High Court declares David Smith winner of Senate recount

Given that we have always elected one Labor and one Liberal senator to fill the two posts, it’s unlikely that the voters will ever elect anyone but the number one candidate for the two big parties.

Smith now has a well-paid and work-free job for life. The only people he has to worry about are his Labor bosses.

The real story isn’t a party hack getting a cushy job. The story is that both parties routinely break laws they don’t care for, and then lie about it to the voters.

Katy Gallagher was appointed to the Senate in 2015, when there is now no dispute that she was a British citizen. s44 states that such a person “shall be incapable of being chosen or of sitting as a senator”.

Gallagher was in breach of the Constitution a year before the 2016 election. So were several other MPs.

We may be charitable and say that minor parties and independents don’t have much of a clue, but Labor and Liberal take turns in government, and they both repeatedly declared that their processes were ironclad.

As we now know, this was rubbish. Scores of MPs holding birth or residual British citizenship were in parliament illegally, ever since the High Court found the UK to be a foreign power in 1999.

As we see, there is no penalty other than being removed from their position. They are not charged with a crime, they are not imprisoned, they are not even required to pay back the salaries and allowances they improperly received.

If our lawmakers do not respect the fundamental law of the nation, then we are in a sad position.

Scathing reviews for David by the Sydney shock jocks today. Alan Jones, Ray Hadley and Chris Smith all called him a union hack.