"You can be a dual citizen and a state parliamentarian, there's no question about that," Ms Finlay said. "But the constitutions in WA, New South Wales, Queensland and Tasmania, say that while you're a dual citizen if you acknowledge allegiance to any foreign power while you're in parliament, you're actually disqualified." Ms Finlay said WA's Supreme Court could decide to disqualify MPs for "a positive action that exercises your citizenship rights, for example, if you travel on that foreign passport, then that would be exercising your right as a foreign citizen and that is a show of allegiance to a foreign power". "It's been known for a long time, but it's just been tucked away in the background and nobody's really paid any attention to it," she said. In an essay published in The Conversation, she wrote that the South Australian parliament changed its constitution in 1994 so that holding a foreign passport did not disqualify MPs and Queensland passed an exemption for "trivial" breaches.

But no such sections existed on WA's statute books. "The advice we have received from the Solicitor General is that unless a member of parliament becomes a dual citizen of a foreign country after they are elected, the 'dual citizenship' issue causes no issues in Western Australia," Mr Quigley said. "A person who is already a dual citizen and simply exercises their rights under the citizenship, including obtaining or using a passport, would not be impacted. "We know of no current member of the government who has become a dual citizen after being elected." Ms Finlay proposed the introduction of a state parliamentary citizenship register in which MPs would disclose relevant allegiances to "reassure the public that the dual citizenship controversy will not expand to disqualify any of our state parliamentarians".

WA senator Linda Reynolds, who chaired Federal Parliament's inquiry into the Commonwealth's dual citizenship laws, told 6PR that eligibility questions raised by Ms Finlay about WA MPs will "probably will get legs". "I suspect that Lorraine [Finlay] is right and this will need to be reviewed further to make sure all of our state parliamentarians are qualified to be representing us," she said. "It hasn't been tested yet under the state constitution in the Supreme Court, so these are all issues that are open questions, and until they're challenged in the Supreme Court here and they make a determination or until the State Parliament changes the legislation, then we won't know." Acting Oppositon Leader Liza Harvey said Liberal MPs had been surveyed about their citizenship and only one member had a foreign passport.

“Tony Kristicevic holds a Croatian passport which he applied for and was granted before the current term of parliament and which has never been used for overseas travel,” she said. WAtoday has also contacted the state government for details of which major party MPs have applied for foreign passports or citizenship, or who have travelled on or renewed a foreign passport. A spokeswoman for Mr Quigley said the government would not be releasing the legal advice from the Solicitor General.