William Robert Wood (born 13 November 1949) is a British-born Australian who has campaigned on peace and justice issues.
[7] The NDP had failed narrowly to win a Senate seat in the 1984 federal election, when Midnight Oil singer Peter Garrett had stood under the party's banner.
[10] He immediately faced a court challenge from one of the unsuccessful candidates in the election, the Call to Australia party's Elaine Nile.
The brief judgment made a number of observations about section 44 of the Constitution[13] When Wood applied for a passport some months after entering parliament, it transpired that while he was a long-term resident of Australia, he was a citizen of the United Kingdom and had only obtained Australian citizenship on 3 February 1988.
[1] The High Court expressly declined to rule on the question of whether being a dual citizen of the United Kingdom would also disqualify a candidate from election.
Further controversy occurred when the NDP asked Dunn to resign so that Wood could reclaim his seat, following his assumption of Australian citizenship in 1988.
Wood contested that election as the first-ranked candidate for the Nuclear Disarmament Party in New South Wales, polling just over 1 per cent of the vote - more than his former running-mate Dunn, but nowhere near enough to be competitive for a Senate spot.
[6] Wood was also active in numerous community-based organisations that assisted people to overcome social and economic disadvantage.