Former Greens senator Larissa Waters says the High Court will inevitably find that she and six other politicians with dual citizenship are ineligible to sit in the federal parliament.
The court will on Friday afternoon rule on the fates of seven current and former parliamentarians.
"I have resolved myself to the inevitability of the court findings - probably all of us - to have been ineligible," the former Queensland senator has told ABC radio. "The law is really clear."
Ms Waters quit the Senate when she discovered she held dual citizenship. Fellow Greens senator Scott Ludlam also resigned.
But the others including Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce - whose presence maintains the Turnbull government's one-seat majority in the lower house - have "clung to power" and their salaries, Ms Waters said.
Australia's constitution bans anyone holding dual citizenship from sitting in parliament, in a section aimed at ensuring MPs don't have split allegiances.
The government has tried to argue that the phrase "subject or citizen ... of a foreign power" should be seen to refer only to a person who has voluntarily obtained, or retained, that status, and not those oblivious to their dual citizenship by descent, through overseas-born parents.
But Ms Waters says the government's attempt to create a new interpretation is grounded in self-interest: "If you're speeding and you didn't know the speed limit, you're still speeding. You're still guilty."
One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts said he was feeling calm ahead of the ruling that could end his short parliamentary career.
"I've been practising a deep form of meditation for the last 16, 17 years, and I tend not to get too ruffled," he told ABC radio.
He said he wanted the High Court to accept that he'd taken reasonable steps to inquire about his citizenship.
In September, the High Court found Senator Roberts was a citizen of the United Kingdom, by descent through his Welsh father, at the time of his nomination for election.
He later told the full bench of the High Court he "honestly but wrongly" believed he'd done everything possible to renounce his British citizenship.
Ms Waters stood down in July after discovering she had Canadian citizenship because she was born in Canada to Australian parents, despite leaving there before she turned one.
The third Queensland senator involved, the LNP's Matt Canavan, stood aside as resources minister after discovering he was a dual citizen of Italy and Australia through his grandparents.
Share
