Activist plea: help me pay my $2m legal bill

Activist who failed to eject Josh Frydenberg from parliament resorts to a publicity campaign to stave off financial ruin.

Michael Staindl has written to fellow climate change activists in inner-eastern Melbourne pleading for help. Picture: AFP

The climate change activist who failed to eject Josh Frydenberg from parliament over his citizenship says he faces a legal bill of between $1m and $2m and has openly resorted to a publicity campaign to stave off financial ruin.

Melbourne man Michael Staindl, 68, was ordered to pay the Treasurer’s costs after the Federal Court found there was no ­evidence to back his claim under section 44 of the Constitution that Mr Frydenberg was ineligible to stay in parliament because of his mother’s Hungarian citizenship.

Mr Staindl has written to fellow climate change activists in inner-eastern Melbourne pleading for help, saying he has no chance of finding the money needed to pay for the legal action.

An email to the Lighter Footprints lobby group details Mr Staindl’s concerns but also his insistence that the case he brought against Mr Frydenberg, who declined to comment, had substance. “I have no further legal options or financial options,’’ he laments.

“Frydenberg through his lawyers Arnold Block (sic) Liebler (sic) has said he plans to take and sell my wife’s house, and accordingly he issued bankruptcy proceedings on Christmas Eve (two days after burying my 93-year-old father and with my wife just out of hospital and very ill).

“Publicity is my last-ditch hope.”

Mr Staindl, a prominent climate change activist, said he had acted on what he had “perceived” to be Mr Frydenberg’s falsehoods over climate. He said when questions had arisen over Mr Frydenberg’s citizenship, he received a report from a Hungarian professor who said Mr Frydenberg had a Hungarian bloodline and therefore citizenship.

“Please forgive this personal appeal but I need all the help I can get in spreading this message,” he writes in the email to Lighter Footprints.

Mr Staindl also asks members to spread the word on an article in The Age last week, where he said he did not have the cash to pay court-ordered legal fees of $410,000, plus interest.

The email suggests the total bill is now between $1m and $2m when all costs are considered.

“I was probably a bit naive, I thought Frydenberg’s side would be covered by the government,’’ he told The Age.

“I didn’t realise that I would potentially be liable for Frydenberg’s case,” Mr Staindl said. “I also didn’t realise my star witness would vanish two weeks before the case.’’

The case was based on Mr Staindl’s false claim Mr Frydenberg should be disqualified under the Constitution because he was entitled to Hungarian citiz­enship through his mother, Erica.

Mrs Frydenberg, who was born in Budapest in 1943, arrived in Australia with her siblings on the SS Surriento from the Italian city of Genoa in 1950, with travel document­s issued to stateless peopl­e fleeing the Holocaust.

Mr Frydenberg’s lawyers told a Federal Court hearing in 2020 that it was likely his mother’s family renounced its Hungarian citizenship.

In 2019, The Australian revealed that the Hungarian ­government had written to Mr Frydenberg telling him he had no established claim to citizenship.

Mr Staindl and Mr Fry­denberg were approached for comment.

The financial position facing Mr Staindl will place heavy pressure on political donors to help bail him out. Climate is a key issue in Kooyong, with Mr Staindl ­having worked with some of Mr Frydenberg’s political enemies to have him thrown out of office.