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Turnbull’s political future in doubt over deputy’s citizenship fiasco

SYDNEY — The future of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s government was thrown in doubt yesterday after it emerged that his deputy was a dual citizen, placing the conservative government’s slim parliamentary majority at risk.

Australian Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce. Photo: Reuters

Australian Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce. Photo: Reuters

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SYDNEY — The future of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s government was thrown in doubt yesterday after it emerged that his deputy was a dual citizen, placing the conservative government’s slim parliamentary majority at risk.

Australia does not allow dual citizens to sit in Parliament, with New Zealand confirming later in the day that its citizenship was automatically granted to deputy premier Barnaby Joyce via his father.

The revelation has major implications for Mr Turnbull’s Liberal-National coalition government, which won national elections last year with 76 seats in the House of Representatives — a narrow one-seat majority.

Mr Joyce has refused to step aside, instead referring the case to the High Court, saying that the Solicitor-General was confident he would not be disqualified.

The obscure rule was little known until recently but several lawmakers have fallen victim to it in recent months, leaving parliamentarians scrambling to clarify their ancestral ties.

“Needless to say, I was shocked to receive this information,” Mr Joyce told Parliament after hearing he may be a dual citizen. “I’ve always been an Australian citizen born in (regional city) Tamworth. Neither me or my parents had any reason to believe that I may be a citizen of any other country.”

Mr Turnbull said: “The government is the very confident the court will not find that the member for New England (Mr Joyce) is to be disqualified from the Parliament. Very confident.” But despite Mr Turnbull’s assertion, constitutional law experts have noted that Mr Joyce’s future is under a cloud.

The Prime Minister has written to Labor opposition leader Bill Shorten to ask if his party wanted to refer any lawmakers over their citizenship status to the High Court so all the cases could be considered as a bloc, The Australian newspaper reported.

The dual citizenship crisis kicked off last month when the minor Australian Greens party’s co-deputy leader Scott Ludlam resigned after revealing he had dual Australian-New Zealand citizenship.

The crisis soon claimed other victims, including Canadian-born Greens Senator Larissa Waters and Resources Minister Matt Canavan, who left Cabinet after finding his mother signed him up to Italian citizenship in his 20s.

Mr Joyce said yesterday he was contacted by the New Zealand High Commission last week to advise him that he “could be a citizen of New Zealand by descent”. While Mr Joyce — the leader of the Nationals party — was born in Australia, he told Parliament his father was born in New Zealand and moved to Australia in 1947.

Meanwhile, Mr Shorten has hit out at the Turnbull administration over the fiasco. He wrote on Facebook: “This Government is absolute chaos ... If Barnaby Joyce is not eligible to sit in Parliament, this government has relied on an illegitimate vote to cut wages for 700,000 workers and to give a A$65 billion (S$70 billion) tax handout to big business. Chaos.”

Opposition Labor lawmaker Tony Burke told Parliament Mr Joyce should stand aside and the government should not accept his vote.

“We’ve never before in this Parliament ... had to go to the High Court and say: ‘Look, we’re not really sure if there’s a majority government in this country’,” he said.

A spokesman for New Zealand Internal Affairs Minister Peter Dunne said that there was no doubt about Mr Joyce’s status, telling AFP news agency that “as far as New Zealand law goes, he is a New Zealand citizen under the Citizenship Act”.

“Mr Joyce was born to a New Zealand citizen father and even though (the father) migrated to Australia in the 1940s that citizenship remained and he passed on the right of citizenship ... to his children.” He added that citizenship was automatically granted and did not need an application.

Almost half of Australia’s 24-million population was born overseas or have at least one parent born overseas, according to last year’s census. AGENCIES

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