Josh Frydenberg is ineligible to sit in federal parliament because of his mother’s Hungarian citizenship, a court has been told.

The treasurer is facing a challenge from one of his constituents, who argues Frydenberg should be disqualified under Australia’s constitution because he is entitled to Hungarian citizenship through his mother.

“[Frydenberg] knew that his mother was born in Hungary,” Kooyong resident Michael Staindl’s barrister, Angel Aleksov, told the federal court sitting as the court of disputed returns on Tuesday.

“It’s not one of these situations where a person was incapable of divesting themselves of a status that disqualifies them under the Australian constitution.”

Under section 44 of Australia’s constitution, dual citizens cannot sit in federal parliament.

“There is significant public interest in a person sitting in parliament without an allegiance to a foreign power,” Aleksov said.

But Frydenberg’s lawyers say the challenge should be thrown out because the MP’s mother, Erica Strauss, was rendered stateless after fleeing Hungary with her family in 1949.

Strauss, also known as Erika Strausz or Erika Strauss, was born in Budapest in 1943. But her family fled Hungary’s communist regime when she was six.

She and her family arrived at Fremantle in Western Australia with travel documents saying they were stateless.

“They believed they had rid themselves or had become separated from their Hungarian citizenship,” John Sheahan QC said. “A pre-condition to renounce [citizenship] is establishing to the satisfaction of the government that you are a citizen and in this case the Hungarian government does not recognise the respondent as a citizen.”

He added there was a letter from the prime minister’s office on 19 November confirming Frydenberg’s Hungarian citizenship had not been established.

Staindl argues Strauss passed on Hungarian citizenship to her son, making him ineligible to stand for re-election in 2019.

“The evidence shows that the respondent’s mother bore the status of a citizen of Hungary,” Aleksov told the court.

A string of MPs have previously been tripped up over their citizenship.

In 2017, deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce, deputy Nationals leader Senator Fiona Nash, former Greens senators Scott Ludlam and Larissa Waters and One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts were found by the high court to be subject or citizens of a foreign power when they nominated for the previous year’s federal election.

Three judges overseeing Frydenberg’s case – Chief Justice James Allsop, and justices Susan Kenny and Alan Robertson – have reserved their judgment and will hand down a decision at a later date.