Bill Shorten has said he is “surprised” the Speaker of the lower house has not issued writs and named the date of the five “Super Saturday” byelections, which Anthony Albanese has claimed is an attempt to shield the government from scrutiny.
With Labor’s heavy hitters descending on Longman and Braddon to defend the two marginal seats, battle lines have also been drawn in Mayo with the preselection of Georgina Downer for the Liberals, and in Fremantle, where the Greens will be represented by Dorinda Cox.
On Tuesday Labor’s Susan Lamb confirmed she had renounced her British citizenship, clearing her way to run in Longman, which the innovation minister, Michaelia Cash, said proved she had never been eligible to represent the seat in parliament.
Last Wednesday the high court ruled that Labor’s Katy Gallagher was ineligible to be elected a senator owing to her failure to renounce dual citizenship before the nomination deadline for the 2016 election. The decision triggered the resignation of four MPs, including three Labor MPs.
The resignations of Lamb (Longman, Queensland), Justine Keay (Braddon, Tasmania), Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, South Australia) and Josh Wilson (Fremantle, Western Australia) will lead to a string of byelections, likely to coincide with a poll to replace Tim Hammond (Perth, Western Australia) who resigned for family reasons.
Despite the MPs formally resigning on Thursday, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Tony Smith, has not yet issued writs naming a date for the byelections.
On Monday evening Labor’s infrastructure spokesman, Anthony Albanese, said the byelections “might be put off until July”.
“Now, the only reason why that would happen would be if Malcolm Turnbull didn’t want the scrutiny that will come if byelections are held on 16th June, which is when they should be held,” he told 6PR Radio in Perth.
The Liberal frontbencher Christopher Pyne dismissed the comments as “rubbish” and said the government and Australian Electoral Commission were going through the proper process.
“They’ll give advice to the Speaker, the Speaker will make a decision and of course we’ll be running in the byelections,” Pyne said, despite the Liberals’ decision to sit out the Perth and Fremantle contests.
On Tuesday Shorten said he was “a little surprised the dates haven’t been set already” but would not “impugn the motives of the Speaker” by suggesting he was protecting Turnbull.
“When Barnaby Joyce had to face the people and John Alexander pulled the pin, they had to face the people pretty quickly,” he told reporters in Brisbane. “We want to move on with it.”
Shorten confirmed that Lamb had now renounced her UK citizenship, claiming that before the 2016 election she had done “everything she could to provide the information the UK Home Office requested” but on this occasion it had “been more flexible” in allowing her to renounce without her parents’ marriage certificate.
“We’re happy that she has no cloud over her eligibility to serve in the parliament,” he said.
Shorten said the Longman byelection would not be decided by the bar on dual citizens standing for parliament but rather on issues including spending on hospitals, schools and the national broadband network.
Appearing at a doorstop alongside Downer, who was preselected for Mayo on Monday evening, Cash said the fact Lamb had now renounced her citizenship showed that she was “never entitled to sit in the Australian parliament”.
The jobs and innovation minister said people were “very, very disappointed in the stand taken by Bill Shorten” who she said “knew all along that his members were not qualified to sit in the Australian parliament but he sought to deceive the Australian people”.
Downer faced questions about her previous support for penalty rate cuts while employed at the Institute for Public Affairs, and clarified that she supports decisions of the “independent Fair Work Commission”.
She confirmed that, although born in the UK, she renounced her British citizenship in 2017 and is eligible to run.
On Tuesday the Greens announced that Cox, an anti-domestic violence campaigner and former police officer, will be their candidate in Fremantle.
