By Phil Cleary
Twenty-five years ago I received the same news Barnaby Joyce heard on Friday. In an astounding High Court decision I'd been ruled ineligible to sit in the Parliament and told I was no longer the independent member for the prized seat of Wills, Bob Hawke's old seat, which I'd won eight months earlier in an exhilarating byelection. The euphoria of our victory party in Coburg that night was put into stark relief by the High Court decision.
By day's end I was told to vacate my office within 24 hours, that my superannuation entitlements for the eight months I'd served would be confiscated, and that my electorate staff would lose their jobs. Thankfully the government reneged on that final ruling, leaving the people of Wills with a modicum of democracy. My situation was far worse than Joyce's. I had no job, no benefactors, and no political party, and would have to wait another four months to try to reclaim the seat from a big-spending ALP machine.
Phil Cleary on his first day in Parliament in 1992. Credit: Greg White/Fairfax Media
We did win, only to see the electoral commission redistribute the boundaries of the seat in a manner that would guarantee the ALP success in 1996.
To say I felt aggrieved and hurt by the High Court's decision would be a gross understatement. In my case, as a teacher on leave without pay, the High Court deemed I held an "Office of Profit under the Crown" and was in contravention of section 44 (iv) of our constitution. That only one judge, William Deane, ruled in my favour was bewildering.
Barnaby Joyce retired to the pub after the High Court ruled he was ineligible to remain in Parliament. Credit: Peter Hardin
Most people thought the decision astonishing and an affront to the principles of our democratic system. After all, section 44 (iv) had its origins in Oliver Cromwell's obsession with stopping the King bankrolling his lackies in the English Parliament, and as a left-wing son of a working-class butcher I was hardly a King's man. I found it humiliating and a metaphor for everything that was wrong with the political system.
The court's decision in 1992 should have prompted a serious review of the constitution by the major parties. It didn't because the struggles of a lone independent didn't amount to a hill of beans in a system dominated by parochial, tribal allegiance. That in part explains why we now have the ridiculous situation in which five MPs have been deemed ineligible by this outdated and inadequate section in our constitution.
Had the Liberal Party listened more objectively to their shadow attorney-general Peter Costello when, in a grandstanding moment a day after the court's decision, he asked the speaker to consider a resolution regarding "the eligibility of members", maybe Joyce would still be a member of the Parliament. That of course is but one of the many ironies of Joyce's ineligibility. What people should be asking is how a Coalition wedded to jingoistic nationalism could be so indifferent to the potential for dual citizenship among its MPs.
Does the incompetence on display in this farcical situation help explain why the level of contempt for politics and politicians has never been greater? While we're laughing about the irony of Joyce running foul of a clause in the constitution that protects the "Australianess" he and his party claims to worship, we should turn our gaze to the important contradictions such rulings expose.
Twenty-five years ago the High Court ruled Phil Cleary was ineligible to sit in the Parliament. Credit: Joe Armao
Twenty-five years after a decision that effectively discriminated against public servants and ordinary wage-earners, but not conflicted millionaires, we continue to tolerate an anachronistic, failed constitution. What kind of constitution is it that asks the descendants of immigrants in an immigrant country, in a global economy adored by the major parties, to swear allegiance to a foreign crown and denounce every semblance of their past?
On the streets no one takes Bill Shorten seriously when he says Joyce has broken the law. Joyce didn't break the law. He fell foul of a broken old tablet forged in yesterday's world. Instead of trying to score the obligatory political point Shorten should have denounced this embarrassing constitution and nailed his colours to a modern republic that recognises our Indigenous past, our contemporary diversity and the will of the people, including those who elected Joyce.
What kind of democracy is it that rules a teacher, but not a millionaire, ineligible to sit in Parliament, or says that a bloke like Joyce, whose family fought alongside Aussies at war, should relinquish his seat in Parliament? One that should be ripped asunder.
Phil Cleary is the former independent member for Wills.