Assistant Treasurer Michael Sukkar has used parliamentary privilege to accuse those challenging the eligibility of Treasurer Josh Frydenberg to sit in Parliament of being “disgusting, disgruntled, debauched” and anti-semitic.
The extraordinary attack was condemned as “a total abuse of parliamentary privilege” on Thursday night.
But Mr Sukkar said he felt compelled to highlight the issue, given the rise of anti-semitism. The Treasurer is Jewish.
Mr Frydenberg’s mother, a survivor of the Holocaust, migrated to Australia from Hungary after World War II.
The High Court has been asked to rule on Mr Frydenberg’s eligibility on two grounds.
The first is based on whether he holds dual citizenship through his mother.
The second deals with misleading Chinese how-to-vote signs prepared by the Liberal Party.
Mr Sukkar said the Treasurer’s mother, Erika Frydenberg, then Strausz, was born in Hungary in 1943, and survived the Holocaust before spending time in a displaced persons’ camp after which she arrived in Australia in 1950.
“Her documentation upon arrival in Australia clearly states her nationality as stateless. She subsequently became an Australian citizen,” he said.
“This is why the move this week by a small number of disgruntled, debauched political activists is so offensive, so disgusting and so abhorrent.
Read the article by Samantha Maiden in The New Daily.