Josh Frydenberg’s eligibility to sit in Parliament is under scrutiny by the Federal Court after a climate activist who lives in his electorate launched a legal claim that the Treasurer is a dual Australian-Hungarian citizen via his mother’s bloodline.
If Mr Frydenberg loses the case and the court rules he is a citizen of Hungary, it will trigger a byelection in his seat of Kooyong.
Mr Frydenberg’s mother, Erica, immigrated to Australia from Hungary in 1950 at the age of seven with her family. The family left Hungary to escape anti-semitic persecution which persisted there after the Holocaust.
Michael Staindl, who is a member of global climate activist group Extinction Rebellion, claimed Erica (nee Strauss) remained a citizen of Hungary after arriving in Australia and that under Hungarian law, Mr Frydenberg is also a citizen.
Mr Frydenberg has denied the claim, relying on travel documents that showed his mother arrived in Australia as a “stateless” refugee. She became an Australian citizen in 1957.
A further complication is that in 1989 Hungary introduced laws, aimed at rectifying its anti-semitic past, which gave citizenship to anyone born there between 1941 and 1945, as well as their children.
John Sheahan, QC, for Mr Frydenberg, argued that under communist rule in 1949, Hungarian citizens, especially those who were Jewish, who wanted to leave the country were regarded as “class traitors” and had to renounce their citizenship to leave.
Read the article by Liz Main in the Australian Financial Review.