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Kiefel CJ

Bell J

Gageler J

Keane J

Nettle J

Gordon J

Edelman J

s 44(i) consists of three categories of disqualification, each of which describes a source of a duty on the part of a candidate for parliamentary office :

""The first category covers the case where such a duty arises from an acknowledgment of the duty by the candidate, senator or member. The second category covers the case where the duty is reciprocal to the status conferred by the law of a foreign power. The third category covers the case where the duty is reciprocal to the rights or privileges conferred by the law of a foreign power.

The second category refers to subjects or citizens of a foreign power – subject being a term appropriate when the foreign power is a monarch of feudal origin; citizen when the foreign power is a republic. …

The third category … covers those who, though not foreign nationals, are under the protection of a foreign power as though they were subjects or citizens of a foreign power.""

21 The amicus submitted that s 44(i) has two limbs, not three as was suggested by Brennan J. He contended that the first limb disqualifies a person who "is under any acknowledgment" of the stated kind, and the second limb disqualifies a person who "is a subject or a citizen or entitled to the rights or privileges of a subject or a citizen of a foreign power". In the first limb, the words "under any acknowledgment" capture any "person who has formally or informally acknowledged allegiance, obedience or adherence to a foreign power and who has not withdrawn or revoked that acknowledgment". Within this limb the word "acknowledgment" connotes an act involving an exercise of the will of the person concerned. In contrast, in the second limb of s 44(i), the words "subject", "citizen" and "entitled to the rights" connote a state of affairs involving the existence of a status or of rights under the law of the foreign power.

22 There is evident force in the submission of the amicus that s 44(i) consists of only two limbs: the verb "is" is used in s 44(i) only twice, and there is a