Labor calls on Joyce to stand aside
Shorten vows to keep pressure on Government over citizenship issue
Labor is threatening to heap more pain on the Australian Government unless Barnaby Joyce stands aside until his citizenship status is resolved. If the Deputy Prime Minister doesn’t abstain from voting in Parliament’s lower house when MPs return to Canberra in a fortnight’s time, Labor will seek to have all votes deferred until the High Court rules on his eligibility, which could take months.
“I don’t believe we can be in a situation where bills are being sponsored by somebody where we don’t know whether he’s even allowed to legally be a member of Parliament,” opposition frontbencher Tony Burke told MPs yesterday.
The Prime Minister told Parliament his deputy was “entitled to be a minister of state under the constitution” for as long he was an MP.
“The reference to the High Court was not done for any reason other than to give the court the opportunity to clarify this area of the law which has been the subject of so much controversy recently,” Turnbull said.
Joyce has been referred to the court to test whether his New Zealand citizenship by descent disqualifies him from sitting in Parliament under section 44 of the constitution.
Labor leader Bill Shorten told reporters the National leader should not be exercising any responsibilities as a minister. “I think Barnaby Joyce should do the right thing, let the nation move on from this constitutional crisis that he and his colleagues have embroiled us in.”
The Government had failed to explain why another cabinet minister, Matt Canavan, who has also been referred to the High Court over his eligibility, had stood aside while Joyce had not.
Joyce, who was born in Tamworth, New South Wales, had New Zealand citizenship, which he renounced this week, via his father who was born in New Zealand but left in 1947.
Meanwhile, Treasurer Scott Morrison said Labor had been “sneaky” in working with New Zealand Labour colleagues to undermine Joyce.
It was revealed this week Labour MP Chris Hipkins had asked a question in the New Zealand Parliament about a scenario similar to that of Joyce.
The query came after he discussed the citizenship issue with a staffer of Labor Senator Penny Wong.
“Rather than come into the Parliament and raise these questions, what they have done, in a very sneaky way, is run around over there in another country and try and dredge this stuff up,” Morrison said.
Labor MP Rob Mitchell told reporters yesterday that Foreign Minister Julie Bishop — who championed the conspiracy argument in Parliament — had lost the plot.
Media inquiries and requests for information by Joyce’s office had already been under way when Hipkins raised his query, he said.
A Greens request for the Government to release its legal advice on Joyce was rejected by AttorneyGeneral George Brandis.
“As a matter of course governments do not publish their legal advice,” Brandis told Parliament.
Greens senator Nick McKim said the advice should be released because Joyce would be the acting Prime Minister when Turnbull went overseas in a fortnight, running the country at the same time a court was deciding his eligibility.