Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) Disclaimer: The AEC has
no power under the Electoral Act to make any determination in relation to the
qualification checklist in a person’s nomination, except as to whether the
person has answered every mandatory question, and provided additional
documentation where required. The candidate must be satisfied that the
additional documents support their contentions in the Qualification Checklist
and that they are qualified under the Constitution and the laws of the
Commonwealth to be elected as a Senator or a member of the House of
Representatives.
The
Guardian, 26
April 2019:
At least 19 United
Australia party candidates have submitted incomplete or inconsistent
information to the Australian Electoral Commission, failing to provide evidence
they are eligible to run for parliament.
The candidates for Clive
Palmer’s party have asserted they are not dual citizens disqualified by section
44 of the constitution, but have mostly failed to provide birth details of
their parents or grandparents, even in cases where candidates admit parents or
grandparents were born overseas.
In one case the UAP
candidate for Blaxland, Nadeem Ashraf, claimed in a statutory declaration that
he lost dual Pakistani citizenship automatically when he became Australian in
1986. Even when taking up another citizenship Pakistani law requires
a declaration of renunciation, which Ashraf failed to provide.
A spokesman for the
United Australia party told Guardian Australia “all [candidates] are eligible
and compliant under s44”, but failed to explain why they had not completed the
checklist.
A spokesman for the AEC
said it had no “power to reject a fully completed candidate nomination for the
Senate or the House of Representatives, regardless of whether any answer to a
question of the qualification checklist is incorrect, false or inadequate”.
At least 16 UAP
candidates stated that they were born in Australia, declared they had parents
or grandparents born in another country but then failed to provide details.
These include Matthew Sirianni-Duffy in Aston, Wayne
Connolly in Goldstein, Lisa Bentley in Gellibrand, Ron Jean in Dunkley, George
Zoraya in Chisholm, Adam Veitch in Bendigo, Neil Harvey in Corangamite, Lynda
Abdo in Hume, Colin Thompson in Dawson, Christian Julius in Griffith, Kenneth
Law in Groom, Jatinder Singh in Holt, Shane Wheatland in Indi, Tony Seals in
Isaacs, Md Sarwar Hasan in Maribyrnong, Tony Pecora in Melbourne, Adam Holt in
Sydney and Yohan Batzke, a Queensland Senate candidate.
The 45th parliament
was rocked
by 14 MPs or senators resigning or being ruled ineligible due to dual citizenship,
many of them triggered by citizenship by descent from parents or grandparents
born in the United Kingdom or New Zealand…..
The joint
standing committee on electoral matters has warned that the presence
of ineligible candidates on the ballot creates potential that “a successful
candidate could have their election challenged on the basis of preference flows
from an ineligible candidate”.
UAP is not alone in having candidates who did not fully compete their nomination forms. It would appear that a number of candidates from more than one political party have also submitted forms unaccompanied by required documentation.
Voters can check the nomination forms of candidates standing in their electorate at
https://www.aec.gov.au/election/candidates.htm.
