Citizenship scandal: Malcolm Turnbull steps up attack on Bill Shorten
SPEAKING in Hong Kong, Malcolm Turnbull stepped up his an attack on Bill Shorten and Labor for protecting the dual citizens in its ranks and not abiding by the law.
NSW
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Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has sent a direct message to Bill Shorten: you’re not above the rule of law.
Speaking in Hong Kong, where he is due to meet chief executive Carrie Lam today, Mr Turnbull stepped up his an attack on Labor for protecting the dual citizens in its ranks and not abiding by the law.
His comments come in the wake of the resignation by Liberal MP John Alexander — a move that extraordinarily reduced Mr Turnbull’s grip on power to a minority government, with 73 seats on the floor of Parliament, excluding the Speaker Tony Smith.
“I say to Bill Shorten, it is the High Court of Australia and nobody else that determines whether MPs and senators can sit in the Parliament and he should stop running a protection racket for his MPs,” he said.
“Bill Shorten has got to stop running a protection racket for his own dual citizens.”
“Is he really going to say that it’s the Labor Party who decides who sits in the Parliament, not the high court?
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“The rule of law means it applies to everybody, and that means it applies to Government MPs, the crossbenchers and the Labor Party. Bill Shorten seems to think the Constitution does not apply to the Labor Party.”
Mr Turnbull did not support Christopher Pyne’s comments today that if Mr Shorten did not refer Labor MPs to the High Court, the Government would do so.
He also did not say whether he’d ask the cross bench to help him send Labor MPs under a citizenship cloud to have their cases heard, seeing as the Government would be reduced to a minority in the next sitting week of Parliament.
He seemed to indicate he may wait until Barnaby Joyce was back in Parliament after a December 2nd by-election before using the Government’s numbers to refer the Labor MPs where there are “clearly substantial grounds” they are dual citizens to the High Court.
Mr Turnbull said the High Court chose a “strict literalism” of the Constitution, which Labor welcomed, and now that decision needed to apply to their MPs.
“Now of course the worm has turned. Now we see one Labor MP after another who could not pass that literal test. Now if Labor says they’ve got counter arguments, terrific, let them make them in the court.
“There is no question Labor has a number of members who not only were but knew they were foreign citizens at the time they nominated for Parliament, that makes them ineligible.”
The Prime Minister said he hoped the by-election in Mr Alexander’s seat of Bennelong would be in the near future.
“Our desire is that the by-election be held as soon as possible for the simple reason you don’t want the people of Bennelong to be without an MP for longer than necessary,” he said.