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Josh Frydenberg denies dual citizen claims

Josh Frydenberg may be a Hungarian citizen, according to reports.

Josh Frydenberg may be a Hungarian citizen, according to reports.

Cabinet minister Josh Frydenberg has dismissed as “absurd” speculation that he is a dual citizen, saying his family were stateless when they arrived from Hungary after World War II.

The environment and energy minister told Fairfax Media his grandparents and mother were stateless refugees when they arrived in Australia, in response to a report in The Australian he may have Hungarian citizenship by descent.

Under Hungarian law, anyone born in the country between 1941 and 1945 is automatically a citizen, in a bid to address the plight of stateless Jews who fled the Holocaust, The Australian reports.

Mr Frydenberg’s mother was born in Hungary in 1943 and arrived in Australia with her parents when she was seven after spending time in a refugee camp.

“When my mother and her sisters and her parents entered Australia after the war their status was ‘Stateless’,” he told Fairfax.

“It is absurd to think that I could involuntarily acquire citizenship of a foreign country from a stateless mother and grandparents.”

Dual citizenship would make him ineligible to be in parliament and threaten the Turnbull government’s slim majority.

It comes after Stephen Parry resigned as Senate president over his dual citizenship and amid growing calls for an audit of the citizenship status of all MPs.

Communications Minister Mitch Fifield on Thursday revealed Mr Parry had confessed to him weeks ago about possibly being a dual UK-Australian citizen.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said the best way of dealing with the citizenship issue is for a bipartisan committee to come up with a solution.

Former deputy PM Barnaby Joyce, who was last week ousted from parliament after the High Court found he and four other MPs were dual citizens, suspects there are other dual citizens in parliament.

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