Gun grabbing Liberal MP John Alexander may be a dual citizen

The dual citizenship fiasco gets more interesting with another adversary of firearm owners under the microscope this time.

From the Conversation:

Liberal backbencher John Alexander is expected to announce his resignation from parliament at the weekend, becoming the latest MP to be claimed by the dual citizenship crisis.

Alexander, who holds the Sydney seat of Bennelong, sought advice from the British Home Office about whether he had British citizenship by descent, via his father. Previously he had thought his father had renounced his UK citizenship.

It is not clear whether the government would hold a byelection for Bennelong on December 16 or wait until next year, after the High Court rules on any referrals that come out of the disclosure process Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has announced. The plan then would be to have whatever byelections were needed on one day.

A December 16 byelection would need to be called on Monday. The loss of Alexander would drive the government, which currently has lost its working majority after Barnaby Joyce was knocked out of parliament, further into minority government.

Bennelong, John Howard’s old seat, is held by a margin of just under 10%. While the Liberals have a strong buffer, a byelection held when a government is unpopular provides an opportunity to send a protest.

The Liberals would also need the personal vote of Alexander, a former tennis star, to help hold the seat. But one complication is that he has been expected to resign at the next election, so at a byelection there would be questions about his longer-term future.

Alexander has made several statements in the past regarding gun control, including his most recent one where America was supposed to care what he thought about them.

Bennelong is generally a safe Liberal seat, so it would be unlikely that the LNP would lose this in said hypothetical scenario. It was last lost by the Liberals in 2007 to Labor’s Maxine McKew.

Let’s hope this works out and John Howard protege Alexander joins the two Greens Senators and Nationals MP’s on the unemployment line.