Mark Dreyfus has denied that Katy Gallagher’s citizenship case provides a precedent for other Labor MPs whose eligibility is in doubt, rejecting the government’s view if Gallagher loses the others should fall on their swords.

The comments from the shadow attorney general suggest that even if the high court finds Gallagher ineligible Labor will insist on further high court hearings to determine the cases of Josh Wilson, Justine Keay, and Susan Lamb.

The cases could stretch the crisis of eligibility hanging over Australia’s parliamentarians well into 2018 and stave off byelections in Labor-held seats for months if they are found ineligible.

Gallagher, who is a senator, and lower house MPs Keay, and Wilson were all British citizens at the nomination date for the 2016 election, but Labor has refused to refer the MPs to the high court because they took “all steps reasonably required” to renounce in time.

On Friday Malcolm Turnbull said Keay and Wilson’s fate “will be determined by the Gallagher case because the facts are essentially the same”.

“If Katy Gallagher is successful then they will rest easy. If she is unsuccessful then they will have to resign.”

On Sunday Dreyfus told ABC’s Insiders that Labor believed Gallagher was eligible since she had taken “reasonable steps” to renounce but had agreed to refer her because “we want this cleared up”.

“[Gallagher], like the rest of us in Labor, cares about the constitutional legitimacy of the Australian parliament … and the high court will clear this up.”



Asked if Gallagher’s case would provide a precedent for the other Labor MPs, Dreyfus replied: “Not really.

“Each case has to be determined on the particular circumstances of the candidate or member concerned and Josh Wilson is a different case again,” he said.

Citizenship declarations this week revealed that Wilson sent his renunciation to the UK Home Office on 13 May, 2016, immediately after Labor dumped its previous candidate for Fremantle. He received his document stamped on 29 June confirming his renunciation, after the nomination date of 9 June.

Dreyfus incorrectly claimed that Wilson was “pre-selected the day before nominations closed”.

Wilson knew he was a dual citizen but “hadn’t thought he was going to be a candidate”, Dreyfus explained.

“He did everything possible as quickly as he possibly could, but he only had 24 hours.”

A spokeswoman for Dreyfus clarified that Wilson had sent forms off within 24 hours of being preselected, rather than 24 hours before the nomination deadline.

Keay applied to renounce in May 2016 but did not receive confirmation of her renunciation until 11 July. Keay, who was preselected 12 months out from the election, has since admitted she waited three months after receiving advice to renounce before sending off her form.



Dreyfus said Keay’s case demonstrated the point “that each person’s circumstances are a lot different” and added that he doesn’t believe that fact made her case more difficult.

Gallagher and Labor MP David Feeney were referred to the high court this week, but the government narrowly defeated a Labor and crossbench motion to send others including Lamb, Keay and Wilson; Liberals Julia Banks, Alex Hawke, Nola Marino and Jason Falinski; and the Nick Xenophon Team MP Rebekha Sharkie.

Dreyfus accused Turnbull of turning a “disclosure system” into a “concealment system”, citing the fact Marino released a document clearing her of having Italian citizenship after the disclosure process. He said she still had questions to answer about whether she had US citizenship.

Asked why Labor had queried Josh Frydenberg, whose citizenship status is caught up in the fact his mother fled Hungary to escape the Holocaust, Dreyfus said Labor had not singled him out but rather complained that a group of Liberal MPs had not made “adequate disclosure”.

Dreyfus said he was sympathetic to Frydenberg’s situation but it was “not for me to say … that the constitution shouldn’t apply to him”.

“I’m very much hoping that he can demonstrate, by just giving some of the material facts, or releasing the legal advice, that he’s got nothing to be concerned about.

“But at the moment, his disclosure statements says nothing. It says that his mother, who escaped the Holocaust, was born in 1943 in Hungary and that’s all it says. It says that he’s got legal advice but he doesn’t say what it says.”



The immigration minister, Peter Dutton, told Sky News on Sunday the government had already referred its MPs where they had issues and complained Labor had “picked at random” four Coalition MPs to attempt to refer in a bid to protect four of its own.

“Where it’s clear now that people do have a problem in the Labor party, they should have been referred by Bill Shorten,” he said.

After filling a Senate vacancy in 2015, Gallagher submitted forms to renounce her British citizenship on 20 April, 2016 but the renunciation was not confirmed until 16 August.

Sharkie is in the same situation of having renounced British citizenship before nominating but it was not effective until after the deadline.

Lamb disclosed that she sent her renunciation form to the UK Home Office on 25 May 2016. The Home Office sought further information on 7 July and on 10 August it responded that it “cannot be satisfied from the documents available” that Lamb held British citizenship, and therefore refused her application to renounce.