Larissa Waters returns to parliament this week after nearly 14 months away.

She will be the first senator among the casualties of section 44 to return to parliament, having quit in July 2017 after discovering she was a dual Canadian citizen.

Waters’ resignation rattled the Greens, having come less than a week after her Greens colleague, the former senator Scott Ludlam, quit parliament after realising that he held dual New Zealand citizenship.

She and Ludlam were both co-deputies of the Greens at the time, and their resignations prompted mirth among Coalition and Labor MPs.

Few government and opposition MPs realised how the eligibility crisis would quickly sweep through their own ranks, culminating in the “Super Saturday” byelections in July this year.

Amazed at suggestions we should allow foreign nationals to serve in the Australian Parliament because two Green MPs can't manage basic admin — James Paterson (@SenPaterson) July 18, 2017

Waters has been able to return to parliament because she won back the Greens’ Queensland ticket No 1 spot after Andrew Bartlett – who replaced her in the Senate last year – stood down as a senator for Queensland in August to run against the Liberal National party’s Trevor Evans in the lower-house electorate of Brisbane in the coming federal election.

She will still have to contest the next federal election because her original term expires then.

Bartlett said he had decided to resign parliament prematurely to better prepare his Brisbane election campaign, which cleared the way for Waters to return.

Waters – one of the Greens’ top performers before she quit parliament – says she has been given the democracy portfolio and she cannot wait to pursue key themes: political donations reform, stopping the revolving door between politics and lobbying, and establishing a federal anti-corruption body.

She told Guardian Australia her time away from Canberra had reinforced for her how disenfranchised voters feel about Australia’s democratic institutions.

“They feel the system has been rigged by corporate interests who donate to Labor and the Liberals and Nationals, and One Nation,” she said.

“A federal anti-corruption body is something the Greens have been pushing for since 2010 and, as often is the way, we float an idea and a few years later Labor decides they think it’s a good idea too and some time after that the Liberals might take it on board as well, so I’m hopeful we will get a federal anti-corruption body. It’s been a long time coming.”

In January Bill Shorten committed Labor to a federal integrity commission if the party won the next federal election. In a speech to the National Press Club in January, the Labor leader acknowledged that voters were disaffected with politics and were craving solutions to clean up the system.

“It has to be independent and well-resourced, secure from government interference,” he said. “It needs a broad jurisdiction, effectively operating as a standing royal commission, with all those investigative powers, into serious and systemic corruption in the public sector.”

Waters said Alex Turnbull – the son of the former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull – had “belled the cat” recently when he called for an anti-corruption body and warned about the influence the coal lobby has on the Coalition.

“We all knew it but it’s not something their own ranks usually admit to,” she said.

She said she wanted to stop the revolving door between lobbyists and MPs: “I did an adjournment speech on this a few years back and it’s only gotten worse since then. The number of folks who have come from the coalmining industry or other vested interest groups that then become someone’s chief of staff, and then get promoted to being an MP themselves, or leave parliament to work for the gas lobby or gambling lobby, it’s just a revolving door.

“We’d like to see a cooling-off period of five years.

“There’s a cooling-off period at the moment for ministers, which is two years, but it’s not very strongly enforced. Remember when former resources minister Ian Macfarlane left [in 2016] and got a job with the Queensland Resources Council within months?”

Waters said most Australians had lost faith in politicians acting morally. “That’s why they’re so pissed off with the system and think the system’s so rigged, because it is. It’s rigged in favour of vested interests and donors.”

She would like all political donations to end from the fossil fuel sector, gambling, alcohol, tobacco and property development.