Well there’s a big fucken surprise: after an absolutely cooked day of legal proceedings, the High Court of Australia has found that One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts was indeed a British citizen at the time of his nomination.
Justice Keane has handed down his findings on Senator Malcolm Roberts. The hearing lasted mere seconds. Roberts didn’t appear #auspol
— Felicity Caldwell (@fel_caldwell) September 22, 2017
This means that, thanks to Australia’s constitution, he should be ineligible to serve as a senator. Ha ha ha.
Roberts one of several pollies to be caught up in a weird frenzy of dual citizenship revelations, but pretty much the only one to so vociferously and incomprehensibly defend himself.
In fact, he said over and over again that he believed he’d always been an Australian citizen, despite the fact that he was born in India to a Welsh father and only applied for Australian citizenship in 1974.
He also said that he got his then-16-year-old sister to fill out the application form. This is the standard of bloke with which we are dealing.
https://twitter.com/stephanieando/status/911130067467505664
Despite all of that sterling defence (and more, including the fact that Roberts had kinda-sorta tried to sort out the citizenship thing before his nomination by, uh, emailing just completely wrong email addresses), the High Court basically gave him a big “DENIED” stamp, with Justice Patrick Keane stating:
I find that Senator Roberts knew that he did not become an Australian citizen until May 1974
I find that, as at the date of his nomination for the Senate, he knew that there was at least a real and substantial prospect that prior to May 1974 he had been and remained thereafter a citizen of the United Kingdom.
High Court has found that @SenatorMRoberts was a citizen of the UK by descent at the time of his nomination https://t.co/d12PKfNvHc #auspol pic.twitter.com/ZBr634W57i
— Political Alert (@political_alert) September 22, 2017
https://twitter.com/joshgnosis/status/911130974515224576
One Nation was plagued by citizenship issues the first time around too. Looks like no-one’s learned a single thing, and we’re exactly zero per cent surprised.
The final hearing is due to take place on October 10.
