Attacks on Josh Frydenberg over citizenship deepen ALP division

Josh Frydenberg urges Labor to “look in the mirror’’ after the party asked him to release his citizenship legal advice.

Senator Katy Gallagher at Parliament House in Canberra

The pursuit of Josh Frydenberg in the dual citizenship crisis has deepened divisions within Labor, as shadow attorney-general Mark Dreyfus said Katy Gallagher’s referral to the High Court should not be used as a “test case” for other opposition MPs in doubt.

Mr Frydenberg, the Environment and Energy Minister whose Hungarian-born Jewish mother fled the Holocaust and arrived in Australia stateless, yesterday urged Mr Dreyfus to “look in the mirror” after the Labor frontbencher asked him to release legal advice to prove he was not a dual citizen.

Mr Dreyfus, whose father also arrived in Australia as stateless from Germany, initially included Mr Frydenberg in a “hit list” of Liberal MPs to be referred to the court and yesterday maintained the pressure.

“I’m deeply sympathetic to Josh’s circumstances that the Constitution shouldn’t apply to him. I’m very much hoping that he can demonstrate, by just giving some of the material facts, or releasing the legal advice, that he’s got nothing to be concerned about,” Mr Dreyfus told the ABC’s Insiders program.

Mr Frydenberg fired back: “The reality is a number of Labor members have either rung me or said publicly that they feel that Mark Dreyfus’s approach has been pure political tactics and they’ve asked him to desist.”

Labor frontbencher Mark Butler said it was not Labor’s “formal position” to throw questions over Mr Frydenberg’s citizenship status.

Mr Dreyfus’s statement that each citizenship case should be individually tested will also infuriate the government after Malcolm Turnbull said Labor MPs Justine Keay and Josh Wilson will have to quit and go to by-elections if Senator Gallagher is disqualified.

Like the ACT senator, Ms Keay and Mr Wilson were British when they nominated for the 2016 election despite taking steps to renounce their foreign citizenship before nominations closed.

Asked whether Senator Gallagher’s case, which is set to go to court early next year, should set a precedent for others, Mr Dreyfus said: “Not really. Each case has to be determined on the particular circumstances of the candidate or member concerned and Josh Wilson is a different case again.”