Mathias Cormann says Bill Shorten must ask Susan Lamb to resign

Mathias Cormann says Bill Shorten must “do the right thing” and ask Susan Lamb to resign over dual citizenship.

Susan Lamb in the House of Representatives at Parliament House in Canberra.

Finance Minister Mathias Cormann says Bill Shorten must “do the right thing” and ask Queensland Labor MP Susan Lamb to resign over dual citizenship.

Senator Cormann’s comments come after the resignation of Shorten factional ally David Feeney yesterday, prompting a by-election in the inner northern Melbourne seat of Batman.

“We know that Bill Shorten still has other members of his team who are dual citizens,” Senator Cormann told Sky News.

“He’s had to be dragged kicking and screaming to doing the right thing here. As time goes by what people can see is that Bill Shorten is getting more shifty as well as getting more socialist, and when it comes to David Feeney he knew last year that David Feeney was a dual citizen.

“He clearly needed to play for time to get on top of these factional shenanigans inside the Labor Party, so they held out until early this year.

“I mean Susan Lamb according to her own lawyer is a British citizen as well as an Australian citizen and so she clearly is in breach of the constitutional requirements to be a federal member of parliament and she should also resign, but Bill Shorten is either too weak or is up to another one of his shifty games.”

Asked whether the government would refer Ms Lamb to the High Court, Senator Cormann deflected.

“Well we want to give Bill Shorten the opportunity to do the right thing as we have done all the way through, so we’re going to hold fire and see what Bill Shorten decides to do,” he said.

“Will he continue to be a shifty Shorten or will he start to step up and do the right thing?

“It’s incumbent on Bill Shorten to do the right thing here.

“He knows that Susan Lamb is a British citizen. He knows that she did not complete the appropriate process that was available to her to renounce her British citizenship.

“He knows that she didn’t supply the British government with the form that they required in order to be able to conclusively proceed and administer the renunciation process.

“It would be in the interests of taxpayers for him to do the right thing and for Australians not to have a succession of one by-election after another.

“He should now ask all of his members who have citizenship issues to take the appropriate actions, but he’s either too weak or he’s up to more of his shifty games.”

.@MathiasCormann: @TurnbullMalcolm provided clear and strong leadership in the citizenship saga, however @billshortenmp's management of Labor's dual citizen conveys that he 'clearly doesn't have what it takes to become Prime Minister of Australia.' MORE: https://t.co/dz0W39gHJ9 pic.twitter.com/Ig8lMG1w1r

— Sky News Australia (@SkyNewsAust) February 1, 2018

‘It is certainly one we should win’: Albo

Labor frontbencher Anthony Albanese said the citizenship saga was an “overhang from last year”, and that he had previously understood that Labor had no problems.

“That was my view. I wasn’t aware of David Feeney’s circumstances, but remember this: We voted to refer anyone with any doubt last year in the House of Representatives and the Government opposed that resolution,” Mr Albanese told the Nine Network.

With the Labor Party set to fast-track ACTU President Ged Kearney as Mr Shorten’s “captain’s pick” for candidate, Mr Albanese said the Batman by-election was “certainly one we should win”.

“We will put up a strong candidate. We are in a position as the alternative government that the Greens will never be,” Mr Albanese said.

“They can say whatever they like, they can’t achieve things because they won’t be sitting on the government benches.”

Mr Albanese denied that there were serious factional divisions within the ALP, with the right seen to be owed a favour in return for left-aligned Ms Kearney getting candidature in Batman, and key right-aligned Shorten supporters Sam Dastyari and Mr Feeney having resigned.

“Not at all, we have been a very united party for a number of years, unlike the

government that has been a mess and the ongoing rolling maul that is Abbott v Turnbull.

“This is something we will deal with. From time to time there are by-elections, we have got one in Batman, it’s a challenge for us and one we should win.”

‘The wheels are falling off the Shorten jalopy’: Pyne

Leader of the government in the House of Representatives, Christopher Pyne, said Mr Shorten had totally mishandled the citizenship issue.

“On 14 August last year Malcolm Turnbull wrote to (Mr Shorten) saying, ‘We will give you the chance to refer any of your members about whom you have doubts’, Mr Pyne told the Nine Network.

“Bill Shorten wrote back the same day, full of braggadocio, saying he had nothing to be concerned about and we should get on with it.

“He has allowed the David Feeney issue to drag over from 2017 to 2018 and now has problems with Susan Lamb.

“She is still a UK citizen and should not be sitting in the parliament and if Bill Shorten wasn’t so weak he would ask her to resign and there would be a by-election in Longman, just like there was in Bennelong with John Alexander. He did the right thing, Bill Shorten won’t do it.”

Mr Pyne said Mr Shorten’s “chaos theory” of winning the election by making a mess was coming unstuck, hinting at leadership tensions with Albanese.

“The wheels are falling off the Shorten jalopy,” he said.

“Susan Lamb will go at some point. It’s just a question of how long Bill Shorten takes to cut her loose.

“He did this with Sam Dastyari as well. His leadership is being questioned. Anthony Albanese, who asked him how his year had got off to a good start, actually Anthony has got off to a very good start indeed.”

‘Bring it on’: Greens

Greens leader Richard Di Natale said his party was in with a “real chance” in Batman.

“I think it’s better news for the people of Batman because they’ve now got an opportunity to send a very strong signal about how they feel around the Adani mine, how they feel about rising inequality in Australia and how they feel about innocent people being locked up in those offshore hell holes,” Senator Di Natale told ABC radio.

Asked whether people may be more inspired by Mr Shorten’s comments about a living wage and affordable private health insurance, Senator Di Natale said, “bring it on”.

“Let’s have a debate about private health insurance,” he said.

“I think Bill Shorten gave the right diagnosis about private health insurance. What he failed to do was offer a prescription for how to fix it.

“We’ve got one. We want to make sure that the money that’s being used to subsidise the private health insurance industry goes to fund things like Medicare-funded dental care rather than propping up an industry where premiums go up and the level of cover goes down. I’d welcome as a doctor a debate on private health insurance and how we strengthen Medicare. “Bring that on, and let’s have a good policy debate around how we make a rapid transition away from dirty brown coal to clean energy, renewable energy.

“You don’t do it by supporting Adani. There are so many things that the people of Batman will get an opportunity to vote on and I really look forward to the campaign there.”

Senator Di Natale denied that there was any threat to five-time candidate Alex Bhathal’s candidature, amid reports of opposition from some local Greens members.

“I think the bigger question is who’s the Labor candidate going to be,” he said.

“Yes, Alex is the candidate. We don’t know who the Labor candidate is yet. We understand that they’re looking at the moment.

“Whoever the candidate is for the Labor Party the bottom line is, even if it is Ged Kearney as has been reported, I think she’s a good person, but she’s going to be trying to argue for a whole range of bad policies.”