Deputy PM is a Kiwi cuckoo in Aussie Parliament’s nest

Malcolm Turnbull’s majority Government in Australia is under threat after the revelation Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce holds New Zealand citizenship.

Across the Tasman, MPs can hold Australian citizenship only.

Joyce told Parliament in Canberra yesterday he would refer his eligibility to serve as an MP to the High Court of Australia.

The Turnbull Government holds a one-seat majority in the House of Representatives and if Joyce were disqualified from being able to sit in Parliament, it would lose its majority.

Officials at the Department of Internal Affairs in Wellington con- firmed Joyce was a New Zealand citizen after checking his status last week following queries from Australian media. Joyce was advised of this by New Zealand’s High Commission in Australia.

Joyce told the House he would remain in his position until the matter was resolved.

He said he was shocked to learn he could be a citizen of New Zealand by descent via his father, who left Dunedin for Australia in 1947.

“Needless to say I was shocked to receive this information. I have always been an Australian citizen, born in Tamworth, just as my mother and my great-grandmother was born there 100 years earlier,” he told the House.

“Neither I, nor my parents, have ever had any reason to believe that I may be a citizen of any other country.”

Joyce’s father, James Joyce, was born in Dunedin before moving to Australia in 1947.

Joyce said the Government believed, based on advice from the Solicitor-General, that he would not be disqualified from serving as the member for New England.

The affair comes after two Green MPs resigned over holding dual citizenship, and National MP and Cabinet minister Matt Canavan and One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts were referred to the High Court.

Under citizenship laws, between 1948 and 1978 anyone born to a New Zealander father was automatically a citizen and would have to renounce the citizenship to remove that status. Since 1978 that has also applied to anyone with a mother who is a New Zealander.

Joyce hit the headlines this year when he criticised the actor Johnny Depp, whose former partner Amber Heard had tried to smuggle his two dogs, Pistol and Boo, into Australia. Joyce, who was Agriculture Minister, threatened to have the dogs put down.