Federal Court Justices in Frydenberg S.44 Dual Citizenship Case Must Be Alerted To Erroneous ‘Stateless Passport’ Claims Before Decision
Before handing down their decision, the Federal Court Justices need to be alerted to factual and evidential discrepancies surrounding the French substitute passport used by Joshua Frydenberg’s family to travel to Australia which were not tested during the Hearing on 18 February 2020.
Click on Opinion re Passport Claim - 8 March 2020 link -
http://www.teamlaw.net.au/uploads/1/7/4/9/17498055/s_44__frydenberg_erroneous_%E2%80%98stateless_passport%E2%80%99_claim_08_03_2020.pdf
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POLITICS & LAW
ARTICLES
Click on to Upload Full Legal Opinion- 11 July 2019
http://www.teamlaw.net.au/uploads/1/7/4/9/17498055/frydenberg_case_-_dual_citizen___11_07_2019___legal_opinion_by_trevor_poulton__solicitor_.pdf
LEGAL OPINION
TREVOR POULTON
(AUSTRALIAN LEGAL PRACTITIONER)
FrydenbergCase2019 (11.07.19)
Dual Citizenship Case
Re: Hon Joshua Anthony Frydenberg MP
C O N T E N T S
HONOURABLE JOSHUA ANTHONY FRYDENBERG MP - DUAL CITIZENSHIP
CASE FOR PETITION OR REFERRAL TO HIGH COURT 1
Petition 2
Issues to be addressed in the case 2
Summary of case 3
THE FRYDENBERG CASE 4
FACT CHECK - STRAUSZ/FRYDENBERG NARRATIVE 5
Image 1 - Form 46 (Immigration Act 1901 – 1949, Australia) 8
Image 2 - NSW Boarding Officer’s report 9
Images 3 to 4 - Form 47A Medical Declaration 9
Image 5 - Letter from Commonwealth Migration Office 10
Images 6 to 8 - AEC Qualification Checklist for 2019 Federal Election 11
HUNGARIAN CITIZENSHIP LAW 12
FLAWED STATELESS CLAIM 17
ACCOUNTABILITY: MARK DREYFUS MP -V- JOSHUA FRDYENBERG MP 29
“Why not a bit of generosity and just leave him alone?” (Cassidy - ABC Insiders) 30
HIGH COURT (SITTING AS COURT OF RETURNS) OR VERIFICATION BY WAY
OF A CERTIFICATE 31
CONCLUSION 32
ATTACHMENTS
Schedule 1
Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 Article : Section 355 Requisites of Petition 33
Schedule 2
List of Members of Parliament whom the High Court ruled as Ineligible and whom
Resigned Preemptively, “Citizenship Seven”. 34
Schedule 3
Immigrant Ships Transcribers Guild - SS Suriento 35
Schedule 4
House of Representatives Citizenship Register Declaration - J Frydenberg
05 Dec 2017 36
Schedule 5
Further reading re changes to Hungarian Citizenship Law 38
Schedule 6
Sovietization and Nationalism in Hungary 40
Schedule 7
Electoral results for Kooyong Vic 18 May 2019 41
Schedule 8
Verification of Citizenship Status Form
Application for Certificate of Citizenship (Budapest) - 42
Office Of Immigration And Nationality (Budapest, July 2013) - Explanatory Notes
for the Application 44
Press Conference Transcript – Malcolm Turnbull - Release Date: 3/11/2017 48
Doorstop interview – Scott Morrison - Release Date: 3/11/2017 51
Article – ABC News - Josh Frydenberg denies Hungarian-born mother
implicates him in dual citizenship saga - Published 3/11/2017 54
___________________________________________
Trevor Poulton poulton@labyrinth.net.au
www.teamlaw.net.au Mobile 0402 987 181
Ref: FrydenbergCase2019
11 July 2019
Prime Minister Scott Morrison
Leader of the Liberal Party of Australia
Parliament House Office
PO Box 6022
Canberra ACT 2600
Email: Scott.Morrison.MP@aph.gov.au
Hon Anthony Albanese MP
ALP Leader of the Opposition
Parliament House Office
PO Box 6022
Canberra ACT 2600
Email: A.Albanese.MP@aph.gov.au
Dear Prime Minister Morrison and The Honourable Anthony Albanese MP
HONOURABLE JOSHUA ANTHONY FRYDENBERG MP - DUAL CITIZENSHIP
CASE FOR PETITION OR REFERRAL TO HIGH COURT
Treasurer Joshua Anthony Frydenberg MP’s citizenship status is looming as a constitutional crisis for the federal government as a consequence of his re-election to the Australian Parliament in the 2019 Federal Election. There is a real prospect that Frydenberg is a Hungarian citizen, and therefore a dual citizen in breach of Section 44(i) of the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act 1900.
The public narrative perpetuated by Joshua Frydenberg may be summed up as follows:
His mother is a Hungarian Jew born in 1943 in Budapest who arrived in Australia on 30 December 1950 as a stateless child from a refugee camp after escaping from the Holocaust, and therefore he is not a citizen of Hungary by descent.[1]
During the constitutional eligibility crisis of 2017/2018, the then Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull became an exponent of the narrative. At a press conference[2] on 3 November 2017 he stated:
“I just want to say something about Josh Frydenberg. Josh Frydenberg's Mother Erika Strausz was born in 1943 in the Budapest ghetto. That's where the fascists had pushed all of the Jews in together as a prelude to sending them to the gas chamber. She wasn’t a Hungarian citizen when she was born and neither were her parents. You know why? The Hungarian fascist Government, allied with Hitler, stripped the Jews of all of their rights. The right to citizenship and the right to life.
Her family fled Hungary at the end of the war. It’s a miracle they weren't killed, as so many of their relatives were. Three quarters of all the Jews in Hungary were murdered in the Holocaust and the prelude to murdering them was depriving them of their citizenship rendering them sub-humans in the eyes of the fascists and the Nazis.”
My letter to you, which is written in the form of an essay, outlines the fallacies of Joshua Frydenberg’s claims, and argues the likelihood that Frydenberg, who is also Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party, is a citizen of a foreign power being Hungary and is therefore a dual citizen and ineligible to sit in the parliament pursuant to Section 44(i) which states:
“Any person who is under any acknowledgment of allegiance, obedience, or adherence to a foreign power, or is a subject or a citizen or entitled to the rights or privileges of a subject or a citizen of a foreign power shall be incapable of being chosen or of sitting as a senator or a member of the House of Representatives.”[3]
Petition
It is foreseeable that a candidate or an eligible person qualified to vote in the Kooyong electorate may file a petition in the High Court as the Court of Disputed Returns within 40 days from the Return of Writs on 28 June 2019 pursuant to Section 355(c) of the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918. The last day to file the petition is 7 August 2019. The procedural requirements for filing a petition in the High Court are detailed in Schedule 1 annexed hereto.
The questions to be addressed to the Court to answer could typically be drafted as follows:
Question (a) Whether, by reason of s 44(i) of the Constitution, the place of the Member for Kooyong (Mr Frydenberg) has become vacant?
Question (b) If the answer to Question (a) is "yes", by what means and in what manner that vacancy should be filled?
Question (c) What directions and other orders, if any, should the Court make in order to hear and finally dispose of this reference?
Question (d) What, if any, orders should be made as to the costs of these proceedings?
If Frydenberg was found by the High Court to be a dual citizen, the answers to (a) and (b) would be:
Answer (a) - By reason of s 44(i) of the Constitution, the place of the Member for Kooyong, the Hon Frydenberg Joshua Anthony Joyce MP, is vacant.
Answer (b) - There should be a re-election for the election of the Member for Kooyong.
A re-election would need to be held if Joshua Frydenberg were to be deemed by the court not eligible to stand as a candidate as at the time of the 2019 federal election.
Issues to be addressed in the case
The alternative processes to filing a petition, which are dealt with at the conclusion of this letter, are a Motion of the House of Representatives referring Frydenberg to the High Court, or Frydenberg committing to the parliament to apply for a Certificate of Citizenship from the Office of Immigration and Nationality Budapest Hungary verifying whether he was never a Hungarian citizen, has lost his Hungarian citizenship or is a Hungarian citizen.
Summary of case
Joshua Frydenberg’s Mother, Erika Strausz, arrived with her parents and siblings in Australia on 30 December 1950. She was born a Hungarian citizen, and based on all disclosures to date no evidence has been produced to show that in all likelihood she had been expatriated or deprived of her citizenship under Hungarian law or a Ministerial decree. Hungarian citizenship law always follows as a fundamental rule the principle of jus sanguinis – that is the right of blood which means that Hungarian citizenship is, by operation of law, automatically conferred from the Hungarian parent to the child irrespective of where the child was born. Based on what is known, Joshua Frydenberg would have to be a Hungarian citizen by descent.
It could be the case that Frydenberg’s Mother had lost her citizenship, but that would certainly not be for the reasons given publicly by Frydenberg which do not ‘stack up’. Despite the political imbroglio, there may in fact be a past law yet to be discovered or disclosed by any interested parties or experts in the field who have inquired into the matter that would discount Frydenberg as a Hungarian citizen.
According to the Australian Electoral Commission AEC Qualification Checklist signed by Frydenberg on 14 April 2019 for the 2019 federal election, his Mother and maternal grandparents lost their Hungarian citizenship some time in 1948. Frydenberg has maintained to the parliament that his Mother was made ’stateless’ prior to coming to Australia, and has now dated the alleged ‘stateless’ event as occurring in 1948. The date of the claimed loss of citizenship had throughout the crisis, until the recent completion of the AEC checklist, strangely never been clarified. In fact, The Australian Jewish News reported on 9 November 2017 that “Frydenberg’s mother Erica Strauss was born in Hungary in 1943, at which point in time she was denied Hungarian citizenship because she was Jewish.”[1]
The ‘stateless’ proposition is dealt with at length further into this article, but in summary the expression was one of several categorisations exploited by the International Refugee Organisation (IRO)[2] and other human rights authorities and welfare societies, for classifying Displaced Persons (DPs) located predominantly in National Socialist Germany as at the end of WW2. DPs comprised of foreign workers including ethnic Jews, and refugees who had fled en masse from the advancing Soviet Russians. DPs was later to include the waves of post-WW2 political and economic migrants and refugees and infiltrees entering into Allied-occupied West Germany, Austria and Italy. The categories were predominantly required for processing voluntary and forced repatriation of persons to Eastern-bloc countries, and for re-settlement and migration purposes in the West.
Jewish refugees and migrants who entered Displaced Persons camps after WW2 seeking to migrate would automatically be classed as ‘stateless’ regardless of their actual national dispositions and reasons for entering the DP camps. In fact, ‘stateless’ was a nominal classification of convenience at the time, not having any recognition under international law until the United Nations in 1954 adopted the Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons.
Further, applying a customary significance to the categorisation, a true ‘stateless’ person could not simply be a ‘refugee’ or ‘displaced person’ or a ‘migrant’, but theoretically could only be a person who was not considered as a national or citizen by any state under the operation of its law.
Joshua Frydenberg has produced no evidence that the post-War Hungarian government operating within the Soviet orbit of influence had stripped Jewish people of their citizenships in 1948 or at any time. The persistent claim by the family itself of having been ‘stateless’ is basically a form of self-identification having no bearing on determining Frydenberg’s true citizenship status.
In articulating the account of his citizenship status, Joshua Frydenberg identified his family’s sojourn to Australia directly with the catastrophic historical event of WW2 to elude being referred to the High Court with other federal members of parliament who were required to answer questions about their foreign citizenship status. In doing so, he conflated events of WW2 and the Holocaust which ended in May 1945 with the experiences of his maternal grandparents, his Mother and her siblings (‘the family Strausz’) residing in a civil society in their homeland country of Hungary in 1948 before leaving Hungary to migrate to another country.
Frydenberg made a declaration in the Parliamentary Citizenship Register on 4 November 2017 that he has obtained legal advices that he is not a Hungarian citizen but has refused to publicly disclose the advices, including in response to a legitimate request from the Shadow Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus.
Section 44(i) of the Australian Constitution was promulgated for reasons of national security. Frydenberg has a duty as a member of parliament to be transparent and publish his advices to help settle the matter. However, the value of the advices would very much depend on what questions had been asked of his legal advisers, noting that Frydenberg is a lawyer himself.
Regardless, this has now become a matter that can only be resolved by the High Court, or a formal verification of Frydenberg’s status through an application for a Certificate of Citizenship lodged by him with the Hungarian Office of Immigration and Nationality that would incontestably determine his status.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . cont./
http://www.teamlaw.net.au/uploads/1/7/4/9/17498055/frydenberg_case_-_dual_citizen___11_07_2019___legal_opinion_by_trevor_poulton__solicitor_.pdf
LEGAL OPINION
TREVOR POULTON
(AUSTRALIAN LEGAL PRACTITIONER)
FrydenbergCase2019 (11.07.19)
Dual Citizenship Case
Re: Hon Joshua Anthony Frydenberg MP
C O N T E N T S
HONOURABLE JOSHUA ANTHONY FRYDENBERG MP - DUAL CITIZENSHIP
CASE FOR PETITION OR REFERRAL TO HIGH COURT 1
Petition 2
Issues to be addressed in the case 2
Summary of case 3
THE FRYDENBERG CASE 4
FACT CHECK - STRAUSZ/FRYDENBERG NARRATIVE 5
Image 1 - Form 46 (Immigration Act 1901 – 1949, Australia) 8
Image 2 - NSW Boarding Officer’s report 9
Images 3 to 4 - Form 47A Medical Declaration 9
Image 5 - Letter from Commonwealth Migration Office 10
Images 6 to 8 - AEC Qualification Checklist for 2019 Federal Election 11
HUNGARIAN CITIZENSHIP LAW 12
- Joshua Frydenberg is currently a citizen of Hungary until he formally renounces his
citizenship 14 - ‘Stateless’ in the 1993 Act - those born in Hungary to foreign citizens 15
- Changes in the laws 15
- Distinction between ‘Entitled To Apply For Citizenship’ and ‘Already A Citizen’ 16
FLAWED STATELESS CLAIM 17
- The claim to have been ‘stateless’ is not plausible for the following reasons:- 19
- ‘Stateless’ and the Strausz experience 22
- Displaced Persons Camps and the “Voting Feet” 23
- Email from Sophie Johnson (ethnic Hungarian now residing in U.K.) 26
- Migration to Australia 27
ACCOUNTABILITY: MARK DREYFUS MP -V- JOSHUA FRDYENBERG MP 29
“Why not a bit of generosity and just leave him alone?” (Cassidy - ABC Insiders) 30
HIGH COURT (SITTING AS COURT OF RETURNS) OR VERIFICATION BY WAY
OF A CERTIFICATE 31
- Motion from the House of Representatives 31
- Application for Verification of Citizenship status 31
- A practical and transparent process for resolving the political imbroglio 32
CONCLUSION 32
ATTACHMENTS
Schedule 1
Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 Article : Section 355 Requisites of Petition 33
Schedule 2
List of Members of Parliament whom the High Court ruled as Ineligible and whom
Resigned Preemptively, “Citizenship Seven”. 34
Schedule 3
Immigrant Ships Transcribers Guild - SS Suriento 35
Schedule 4
House of Representatives Citizenship Register Declaration - J Frydenberg
05 Dec 2017 36
Schedule 5
Further reading re changes to Hungarian Citizenship Law 38
Schedule 6
Sovietization and Nationalism in Hungary 40
Schedule 7
Electoral results for Kooyong Vic 18 May 2019 41
Schedule 8
Verification of Citizenship Status Form
Application for Certificate of Citizenship (Budapest) - 42
Office Of Immigration And Nationality (Budapest, July 2013) - Explanatory Notes
for the Application 44
Press Conference Transcript – Malcolm Turnbull - Release Date: 3/11/2017 48
Doorstop interview – Scott Morrison - Release Date: 3/11/2017 51
Article – ABC News - Josh Frydenberg denies Hungarian-born mother
implicates him in dual citizenship saga - Published 3/11/2017 54
___________________________________________
Trevor Poulton poulton@labyrinth.net.au
www.teamlaw.net.au Mobile 0402 987 181
Ref: FrydenbergCase2019
11 July 2019
Prime Minister Scott Morrison
Leader of the Liberal Party of Australia
Parliament House Office
PO Box 6022
Canberra ACT 2600
Email: Scott.Morrison.MP@aph.gov.au
Hon Anthony Albanese MP
ALP Leader of the Opposition
Parliament House Office
PO Box 6022
Canberra ACT 2600
Email: A.Albanese.MP@aph.gov.au
Dear Prime Minister Morrison and The Honourable Anthony Albanese MP
HONOURABLE JOSHUA ANTHONY FRYDENBERG MP - DUAL CITIZENSHIP
CASE FOR PETITION OR REFERRAL TO HIGH COURT
Treasurer Joshua Anthony Frydenberg MP’s citizenship status is looming as a constitutional crisis for the federal government as a consequence of his re-election to the Australian Parliament in the 2019 Federal Election. There is a real prospect that Frydenberg is a Hungarian citizen, and therefore a dual citizen in breach of Section 44(i) of the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act 1900.
The public narrative perpetuated by Joshua Frydenberg may be summed up as follows:
His mother is a Hungarian Jew born in 1943 in Budapest who arrived in Australia on 30 December 1950 as a stateless child from a refugee camp after escaping from the Holocaust, and therefore he is not a citizen of Hungary by descent.[1]
During the constitutional eligibility crisis of 2017/2018, the then Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull became an exponent of the narrative. At a press conference[2] on 3 November 2017 he stated:
“I just want to say something about Josh Frydenberg. Josh Frydenberg's Mother Erika Strausz was born in 1943 in the Budapest ghetto. That's where the fascists had pushed all of the Jews in together as a prelude to sending them to the gas chamber. She wasn’t a Hungarian citizen when she was born and neither were her parents. You know why? The Hungarian fascist Government, allied with Hitler, stripped the Jews of all of their rights. The right to citizenship and the right to life.
Her family fled Hungary at the end of the war. It’s a miracle they weren't killed, as so many of their relatives were. Three quarters of all the Jews in Hungary were murdered in the Holocaust and the prelude to murdering them was depriving them of their citizenship rendering them sub-humans in the eyes of the fascists and the Nazis.”
My letter to you, which is written in the form of an essay, outlines the fallacies of Joshua Frydenberg’s claims, and argues the likelihood that Frydenberg, who is also Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party, is a citizen of a foreign power being Hungary and is therefore a dual citizen and ineligible to sit in the parliament pursuant to Section 44(i) which states:
“Any person who is under any acknowledgment of allegiance, obedience, or adherence to a foreign power, or is a subject or a citizen or entitled to the rights or privileges of a subject or a citizen of a foreign power shall be incapable of being chosen or of sitting as a senator or a member of the House of Representatives.”[3]
Petition
It is foreseeable that a candidate or an eligible person qualified to vote in the Kooyong electorate may file a petition in the High Court as the Court of Disputed Returns within 40 days from the Return of Writs on 28 June 2019 pursuant to Section 355(c) of the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918. The last day to file the petition is 7 August 2019. The procedural requirements for filing a petition in the High Court are detailed in Schedule 1 annexed hereto.
The questions to be addressed to the Court to answer could typically be drafted as follows:
Question (a) Whether, by reason of s 44(i) of the Constitution, the place of the Member for Kooyong (Mr Frydenberg) has become vacant?
Question (b) If the answer to Question (a) is "yes", by what means and in what manner that vacancy should be filled?
Question (c) What directions and other orders, if any, should the Court make in order to hear and finally dispose of this reference?
Question (d) What, if any, orders should be made as to the costs of these proceedings?
If Frydenberg was found by the High Court to be a dual citizen, the answers to (a) and (b) would be:
Answer (a) - By reason of s 44(i) of the Constitution, the place of the Member for Kooyong, the Hon Frydenberg Joshua Anthony Joyce MP, is vacant.
Answer (b) - There should be a re-election for the election of the Member for Kooyong.
A re-election would need to be held if Joshua Frydenberg were to be deemed by the court not eligible to stand as a candidate as at the time of the 2019 federal election.
Issues to be addressed in the case
- Was Frydenberg’s Mother ever deprived of her Hungarian Citizenship?
- What laws and facts can be relied upon to satisfy the claim?
- If Frydenberg’s Mother has retained her Hungarian citizenship, was Frydenberg a citizen of Hungary by descent under Hungarian citizenship law?
- If Frydenberg was ever a citizen of Hungary, has he since been deprived or lost his citizenship, and if so, when and under what law or circumstances?
- If Frydenberg is found to be a dual citizen, what reasonable inquires, as would be expected under the Constitution of Australia Act 1900, did Frydenberg make with the Hungarian government to ascertain his citizenship status?
- Has Frydenberg made sufficient inquires in all the circumstances to avoid a breach of Section 44(i)?
The alternative processes to filing a petition, which are dealt with at the conclusion of this letter, are a Motion of the House of Representatives referring Frydenberg to the High Court, or Frydenberg committing to the parliament to apply for a Certificate of Citizenship from the Office of Immigration and Nationality Budapest Hungary verifying whether he was never a Hungarian citizen, has lost his Hungarian citizenship or is a Hungarian citizen.
Summary of case
Joshua Frydenberg’s Mother, Erika Strausz, arrived with her parents and siblings in Australia on 30 December 1950. She was born a Hungarian citizen, and based on all disclosures to date no evidence has been produced to show that in all likelihood she had been expatriated or deprived of her citizenship under Hungarian law or a Ministerial decree. Hungarian citizenship law always follows as a fundamental rule the principle of jus sanguinis – that is the right of blood which means that Hungarian citizenship is, by operation of law, automatically conferred from the Hungarian parent to the child irrespective of where the child was born. Based on what is known, Joshua Frydenberg would have to be a Hungarian citizen by descent.
It could be the case that Frydenberg’s Mother had lost her citizenship, but that would certainly not be for the reasons given publicly by Frydenberg which do not ‘stack up’. Despite the political imbroglio, there may in fact be a past law yet to be discovered or disclosed by any interested parties or experts in the field who have inquired into the matter that would discount Frydenberg as a Hungarian citizen.
According to the Australian Electoral Commission AEC Qualification Checklist signed by Frydenberg on 14 April 2019 for the 2019 federal election, his Mother and maternal grandparents lost their Hungarian citizenship some time in 1948. Frydenberg has maintained to the parliament that his Mother was made ’stateless’ prior to coming to Australia, and has now dated the alleged ‘stateless’ event as occurring in 1948. The date of the claimed loss of citizenship had throughout the crisis, until the recent completion of the AEC checklist, strangely never been clarified. In fact, The Australian Jewish News reported on 9 November 2017 that “Frydenberg’s mother Erica Strauss was born in Hungary in 1943, at which point in time she was denied Hungarian citizenship because she was Jewish.”[1]
The ‘stateless’ proposition is dealt with at length further into this article, but in summary the expression was one of several categorisations exploited by the International Refugee Organisation (IRO)[2] and other human rights authorities and welfare societies, for classifying Displaced Persons (DPs) located predominantly in National Socialist Germany as at the end of WW2. DPs comprised of foreign workers including ethnic Jews, and refugees who had fled en masse from the advancing Soviet Russians. DPs was later to include the waves of post-WW2 political and economic migrants and refugees and infiltrees entering into Allied-occupied West Germany, Austria and Italy. The categories were predominantly required for processing voluntary and forced repatriation of persons to Eastern-bloc countries, and for re-settlement and migration purposes in the West.
Jewish refugees and migrants who entered Displaced Persons camps after WW2 seeking to migrate would automatically be classed as ‘stateless’ regardless of their actual national dispositions and reasons for entering the DP camps. In fact, ‘stateless’ was a nominal classification of convenience at the time, not having any recognition under international law until the United Nations in 1954 adopted the Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons.
Further, applying a customary significance to the categorisation, a true ‘stateless’ person could not simply be a ‘refugee’ or ‘displaced person’ or a ‘migrant’, but theoretically could only be a person who was not considered as a national or citizen by any state under the operation of its law.
Joshua Frydenberg has produced no evidence that the post-War Hungarian government operating within the Soviet orbit of influence had stripped Jewish people of their citizenships in 1948 or at any time. The persistent claim by the family itself of having been ‘stateless’ is basically a form of self-identification having no bearing on determining Frydenberg’s true citizenship status.
In articulating the account of his citizenship status, Joshua Frydenberg identified his family’s sojourn to Australia directly with the catastrophic historical event of WW2 to elude being referred to the High Court with other federal members of parliament who were required to answer questions about their foreign citizenship status. In doing so, he conflated events of WW2 and the Holocaust which ended in May 1945 with the experiences of his maternal grandparents, his Mother and her siblings (‘the family Strausz’) residing in a civil society in their homeland country of Hungary in 1948 before leaving Hungary to migrate to another country.
Frydenberg made a declaration in the Parliamentary Citizenship Register on 4 November 2017 that he has obtained legal advices that he is not a Hungarian citizen but has refused to publicly disclose the advices, including in response to a legitimate request from the Shadow Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus.
Section 44(i) of the Australian Constitution was promulgated for reasons of national security. Frydenberg has a duty as a member of parliament to be transparent and publish his advices to help settle the matter. However, the value of the advices would very much depend on what questions had been asked of his legal advisers, noting that Frydenberg is a lawyer himself.
Regardless, this has now become a matter that can only be resolved by the High Court, or a formal verification of Frydenberg’s status through an application for a Certificate of Citizenship lodged by him with the Hungarian Office of Immigration and Nationality that would incontestably determine his status.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . cont./
The Crux of the Frydenberg Case
by Trevor Poulton
https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/the-crux-of-the-frydenberg-case,12982
by Trevor Poulton
https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/the-crux-of-the-frydenberg-case,12982
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
