Greens federal candidate for Franklin, Owen Fitzgerald, falls foul of dual citizenship law

ABC NEWS (Australia)

The Greens have been forced to admit an oversight failure - with a rising star of the party forced to end his election campaign in the Tasmanian seat of Franklin. Owen Fitzgerald will remain on the ballot but can't be elected as he's a dual citizen.  The oversight was picked up by a self proclaimed 'amateur election analyst' who's blasted the party for failing to learn the lessons of 2017's citizenship scandal.

Transcript

00:00A constitutional bump in the road for an aspiring politician.

00:06Look, it is disappointing and it is hard, but it has happened and I accept that this is human error.

00:15Greens candidate for Franklin, Owen Fitzgerald, had renounced British citizenship from his mother's side,

00:22but was unaware that his father, being a New Zealander, makes him one too.

00:27As a dual citizen, he's ineligible to sit in Federal Parliament under Section 44 of the Constitution.

00:33This has been a failure of our party's candidate vetting processes and it's something that we'll need to tighten up.

00:40The Greens are blaming an administrative oversight.

00:43They only became aware after a tweet from election analyst Kevin Bonham.

00:48It is a complete failure of vetting by a supposedly serious party to have not spotted this.

00:54I don't know how they could have missed it.

00:56He says New Zealand's citizenship rules are among the most basic and well known.

01:01In 2017, dual citizenships triggered a wave of resignations by MPs and Senators, including by two Greens,

01:09as well as then Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce, whose father was also from across the ditch.

01:15Section 44 of the Constitution is a disgraceful provision.

01:19It has no place in a modern multicultural society like Australia.

01:24The Greens are yet to decide how they'll advise their supporters in Franklin to vote.

01:28But they're expected to swing behind anti-salmon campaigner Peter George.

01:33In order to mount a serious challenge to Labor's Julie Collins, he'll need very favourable preference flow.

01:39But in a blow to his chances, the Liberals are asking their voters to preference Ms Collins over him.

01:46They've been bought out by the salmon industry and they're doing what their masters tell them to do.

01:52The scales still yet to tip in his favour.

01:55The third step is to step in his favour.

02:00The third step is to step in his favour.

02:04The third step is to step in the direction of the Government's

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