Scott Ludlam is having a ball.
Twelve months ago on Saturday, the then-Greens senator stood up at a press conference in Perth, Western Australia, to announce he would resign from parliament. It had been pointed out to him by a lawyer that despite living in Australia for most of his life and being an Australian citizen, he was still a citizen of New Zealand – his country of birth – and was therefore ineligible to be elected to parliament under section 44 of the constitution.
“I'm sorry about this, but it's a thing.”
hey everyone. i'm sorry about this, but it's a thing. i'll really miss it, but there are other ways to make trouble. love and thanks. https://t.co/1QsEgRIEnW
At the time, Ludlam and his fellow Greens senator Larissa Waters – who resigned shortly after Ludlam due to her own dual citizenship with Canada – were widely mocked by Labor and Liberal politicians for “not getting their paperwork right” to ensure they had not been dual citizens at the time of the election. Both of the major parties assured the public that the vetting processes developed over time by the parties were solid.
“And the High Court will so hold,” the prime minister said, infamously if not regrettably.
Ludlam has really had the last laugh.
Amazed at suggestions we should allow foreign nationals to serve in the Australian Parliament because two Green MPs can't manage basic admin
In the year since, a total of 17 out of the 226 politicians elected in 2016 have been caught up in Section 44 woes. Of those, 15 were forced to resign from parliament and so far, only two have returned: Liberal MP John Alexander and former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce.
“It's strange, being the first domino and then copping a certain amount of abuse from Labor, which said we were disorganised, and the government, who said the Greens were bad and terrible,” Ludlam told BuzzFeed News this week. “I think it has been a surprise for everyone just how deep and widespread it has become.”
When BuzzFeed News spoke to Ludlam, he was on a ship in New York Harbor. Ludlam has been travelling around the world on a peace ship for the past ten days, along with five weeks at the start of this year, doing lectures and presentations on the nuclear industry and renewable energy, among other things.
“I'm kind of having a ball, actually.”
He remains convinced he made the right decision to resign and not be dragged before the High Court as so many others have been since.
“It would have been untenable for me or Larissa to have said, ‘We are clearly in breach here and you're going to have to dynamite us out.’ We would have been smashed. We wouldn't have gotten away with it.”
Waters is set to return to parliament following the resignation of her replacement, Andrew Bartlett, who is stepping down to contest a lower house seat at the next federal election. Ludlam said more dominoes were likely to fall before the parliament is done.
“I don't think we're done yet, because [prime minister Malcolm] Turnbull protected a whole pile of his people who should probably be facing by-elections too,” he said. “So I feel like it still hasn't washed through because the government has been so bloody dishonest.”
Labor last year attempted to refer its MPs currently facing by-elections at the end of this month (Justine Keay, Susan Lamb, and Josh Wilson) along with several Liberal MPs to the High Court to have it decide their eligibility. The government refused, but Labor eventually relented to by-elections for its own MPs once a High Court decision ruled Labor senator Katy Gallagher ineligible.
Ludlam maintains that he made the right decision faced with the constitution being as it is today, but says if the law could be easily changed, then it should be.
“We are a multicultural country, and unless you are Aboriginal, you're from somewhere else,” he said.
“If anything, the kind of additional cascading dominoes has proven just how many people are caught up in this and that is a reflection of the country... It's not a constitutional provision that is very common in the rest of the world. It's actually quite unusual.”
But he said he found the idea of spending the next few years on a referendum on section 44 “hurts my soul a bit” when there is other “unfinished business” to work on.
“It distracts away from [other things]. Recognition of Aboriginal people being the primary one [and] the broader sovereignty debate about who's continent it is... That would really bug me.”
Ludlam, now 48 years old, is not considering a return to office, he said, because after nine years in the job he thought it appropriate to step back, but he admitted he missed the people and the platform, and “the ability to poke the eyes of the bad guys from very close range”.
And he misses the fun of interrogating ministers and public servants during Senate Estimates.
“There are times when it bugs me, like Estimates hurts. Just following that stuff on Twitter and thinking, fuck, I could really go with another half an hour in there.”
“Just following that stuff on Twitter and thinking, fuck, I could really go with another half an hour in there.”
But Ludlam's replacement, 23-year-old Jordon Steele-John, has taken up the mantle of some of Ludlam's focus on digital rights and fighting against what the Greens argue is an encroachment on privacy through national security laws.
Ludlam views the creation of Peter Dutton's mega ministry of home affairs as a “political event horizon”.
“They are in charge of investigating themselves, they are trusted with some of the most intrusive and coercive powers that have been seen in modern Australian history for a combined government agency, and they are led by a guy without outright, unapologetic authoritarian tendencies,” he said.
“I think at present he is one of the most dangerous people in politics and I'm looking forward to being a part in some way of the confrontation that is going to happen to throw him out of parliament.”
CORRECTION
Scott Ludlam had been on the ship for the past 10 days. The article previously misstated this length of time.