Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

It won't surprise the House to hear that I don't support the resolution moved by the Manager of Opposition Business. I rise more in sorrow than in anger, though, about this particular resolution, because really this is a very straightforward matter, and Labor is desperately trying to play politics with it. Let's reprise what's happened here. We've had, for months, doubts about certain members of the House's citizenship. Some of those members have taken the necessary action. The Deputy Prime Minister was referred to the High Court with everybody's support in the chamber. The High Court heard about his matter, ruled that he was not able to sit in the parliament, and he has won a by-election. John Alexander, the former member for Bennelong, as soon as he was aware that he thought there was a better-than-even chance that he had a UK citizenship entitlement, resigned from the parliament, did the right thing and is facing a by-election on 16 December.

The Leader of the Opposition lectured the government day in, day out, demanding some kind of process, some kind of audit. Having opposed an audit and opposed the process, he demanded we have a process. We sat down in good faith with the opposition in the Senate and in the House of Representatives and crafted a process. We even moved the times around, the schedules, to suit members of the opposition, and every member complied with that process. It's been discovered—most unfortunately for the members concerned, in Longman and Fremantle and Braddon and Batman, and in the case of Mayo, which is particularly unfortunate as the member for Mayo is a member of the crossbench and not a member of the Labor Party—that those five members were UK citizens at the time nominations closed for the 2016 election.

It doesn't matter, quite frankly, about the Labor Party's rhetoric about when they did this and when they did that. They've all admitted themselves that, in those five cases, on 9 June 2016, they remained citizens of the UK; they were dual citizens. Therefore, this is a very straightforward matter. Those members must be referred to the High Court for a finding. If the High Court finds that, for whatever reason, they can continue to sit in the parliament, good luck go to them. And if it finds that they are in fact legitimately sitting in the parliament, there will be by-elections. I know that will be painful for the Leader of the Opposition because he has led his members down this path and into this unfortunate situation. But on this side of the House we've done that; we've taken our lumps. The Deputy Prime Minister took his lumps. The member for Bennelong has taken his lumps.

Labor now, really disgracefully, is trying to create a smokescreen and to create myths about certain members on this side of the House about whom there is no question of legitimacy. The Prime Minister has pointed out that the member for Sydney and the member for Forrest are in exactly the same position, but somehow the member for Forrest should be referred to the High Court.

Now, we haven't said things like that—for example, as to the member for Cowan. She has put in her statements a reasonably opaque description of how she has renounced her Egyptian citizenship, from which she has had no response from the government of Egypt, but we haven't suggested that we would refer the member for Cowan. We have very straightforwardly said there is no doubt about those five members; they need to be referred to the High Court. Labor scrambled around desperately yesterday, creating hit lists of members of parliament, including people whose families survived the Holocaust, pushing it around in the gallery, trying to create as much dust as they possibly could. It is a political tactic, because the Leader of the Opposition sees everything through the prism of politics. He can never see anything through the prism of principle. That's why I stand here in sorrow more than anger, because I want to get this matter resolved, as does every member of the House of Representatives. Disappointingly, Labor has managed to create enough dust to convince the Independents, at least at this stage, that this motion is legitimate. It isn't legitimate to lump five people who are clearly not capable of sitting in the House—at this stage, unless the High Court rules it—with people who have absolutely no case to answer whatsoever. That is not a fair principle. There is no equivalency with the people who are being referred to the High Court.

My strong suggestion is that each member should be dealt with on their merits. Each member of the House of Representatives should be debated on their merits, and each one should be voted on separately. Of course, the Clerk and the Speaker and I have talked about these matters, and that of course is the best way to go ahead because then each person can be debated on their merits, and it can be decided by the House whether they should be referred. The idea that you could have a job lot—that all of these members have some kind of equivalence—is not only insulting; it is also intellectually offensive to anybody in the House. This is not a New South Wales ALP state conference meeting; this is the House of Representatives, and we want to know that everybody in it is sitting here legitimately. So I do implore the Independents to reconsider their position on supporting this motion.

I don't want to take too long because I would actually like to get back to marriage equality, which is the reason we've been here this week, and we can deal with citizenship matters at a later date. The Leader of the Opposition said, if we've got nothing to hide, why would we be in the least bit concerned about any of our members being referred to the High Court? On that logic, we might as well refer all 150 members of the House of Representatives to the High Court. We might as well not have had a process, because quite clearly there is no reason at all for people who have no question to answer to be referred to the High Court. Labor has picked out a few people on their hit list and put them in this motion. They have left off a couple of people who were on the hit list, including the member for Kooyong, because good sense took over on a couple of cases on that side of the House and they realised how offensive that was, and I am glad that the member for Melbourne Ports and others made that absolutely clear and had the decency to stop that ludicrous referral.

Mr Turnbull interjecting—

Exactly. The member for Isaacs, sadly, didn't show the same good judgement.

On the Leader of the Opposition's logic, we would refer all 150 members to the High Court. Clearly, that is a mad idea and we shouldn't do it. What this motion asks us to do as members of parliament is to completely suspend our sense, and decide—knowing that members on this side of the House have no case to answer—to refer them to the High Court anyway. It asks us to just play a political game that Labor has made up to try and cover—a fig leaf for—their embarrassment. They created a process which has led to four of their members and one senator obviously lacking legitimacy to be in this place. They said over and over again that not one of their members had a case to answer. It has turned out to be quite the opposite, so they've tried to create this fig leaf of this motion, and they're asking to make the mad decision to refer people to the High Court who have no case to answer whatsoever simply to assist them to get through a difficult political spot. I'm not prepared to support that, the government won't support that and I hope the Independents will reconsider and not support it, because they are being led into a position which is quite illogical and politically embarrassing for everybody in the House to be asked to do.

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