Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. In the last answer given by the Deputy Prime Minister, he confirmed that, up until the weekend, he was in violation of the Australian Constitution as a member of parliament. He confirmed that he had renounced a foreign citizenship, which you are ineligible to nominate for parliament if you hold. Why is he still a member of your cabinet? Why is he still voting in this parliament, when, by his own admission, it's against the Constitution?

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's difficult, even for a thespian as accomplished as the member for Watson, to maintain that faux indignation right through question time. The thunderous look, the furrowed brow, the grave tones—all of this stuff starts to pale into irrelevance and unconvincing ham acting after a few hours.

The fact of the matter is, as the honourable member knows, as many honourable members on the other side know, the proposition that a person who is a citizen of Australia and a citizen of another country is, and by that reason alone, disqualified from parliament is not an unqualified proposition. The High Court has set limits on it, and at least one of the honourable members opposite is relying on those limits. That is to say, the member for Braddon, who was a British citizen at the time she nominated, says, 'Well, it's okay; because of what the High Court said in Sykes v Cleary, I made a reasonable effort to renounce, but it hadn't been completed.' Well, she may be right. Senator Dastyari is still a citizen of Iran—at least so he claims. He says he's put in a big effort to renounce, but it hasn't been effective according to Iranian law. He may well be right, legally.

The point of the matter is that the section has to be read in accordance with its purpose and intent. The court has made that very, very clear. It has made very, very clear that it is designed to deal with split allegiances or conflicted loyalties. And, of course, it follows that, if a person is not aware that they are—unbeknownst to them—a citizen of another country, how can they possibly have a split allegiance to that other country? So the reality is the advice we have from the Solicitor-General is very strong. We are very confident that the High Court will find that the member for New England is not disqualified from sitting in this House. We have every confidence in that. We look forward to the submissions being made in the High Court, and we look forward to the High Court coming to its decision. As I say, we have every confidence that they will decide that the honourable member is qualified to sit in this House, and that is why he's here. So, you can ask the question in another furious way again, and I'll just refer to this previous answer.