(MENAFN- Gulf Times) Australian Senator Larissa Waters yesterday announced she will resign from parliament, the second senator from the left-wing Greens Party to quit within a week due to dual citizenship.
Waters, who was born in Canada to Australian parents, said she was forced to resign after learning that she holds dual citizenship, which she described as an 'honest mistake.
On Friday, her Greens colleague, Scott Ludlam, quit due to having a dual citizenship of Australia and New Zealand.
Both the senators were deputy leaders of the Greens party.
According to Australia's constitution, a person cannot run for federal office if they hold dual or multiple citizenship.
Waters, 40, was first elected to the parliament in 2010.
She was 11 months old when she left Canada with her parents, who were studying overseas, and has not returned to Canada since.
She said yesterday that she had thought she had to choose to be Canadian until the age of 21, but had found out that she was a Canadian citizen by birth only after Ludlum's case.
'I was devastated to learn that because of 70-year-old Canadian laws I had been a dual citizen from birth, and that Canadian law changed a week after I was born and required me to have actively renounced Canadian citizenship, a teary Waters told reporters in Brisbane.
In Australia, 28% of the population are born abroad, according to last year's census.
The Greens held nine seats in the senate — the upper house of the parliament — until last week, which made it the third largest party. 'There is no question here, I won't sugar-coat it, we need to make sure that our internal party processes are up to the challenge, the Greens leader Richard Di Natale said.
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