Page:Re Canavan.pdf/32

Kiefel CJ

Bell J

Gageler J

Keane J

Nettle J

Gordon J

Edelman J

31 The second clause, the predecessor of s 45(i), provided :

""If a Senator or Member of the House of Representatives … [t]akes an oath or makes a declaration or acknowledgment of allegiance, obedience, or adherence to a Foreign Power, or does any act whereby he becomes a subject or citizen, or entitled to the rights or privileges of a subject or citizen, of a Foreign Power … his place shall thereupon become vacant.""

32 The clauses remained in substantially identical form in the successive drafts of the Constitution Bill prepared for and considered and approved by the National Australasian Convention at its Adelaide session in April 1897 and again by the Australasian Federal Convention at its Sydney session in September 1897 when a motion that the words "until parliament otherwise provides" be inserted at the beginning of the predecessor of s 44 was negatived.

33 The clauses were then recast to take their final form which became the text of ss 44(i) and 45(i) in the revised version of the Constitution Bill presented soon after the beginning of the Melbourne session of the Australasian Federal Convention in March 1898. That final recasting of the two clauses occurred as part of a large number of amendments prepared by the Convention's drafting committee in the period between the Sydney session and the Melbourne session. Mr Barton, the chairman of the committee, described them as "drafting" amendments not intended to alter the "sense" of the draft as approved by the