The citizenship shemozzle - it's too ridiculous to be dignified with a word like crisis - is all because our oldest and best friends are foreign powers.
Foreign powers. Those two little words have a slightly sinister ring, suggesting nations that don't speak English with big, bullying armies.
But not in law. To the High Court, though it prefers fancier words, it simply means another country.
But is Britain another country? And if it is, when did it happen?
When the constitution, and its troublesome Section 44 banning citizens of a foreign power being federal MPs or senators, was being written, no-one would have thought of Britain in such terms.
It was the mother country, which retained important controls.
Australia's progress to full independence, which automatically transformed Britain to a foreign power, was evolutionary. Milestones included the Statute of Westminster, which Australia adopted in 1942, and the Australia Act of 1986.
They ended all legal ties, including appeals to the Privy Council.
The foreign power argument, at least as it applies to Section 44, was decided by the High Court in 1999 when it ruled that Heather Hill, a One Nation candidate who'd won a Queensland Senate seat, was ineligible because she was a dual Australian-UK citizen.
The court rejected Hill's argument that Britain wasn't a foreign power.
It said the question revolved around legal connections and not around "Australia's strong historical and emotional ties with the UK".
It also said it didn't matter that both countries had the same monarch because she acts in Australian matters on the advice of Australian ministers.
In other words the Queen can wear two or more hats, or is that crowns? She's a multi-monarch.
All this is no doubt impeccable law, but still a little sad because history and emotion and really important things like the Ashes (though don't mention Bodyline) should count for something.
And the same goes for New Zealand, which has snared two of our defrocked semi-foreign politicians.
The Kiwis are the blokes we fought with at Gallipoli. They're the other half of Anzac.
Or should that now be AFPAC as in Australian Foreign Power Army Corps.
