Court puts Australia’s citizenship crisis on hold for two months

SYDNEY — A citizenship crisis will loom over the Australian government for at least another two months after a court said yesterday it would not begin hearings into the parliamentary eligibility of seven lawmakers until mid-October.

Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce and six other lawmakers must wait until Oct 10, when the court will hear whether they have breached the Constitution by being dual citizens when they were elected to Parliament.

“There is an obvious public urgency in relation to this matter to clarify the situation,” Attorney-General George Brandis told reporters. “We look forward to the speedy resolution of the matter.”

Mr Brandis said the court would examine seven cases during the three-day seating in Canberra.

Still, the delay threatens to further erode support for Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

The next national election is not due until 2019, but political analysts say prolonged poor poll results could encourage a leadership challenge.

“Turnbull needs to urgently remove the doubt around the credibility of his government, which has already caused him great harm,” said Professor Haydon Manning, a political science expert at Flinders University in South Australia.

Australia’s Parliament has been rocked by the revelation that the seven lawmakers, including Mr Joyce and two other ministers in the coalition government, are dual citizens, meaning they are potentially ineligible to hold elected office.

Mr Turnbull’s centre-right government holds just a one-seat majority in Parliament, and its popularity is sitting at six-month lows in opinion polls, meaning its future could rest on the outcome of the citizenship crisis.

The High Court ruling also threatens to create a parliamentary impasse for Mr Turnbull if Mr Joyce is disqualified. Mr Joyce, the leader of the rural-based Nationals, the junior partner in the ruling coalition, has said he was a joint New Zealand citizen when he was elected last year.

If Mr Joyce is disqualified by the court over the citizenship rules, Mr Turnbull would have to rely on the support of the often-fractious independents in Parliament to have any hope of passing legislation.

The possible deadlock also threatens consumer sentiment, said analysts, a bad sign for Australia’s somewhat sluggish economy.

Mr Turnbull brushed away any suggestions that the court could deliver a ruling that would doom his government.

“We are very, very confident that our members who have been caught up in this will be held by the court to be eligible to sit in the Parliament and therefore eligible to be ministers,” he told reporters in the rural town of Albury, 555km south of Sydney.

A 116-year-old law demands an elected lawmaker only have Australian citizenship. Questions have been raised about whether the law is still relevant, when nearly half of Australians were either born in a different country or have at least one parent hailing from overseas. AGENCIES