The citizenship of Malcolm Ieuan Roberts, (currently) One Nation senator for Queensland, is a curiosity.

Born in 1955 to a Welsh father and Australian mother in Disergarh, West Bengal, he has signed a statutory declaration which states, in part: “I can confirm I am not a citizen of The United Kingdom, nor am I a citizen of India. I am a citizen of Australia only.”



But it’s not that simple.

Is Malcolm Roberts an Australian citizen?

Yes. He is. This is not disputed. But whether he might hold another citizenship, and when he might have renounced any other citizenship is the subject of fierce debate, given Australia’s rigid constitutional section 44 that forbids dual citizens from sitting in parliament. This rule has in a matter of weeks ended the representative careers of Greens Scott Ludlam (dual citizen with New Zealand) and Larissa Waters (accidental Canadian), and forced Nationals senator Matt Canavan (possibly accidental Italian) from the cabinet, though not yet parliament.

Is Malcolm Roberts a British citizen?

No. Not any more. But just when he ceased being one of Her Majesty’s subjects, and became … er … another type of Her Majesty’s subject is the subject of much contention.



The General Register Office’s register of British nationals born overseas between 1818 and 2005 lists his name, suggesting that at least at some point in his life, Roberts held British citizenship. Buzzfeed published documents purporting to show Roberts had travelled on a British passport as a child.



This is strange because last year a spokesman for Roberts told Guardian Australia he was born in India to expatriate parents, but had only ever held one citizenship.

In an often bizarre interview with Paul Murray on Sky News on Thursday he said he wrote to British officials on 1 May 2016, asking if he was a UK citizen.

He said had no reason to believe he was British, but thought it best to double-check – given both of his parents held British passports – while filling out a nomination form for the Senate.



He said he received no response so wrote again on 6 June – three days before nominations closed for the federal election – saying that if he had British citizenship, he fully renounced it.



“I’ve taken all steps that I reasonably believe necessary,” he said in the interview.

The UK government’s website sets out clear steps that need to be taken to renounce citizenship. It requires two parts of a form to be filled in and countersigned, then posted with the appropriate fee and any supporting documents, such as a passport, to prove that you have citizenship of another country.

The British High Commission finally confirmed Roberts had renounced his citizenship on 5 December 2016, six months after he nominated as a Senate candidate. The UK government’s application process says: “The date your citizenship or status stops will be shown on the form,” if an application for renunciation is successful. Roberts has refused media requests to make this document public.

Roberts’s spokesman told Fairfax:



He is choosing to believe that he was never British. He is preferring to believe that he was never British because he has no allegiance or exercised any citizenship arrangement. There is nothing wrong or incongruent with Malcolm Roberts putting his hand up and saying as far as I’m concerned I’m not British, never was – the British government may have a different view.

Running the argument before the bench of the high court that one does not believe oneself to be a citizen of a country would be a novel legal approach, to say the very least.

Might he be an Indian citizen?

This has been advanced among some elements, based on India’s changing citizenship laws over its short history as an independent nation.



It would be just the type of thing Roberts would believe in, were it not about him.



Independent Australia has examined in detail the Indian citizenship laws that might bind him to that country – a line of reasoning that includes a supreme court decision on former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi.



The argument runs thus: when Roberts was born in Disergarh, in West Bengal, in 1955, India was only eight years old as an independent country, and was seeking to establish a population of categoric Indian nationals. The Citizenship Act, 1955 of India makes every person born in India between 26 January 1950 and 1 July 1987 an Indian citizen automatically.

His citizenship will have been renounced when he took the citizenship of another country (India does not recognise dual nationals) but only if he did so “voluntarily”, which would require him to have made that renunciation as an adult (because minors cannot make these legal decisions, Indian children, in some circumstances, can hold dual citizenship).



The Gandhi connection comes from Rajiv’s somewhat-reluctant accession to the prime ministership, when his marriage to Italian-born Sonia called into question his citizenship. The supreme court ruled in his favour: “unless there is a decision of the central government under s. 9(2) of the Citizenship Act that he has acquired the citizenship of a foreign country, he should be presumed to be an Indian citizen”.



Roberts’s case is helped somewhat, though far from categorically, by a statement to News Corp from a spokesman for the Indian High Commission, which said a child born in India to foreign parents was “most probably going to be a foreign national”.

That statement is not without a healthy dose of ambiguity. Roberts may well still be tied to the republic of his birth.



What happens next?

Roberts’s future in the Senate is in doubt because he is required to show that if he was a British citizen at the time of nomination, he took “reasonable steps” to ensure that he wasn’t.

His eligibility could be tested in the high court. Roberts says he is “very confident” he would withstand that challenge. He has also called for an inquiry into all parliamentarians.

He said his “renunciation document” showing he was not a British citizen would be provided to that inquiry. Fairfax reported on Friday that if Roberts is ruled ineligible, Judy Smith, sister of One Nation leader Pauline Hanson, could end up replacing him.