Last Friday Malcolm Turnbull thought we all just might calm down on the witch hunts. As of Monday, given it was obvious no one was calming down, we have the eligibility audit you have when you are not having an audit.



Under arrangements signed off by the cabinet, all MPs and senators will have to lodge declarations that they were not foreign citizens at the time of their nomination.

On the face of it, this sounds like the status quo. Political candidates already have to declare they are compliant with the obligations imposed by the constitution before seeking office. There already is a system.

But the procedure Turnbull proposes is different in this respect: this would be a public declaration, like the public declarations politicians make about their pecuniary interests.

Not a statutory declaration, mind you, but a declaration to parliament, with incorrect or false statements a breach of privilege (which sounds scary, and could be scary, if the penalties were ever applied, but generally isn’t scary at all, because in practice, privilege breaches are generally slap-on-the-wrist territory – not the fines, or the prison sentence).

Turnbull argued on Monday what normally isn’t scary is deeply scary in this instance because “the political consequences alone would be very, very dramatic”.

“I mean, they would clearly – if they were a citizen of another country and said they weren’t, clearly the immediate consequence would be they would be out of parliament”.

Well, no, not necessarily, and not immediately in any case.

There are a number of other curiosities about this proposal. MPs won’t have to provide information about their grandparents, which is odd, given citizenship by descent can occur via grandparents as well as parents.

It’s also unclear what happens if some parliamentarians refuse to comply with the mandated show and tell.

There’s another curiosity we can consider – and it’s timing.

The new system requires declarations be made within 21 days from the time the parliament resolves that this will be the new system.

Now, why 21 days? Given this information is already supposed to exist courtesy of the vetting processes pre-election, why not 24 hours?

So let’s conduct a thought experiment and lay this proposed timeframe over the remainder of the political year, over the parliamentary calendar.

Assuming you as the government still have any control over how this citizenship crisis plays out (and that is arguable) let’s consider chamber by chamber.

The Senate, which sits next week, could approve this framework next week if Labor ultimately agrees with the terms, starting the clock from then, which means the Senate disclosures could pop up while the parliament was still in session for the year.

This will obviously be inconvenient and embarrassing politically in the event any problems are uncovered. But Senate eligibility problems are easier to fix – there’s a resignation, or a court process resulting in a recounts to fill vacancies. No byelections.

If you strike problems in the House, you have to face byelections.

Byelections are, of course, deeply problematic if you happen to hold government by a wafer-thin majority, and we know the government is already having to fight one political contest, in New England – an inconvenience that has cost the government its working majority on the floor of the chamber.

The House sits for only another fortnight, in late November and early December.

On the 21-day timeframe proposed in this system, the public eligibility declarations from lower house MPs won’t actually show up in the final parliamentary sitting weeks before the end of the year.

The relevant material will not be in the public domain while the three-ring circus is in Canberra.

While you can’t forestall the inevitable, this effect of kicking the can down the road could be useful if you were a government wanting to avoid any dangerous conflagrations – like someone trying on a vote of no-confidence on the floor of the House, or some other mischief with the potential to blow the place sky high.

If you were a sceptical person (and sadly, the track record on the dual citizenship fracas has taught all of us to be rigorous sceptics), you might wonder whether this is transparency with a bonus feature – a flotation device to get a prime minister and a government through the political killing season.