Oh Well! While I am mysteriously unable to preview and correct the previous blog I may as well press on I suppose.

I will only comment on the politics of other nations under extreme provocation. The furore over Donald trump has led me to do so but I will try hard to refrain from further such comment in the future.

Moving our focus to Australia, where I have every right and considerable cause to comment, I will start with the recent citizenship fiasco.

For the benefit of anyone fortunate enough to be unaware of this particular pantomime, the facts are as follows:

The Australian Constitution (which, like everyone else’s Constitution, is only invoked when somebody sees a way to gain a personal advantage from doing so) requires that persons standing for election shall have solely Australian  Citizenship.

This seems a simple and reasonable rule. A member of Parliament should not have divided loyalties.

And here we see the customary stupidity of the legal draughtsman at work.

In reality, what possible influence can this requirement have on the actions and beliefs  – the loyalties — of the person concerned?

In this context I will mention three names from recent history. Burgess, McLean, and Philby. Old Poms (Australian migrants from the UK) like me, will know where I am going with this. For the benefit of others I will explain.

Those men attended the ‘best’ Public Schools and Universities in England and went on to have hugely successful careers in British Intelligence, rising to the very top positions. They did not have, and had never had,  multiple citizenships. They were shining examples of the ‘Old School Tie brigade’. British to the core and utterly trustworthy.

They were also major Russian spies and did enormous harm; much of which is still undermining our safety and freedom today. They were recruited to the Communist party whilst at university and became ‘sleepers’. Many young and idealistic people were attracted to the idea of communism in those days; most soon saw its obvious flaws and flinched away from any association with it. And these three pretended, with total success, to have done the same.

Even when discovered they were able, no doubt with covert assistance by the ‘Old Boy’ network, to escape to Russia. Burgess and McLean were discovered first but managed to flee just in time. Of course they did.  Philby was their boss and the information would have reached him before any action could be taken.

Then the rumours started and the press had a field day speculating on the identity if ‘The Third Man’ and revelling in the allusion to the popular film of that name. But Philby also ran successfully. Of course he did; he knew every move being made in advance. He was ‘M’ – the top man.

In case anyone has not grasped my point, they could not have behaved less loyally and more harmfully had they had a dozen multiple citizenships.

(And as an aside, don’t think it couldn’t happen here. Do you think it was simply accident or oversight that allowed Christopher Skase to simply ask for his confiscated passport back and be given it?  You can bet he would hardly have bothered to ask unless he knew that there was a fix in place. Old Pals? Money’? A combination of the two? Just something else that has been  quietly hushed up and slid under the carpet. How much more goes on that we never hear about?)

So, poor old Barnaby Joyce, born in Australia, lived all his life here, utterly devoted to the welfare of his constituents and to country people in general, was found to be entitled to New Zealand citizenship. He’d never suspected it. Never even thought of it. He had no wish to be anything but an Australian, had never supposed that he was anything else and had not the slightest reason to suppose it. And nobody but a lawyer or a politician (too often the same thing) with an eye on the main chance would have ever thought anything about it either.

But someone crawled out from under their rock bent on causing harm. Nobody first asked the view of the people who had elected Barnaby. The full might of the Supreme Court was brought to bear on the subject and several people were discovered to have entitlement to obscure citizenships to defunct nations and other unlikely and unanticipated rights. And a few had just been sloppy and not done the due diligence required of them. Those few, surely, could have been peremptorily dealt with and the rest allowed a short grace period to formally renounce and reject all other citizenships. Indeed it would make more sense, and perhaps even be effective, if candidates were simply required to make a formal, legally recognised declaration to that effect in the first place. And the Supreme Court could confine itself to something useful – surely it has more than enough serious matters to consider.

And none of it benefited the Australian public in any way; because probably none of those people were planning to betray the country, and if any of them were they could have done so as easily as Burgess, McLean and Philby, regardless of how few or many citizenships they had or were entitled to. Does anyone believe that renouncing a bizarre and unlikely citizenship would in any way affect the desires and motives of the person – except possibly to fuel, or even initiate, their desire to harm the country?

But Barnaby Joyce took the necessary steps to revoke his unsuspected citizenship (now we need no longer fear the evil designs of the New Zealanders!) and placed himself before his electorate once again. And, predictably, was re-elected with a comfortable majority. But the knife-in-the-back specialists had not done yet.

Now we see Barnaby Joyce’s career and personal life invaded and wrecked over a personal matter that has no bearing at all on his ability to represent the people who elected him. But at least that has allowed Tony Abbott to make the first sensible remark that I have heard attributed to him in a long time. He said ‘It’s nobody else’s business.’ And he is right.

Of course all this crap is a product of our silly political system and the hordes of lawyers infesting it. The whole aim of the exercise is simply for the Labor party to gain an advantage that the electorate had not chosen to afford them.  Misusing the label ‘Democracy’ has given our political system a legitimacy that it does not deserve; something that I will enlarge on in the next blog.

For now, ponder the fact that Donald Trump is an excellent example of a true Democrat – and I am not referring to any political party of that name. Malcolm Turnbull is another example and I much regret that the detestable Paul Keating has a valid claim to be another. That ought to give you a good clue to my thinking.

Don’t miss the next thrilling instalment.