Richard Di Natale (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I do not intend to speak to Senator Canavan's case. As Senator Wong has pointed out, this is a case that needs to be adjudicated within the court, so I do not intend to make any further comment regarding Senator Canavan's case. I will shortly seek leave to move a motion relating to Senators Ludlam and Waters. However, I do feel it's important to put on the record our view, the Australian Greens view, about what should transpire from this point onwards.

Senator Wong is absolutely correct when she says that it is very serious to question the eligibility of any senator in this place. That is a very serious question to ask, and one that needs to be considered very, very carefully. What is more serious, though, is that there may indeed be senators, and members of the lower house, who are sitting as members of the parliament when they are ineligible to do so. That is of course a much more serious concern, because—Senator Wong is absolutely right—it goes to the very heart of a democracy in terms of who is eligible to stand and represent the Australian people.

What has transpired over recent months has involved a number of senators—in fact, two Greens senators, and we now have further action in the High Court relating to Senator Canavan, with questions being asked of other members of the parliament. While Senator Wong discusses section 44 quite broadly, it is our view that an audit is necessary to assess the citizenship status of all members of the parliament. That is the only way in which we can give confidence to the Australian people that members of parliament sitting here representing the Australian community are eligible to do so. And it does go to the heart of any democracy: the circumstances in which our Constitution determines that people are duly elected.

Ultimately, for people to have faith in the system, we rely on people within the system to act with integrity. I'm very proud of the actions of both senators Ludlam and Waters in accepting they made an error, and paying a very high price for that error by doing the decent and honourable thing and announcing their resignations. However, we need to be absolutely confident that everyone within our parliament is going to do the same thing. Sadly, I don't have that confidence. I don't think the Australian people have that confidence. If anything, what we have seen is a double standard being applied in terms of the actions taken by senators in this place.

So we do believe very strongly that there needs to be a thorough and independent audit of not other issues relating to section 44 of the Constitution but the citizenship status of individuals within the Australian parliament. We think it's important to restore faith in our democracy, and we will be moving tomorrow to establish such an audit. It will be up to other members of parliament to decide what they do with regard to such an audit—whether they think that restoring trust within our Australian democracy is a necessary task or whether they would like to rely on the fact that individuals within the system will simply act in the interests of the Australian people, rather than in their own narrow self-interest. Sadly, we don't have confidence that every member of this place will do that, and it is for those reasons that we will be moving for such a wide-ranging audit.

In the meantime, let me put on the record my pride in the actions of senators Ludlam and Waters, who both paid a very high price for a mistake that they made—but they did act, with the integrity that I am so proud that our party represents.