On the future of the Citizenship Seven

John Hall writes: Re. “What next for the Citizenship Seven?”  (Friday)

I am betting two lumps of coal on Malcolm Roberts going to the furnace. One Nation senators tend to implode early — thanks to Pauline Hanson’s amazing managerial expertise.

Robert Garnett writes: Re. “What next for the Citizenship Seven?”  (Friday)

The High Court would, in my view be derelict, in its duties if it did NOT find all of the seven ineligible to remain in Parliament.

I base this on the following:

1. The constitution forms the basis of eligibility for parliament. The framers had reasons for this particular requirement. It is reasonable speculation that this provision related to parliamentary representatives being required to have singular loyalty to the Commonwealth of Australia.  The notion that a person is ignorant of their ineligibility is no reason to create a precedent whereby anybody who claims they have no knowledge of their non-compliance gets off with it. 

2. Ignorance of the law is no excuse, although it may be mitigation against harsher punishment in some ordinary crime. It is hard to see how ignorance of a fundamental provision of our constitution, by those who claim to represent the constitution in parliament, would provide mitigation. Any mitigation in the face of gross negligence can be expected to be fairly light. In any case ineligibility for parliament is not a crime with punishment and therefore the notion of mitigation through ignorance would seem to a reasonable person to be irrelevant. They either breached the constitution or they didn’t.

3. Governments, except in the case of non-natural persons in the form of corporations, can be extremely parsimonious and brutal when punishing Australian citizens who breach the acts of parliament that they create. It is had to see therefore, that parliamentarians who through their negligence have breached the constitution should get special consideration. The idea of parliamentary democracy is government of the people, by the people, so we need to be very careful about the attribution to much exceptionalism to them. If we do, we are acknowledging that we are governed by exceptional elites. 

4. Mitigation might provide some relief for the constitutional breachers, such as whether they have to pay back the salaries and benefits they have received whilst operating outside of the law. Again one can use the precedence of how minor tax avoiders get treated by the ATO under the legislation that is provided by those same parliamentarians. I will leave it to the reader to ascertain the level of mercy that should be provided by the High Court in its deliberation on this issue.