Australia to hold 5 by-elections due to citizenship crisis

CANBERRA, Australia — Australian will hold an unprecedented five by-elections on the same day in July due to a political crisis over a 117-year-old constitutional ban on dual citizens holding seats in Parliament.

Speaker Tony Smith told the House of Representatives on Thursday that the by-elections in four states will be held July 28.

The elections give Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull a chance to increase his conservative coalition's single-seat majority in the House, where parties need a majority to govern. Four of the electorates had been held by the center-left opposition Labor Party and one was held by an independent legislator.

But a firmer grip on power could be short-lived, with Australia facing a general election within a year and potentially as early as August.

Four lawmakers were forced out of office by a High Court decision two weeks ago that some lawyers argue changed the definition of the reasonable steps that a candidate is expected to take to renounce a second nationality before running for election. The ruling means that long delays by foreign countries in processing a citizenship renunciation application can cost a dual national a chance to be elected to the Australian Parliament. A fifth by-election was caused by a lawmaker who quit for family reasons unrelated to citizenship.

Since July, 15 lawmakers have been disqualified by the court or quit pre-emptively because of the dual citizenship ban. That is one in 15 of all the lawmakers who won seats in Parliament at the last election in 2016. They all said they had been unaware they were anything more than Australian citizens when they were elected. Only two lawmakers had previously been expelled over the dual-national ban since the Australian Parliament first formed in 1901.

Many question whether such a ban is appropriate in a migrant nation where half the population was born overseas or has at least one overseas-born parent.