This article is more than 9 months old

This article is more than 9 months old

The treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, has reportedly received a letter from the Hungarian government saying it has found he has no “established” Hungarian citizenship.

A resident of Frydenberg’s electorate of Kooyong, Michael Staindl, filed a high court petition in July challenging Frydenberg’s eligibility to sit in the federal parliament. He argued the MP should be disqualified under the constitution because he is entitled to Hungarian citizenship.

News Corp reported that Frydenberg had written to Gergely Gulyas, the minister of the Hungarian prime minister’s office.

Josh Frydenberg's citizenship challenged by constituent who feels 'betrayed' on climate Read more

The letter from the Hungarian prime minister’s office states that a search of the country’s records turned up no evidence of Frydenberg or his mother being Hungarian citizens.

“I can confirm that the Hungarian citizenship of the Hon. Joshua Frydenberg MP is not ­established,” the official Hungarian letter said.

“In addition, following a search of all relevant Hungarian records where Hungarian citizenship is expected to be or is ­required to be recorded: no ­record listing you as a Hungarian citizen has been identified. No ­record which came into existence after her departure from Hungary in 1949 listing Erica Frydenberg (nee Erika Strausz or Erika Strauss) as a Hungarian citizen has been identified.”

Frydenberg’s mother Erica, who was born in Budapest in 1943, left the country in 1949. She arrived in Australia with her siblings on the SS Surriento from the Italian city of Genoa in 1950 with travel documents issued to stateless people by the chief of police in Paris.

Staindl previously said he decided to bring the challenge because “I’ve been trying to get action on climate change and [Frydenberg] makes you feel well heard but I think he’s consistently betrayed me, the electorate and the country on climate change”.

Frydenberg previously dismissed as “absurd” speculation that he is a dual citizen, saying his family were stateless when they arrived from Hungary after the second world war.

“It’s a baseless assertion,” he said. “It is absurd to think that I could involuntarily acquire citizenship of a foreign country from a stateless mother and grandparents – it invokes the North Korean example of conferring citizenship on someone against their will.”