Labor plunged into turmoil as David Feeney resigns

David Feeney has plunged the ALP into turmoil when he became its first federal MP to fall victim to the dual citizenship crisis.

Labor MP David Feeney after announcing his resignation from parliament as a result of his dual citizenship status. Picture: Stuart McEvoy

Victorian MP David Feeney plunged the Labor Party into turmoil when he resigned from the inner-Melbourne seat of Batman yesterday to become the first federal ALP MP to fall victim to the dual citizenship crisis.

The sombre Victorian powerbroker resigned with immediate effect from the once-prized inner-city seat, saying he was unable to disprove that he was a dual British citizen.

In a short statement, and refusing to answer questions, Mr Feeney described his decision as difficult but unavoidable after a month of fruitless searching to find proof he had renounced his British citizenship.

Mr Feeney, who has a Northern Irish father and has a claim to British and Irish citizenship, said he had taken steps a decade ago to renounce potential claims to Irish as well as British dual citizenship, but had been able to find only paperwork renouncing his Irish citizenship.

“There is no question concerning my Irish citizenship but with respect to my British renunciation, however, I have been unable to ­locate the required notice of ­renunciation,” he said.

“I am unable to disprove that I am a dual citizen.”

The Melbourne-based MP and former senator said he had conducted an exhaustive search of his own records, as well as those held by the British Home Office and the British high commission in Australia.

“This has been an incredibly difficult decision,” he said.

Mr Feeney is the first Labor MP to resign or be disqualified in the dual citizenship saga, and it takes to 16 since the 2016 election the number of parliamentarians who have lost their seats or been referred to the High Court over constitutional concerns.

Malcolm Turnbull described Mr Feeney’s resignation as “long overdue”, while frontbencher Christopher Pyne declared it ­“humiliating” for Bill Shorten.

Other Labor MPs to be implicated in the citizenship crisis include Queensland MP Susan Lamb, ACT senator Katy Gall­agher, Tasmanian MP Justine Keay and West Australian Josh Wilson.

Ms Lamb did not complete her renunciation of British citizenship, which she gained through her late Scottish-born father, because she did not supply the UK Home Office with the necessary documents.

She is estranged from her mother, whose marriage certificate to her father was needed to finalise the renunciation.

She is “very clearly still a UK citizen”, Mr Pyne said

Like Senator Gallagher, whose case is before the High Court, Mr Wilson and Ms Keay were British citizens when they nominated for the 2016 election.

Senator Gallagher’s matter is considered a “test case” for her colleagues, leaving open the possibility of several more by-elections for Labor.

Mr Feeney’s resignation is significant for Victorian Labor because it forces the party to square off against the Greens at a federal level at a time when inner-city voters are showing increasing signs of voting green, putting Labor in a position of weakness.

The Greens nabbed a swing of 9.5 per cent towards them when they battled Labor in Batman in 2013.

At the time, Mr Feeney faced social worker Alex Bhathal, who lost the race by a margin of fewer than 2000 votes.

Australian Greens leader Richard Di Natale confirmed that Ms Bhathal, a social worker and mother of two, has been preselected as the Greens candidate for the by-election, in a campaign zeroing in on issues including the Adani coalmine, climate change and electoral reform. A team of three activists protesting against Queensland’s Adani coalmine attempted to confront Mr Feeney — who opposes the mine — and his wife, Liberty Sanger, and their young son as they left his resignation press conference.

The protesters were members of climate change activist group 350.org and sneaked into parliamentary offices by telling security they were media.

Mr Feeney is a former state secretary of the Victorian ALP and a key strategist to the then Bracks Labor government and the party federally.