Tony Abbott has characterised the Turnbull government’s citizenship dramas as an “ongoing circus” and has predicted more politicians will be caught up in eligibility questions.
With Abbott’s close party allies, such as Kevin Andrews and Eric Abetz, already defying Malcolm Turnbull by calling for an audit of all parliamentarians, the former prime minister used his regular interview on 2GB to call on Turnbull to resolve the chaos – although he declined to say how.
“Until this matter is resolved I think that it is going to be an ongoing circus, that is what it is going to be and governments and countries cannot afford to have an ongoing circus of this type,” Abbott told 2GB radio on Monday.
“Exactly how it is resolved is up to the PM, that’s what PMs have to do, they have to make the hard calls, there is no doubt that we should not, and I think cannot, go on with the sorts of things that are happening at the moment.
“Every day it is someone else, it was Josh Frydenberg last week now it is Alex Hawke, [it] will probably be someone else tomorrow, that’s why this matter does need to be resolved.”
Abbott faced questions about his own eligibility to be in parliament because he was born in the UK.
Labor has called for a universal disclosure system for all parliamentarians to restore public confidence in the system. The Greens and some crossbenchers want an audit. Last week Turnbull declared there was no need for an audit, and said the citizenship fracas was turning into a witch-hunt.
On Monday, the treasurer, Scott Morrison, said the voters wouldn’t be happy if the government was “distracted by a genealogy commission”.
At a doorstop in Canberra the Greens leader, Richard Di Natale, said by now all parliamentarians should know where they, their parents and grandparents were born.
He called on the Coalition and Labor “to stop any MP being paid who is found to be a dual citizen from the moment of the high court decision”.
Di Natale said Labor should back “universal action” in addition to “universal disclosure”, reiterating Greens demands for a comprehensive audit of all senators and MPs.
He suggested Senate and House of Representatives select committees could conduct public or private hearings which would take evidence from parliamentarians, lawyers and citizenship experts and then recommend that people who had “question marks” over their dual citizenship status be referred to the high court.
The citizenship controversy has created tensions across the government, with Coalition relations strained, and the Nationals now campaigning to take the Senate presidency after the resignation of the Liberal Stephen Parry.
The Nationals are backing the New South Wales senator John Williams to be the new Senate president.
Williams has been endorsed by Barnaby Joyce, and, on Monday, by the resources minister and Queensland Nationals senator, Matt Canavan, who characterised Williams as “a fine senator and of course would make an excellent candidate for the presidency”.
The rallying for Williams follows Joyce’s description of Parry as “dopey” for not checking his eligibility status sooner, when Nationals MPs had cooperated with a referral to the high court.
