning, there’s no problem.

Candidates in other professions, and those in other states, don’t appear to be so lucky. Stuart Grimley, who’s second on the Victorian ticket for Derryn Hinch’s Justice Party, has stepped down from his role as a police officer to run. And Carolyne Boothman ceased being the Labor candidate for Gippsland after being required to quit from her position as a teacher to run (if you want to know why there aren’t more teachers in Parliament, Section 44 is a good place to start).