Someone has switched Section 44 of our constitution to "evil".

It's always had a sense of humour, that section. Every now and again, over the lifespan of our young democracy, it's intervened merrily to chop some unwitting greenhorn off at the knees.

("You're in the RAAF, you say, Jackie Kelly? Right. That's actually an office of profit under the Crown, Squadron Leader. And it's back to a by-election with you!")

The section was originally designed to protect us from traitors, criminals, bankrupts and fraudsters, and its comedic timing has largely been gentle.

It has forced prospective politicians into some extraordinary feats of intrepidity.

Nigel Scullion, now a Cabinet minister, was alerted only days before the close of nominations for the Senate in 2001 that his British citizenship might be a snag.

Unable immediately to renounce it in Australia, Scullion (a swashbuckling type whose pre-politics career was enlivened by an incident at a conference in St Petersburg in which a team of Newfoundland halibut fishermen chained him to a lamp-post clad only in his underpants) embarked on a mad dash to London, divesting himself of the troublesome allegiance with only hours to spare.

Labor senator Sam Dastyari, who was born in administratively-ticklish Iran, spent $25,000 —controversially of his own money — in an attempt to get shot of his birthright.

Others have employed different techniques in order to weed their portfolios of national allegiance down to one.

Malcolm Roberts, the One Nation senator from Queensland who was born in India to a Welsh father, insists that he renounced any claim to British citizenship before he was elected to the Senate in 2016.

Mindful of the High Court's historic insistence that a candidate must have made a thorough attempt at renunciation of other citizenships, Senator Roberts took the step of emailing the British High Commission's website repeatedly while "choosing to believe that he was never British", according to a spokesman.

A live issue for the High Court remains — one must assume — the question of whether Senator Roberts has also satisfactorily ceased to become a citizen of whatever planet it is on which this would amount to a reasonable legal argument.

Freshly-resigned Cabinet minister Matt Canavan's High Court defence relies on the highly speculative "I never heard back from my mum after we discussed it that one time" argument.

And the latest quivering victim to be loaded into the tumbril is Julia Banks, Liberal Member for Chisholm, who now is obliged to consider the immortal question: When is a good time to inform your boss, the Prime Minister, who holds power by one seat, that you might possibly be Greek?

Ms Banks was born in Australia, but her dad was Greek, and Greece turns out to be one of those countries that overshares with its citizenship, pressing it on you like a basket of olives you haven't asked for.

This evening she was given the all-clear — there's no dual citizenship hiding in her closet.

She won't join the unhappy Senate pair Scott Ludlam and Larissa Waters, brought down by an allegiance they unwittingly carried into office.

If this affair proves anything, it's that paperwork can be a bitch.

And it's worth bearing in mind that the Australian Parliament, which collectively has been responsible for chasing up Centrelink recipients for all sorts of administrative errors in recent years, has not come up particularly well, individually speaking, in the Admin Olympics.