Lawyer flags Josh Frydenberg eligibility challenge

Author of The Holocaust Denier threatens to challenge Josh Frydenberg’s election in High Court.

Federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg. Picture: AAP

A lawyer who has written a book called The Holocaust Denier is threatening to challenge Josh Frydenberg’s election in the High Court, claiming he is a Hungarian citizen by descent.

Trevor Poulton — also a Labor Party member — said he was working with the Kooyong Independents Group, which is asso­ciated with former Kooyong candidate Oliver Yates, to test the Treasurer’s citizenship status and eligibility to sit in parliament under section 44 of the ­Constitution.

A candidate for Mr Frydenberg’s Victorian seat of Kooyong or a voter in the electorate has 40 days from the writ being returned to lodge a petition to the Court of Disputed Returns. All writs were returned by June 21.

“I’m going to be giving a briefing to these persons (in the Kooyong Independents Group) and my understanding is someone will be putting their hand up to lodge the petition,” Mr Poulton said. “There is an investment in ­actually taking this to the High Court. It involves time, work and there’s always a potential risk of costs being awarded against the applicant.”

Mr Frydenberg has repeatedly denied he has any claim to Hungarian citizenship and says in his parliamentary citizenship register that he has received legal advice from Hungarian and Polish citizenship law experts, plus Australian legal advice.

Mr Frydenberg’s mother, Erica Strausz, was born in Hun­gary in 1943 and came to Australia as a child after spending time in a displaced persons’ camp as she and her family fled the Holocaust.

Her nationality was listed as “stateless” upon her arrival to Australia.

Under a Hungarian citizenship law designed to address the stateless status of Jews, who were murdered in their tens of thousands and driven out of Hungary during World War II, anyone born in Hungary between 1941 and 1945 is automatically considered a citizen. Section 3(1) of the Hungarian citizenship act says: “The child of a Hungarian citizen shall become a Hungarian citizen by birth.”

Mr Frydenberg said the ­Coalition was confident none of its MPs had any section 44 issues.

Asked what he thought Mr Poulton’s motives were, Mr Frydenberg said: “Holocaust denial is appalling … I have no time … for people who deny what is the most tragic event in world history.”

Mr Poulton said he was concerned an “exception” had been made for Mr Frydenberg and that Labor did not pursue his eligibility in the dual citizenship fiasco because of his family’s experience in World War II. “How’s it possible someone should be made an exception for a politically correct reason when the Constitution is quite clear under section 44?”

The lawyer wrote The Holocaust Denier, a novel published on June 12, but insisted he personally believed in the Holocaust.

“(The book) is a psychological thriller where (the main character) fanatically embraces belief about the Holocaust in a more modern manifestation of neo-Nazism,” Mr Poulton said.

Labor sources said Mr Poulton had been expelled from the party but he showed The Australian confirmation of his Victorian Labor 12-month membership renewal from March.