Coroner & Legal
Where is the document Senator Abetz?
Having read the article by Sue Neales in the Mercury ( Linked on Tasmanian Times, HERE ) I wish to make it plain that I have never seen, met or spoken with Abetz and I hold no opinion over his politics; further I have never met or spoken to Senator Brown.
If asked, my politics apart from the likes of Abetz, would be tinged with blue.
I first came across Abetz in his capacity as a Minister of Forests in the former Liberal Government via an article written by Abetz, “Brown can’t see the forest for the trees” in the Melbourne Age, 9 February 2007. Abetz wrote “….no Senator Brown Forests are not harvested for woodchips. Forests are harvested for saw logs and specialty timbers such as for furniture. Rather than being wasted the residue is turned into woodchips.”
Living in Tasmania I knew this to be totally untrue and unbecoming of a Minister of the Crown.
As a result I wrote to the Age; they published my letter which read in part, “The reader should bear in mind after the last Federal Election and not before, the Senator accepted on behalf of the Tasmanian Liberal Party a donation of $60,000 from the Tasmanian woodchip logging and plantation company Gunns Ltd.”
This paragraph prompted a letter to me from Abetz, I quote, “I write regarding a letter to the Editor you published in the Age on 13th February 2007. In that letter you asserted that I had personally accepted monies from Gunns Ltd on behalf of the Liberal Party. I have communicated to the Age that this is demonstrably false and on advice defamatory…”
To which I replied 20 November 2007, “Abetz are you aware of the $50,000 given by Gunns Ltd to the Federal Liberal Party on 21 April 2006 weeks after you were made Minister for Forests? This donation was declared but it was accepted from a company pushing a controversial pulp mill in Tasmania. It could be perceived as compromising the position of the Minister, or at the very least influencing him and his party’s thinking in the execution of their duty.”
A copy of this letter was sent to the then Prime Minister, John Howard.
In another letter to Abetz 16 March 2007 a copy of which was sent to the Clerk of the Senate, I asked the question, “Please supply me with the date of your Certificate of Citizenship and photocopy of same so as to prove your eligibility to sit as a Senator in the Upper House of the Australian Parliament.
To which Abetz replied, “There appears no logical correlation between these two matters you have raised and your bizarre request of me save for vexatious artifice.”
This prompted me to commence further investigations as to Abetz, his background and integrity.
I was soon to receive an unannounced visit by two men from Abetz’s office who arrived at my front door to warn me against continuing my “vendetta”; their words. They did not look like Jehovah’s Witnesses.
I told them to go back to their master and inform him that as a result of this visit “I would pursue him to the grave”. I can only assume that this visit was a result of my sending copies of my Abetz correspondence to the Prime Minister and the Clerk of the Senate.
The rest of my investigations have been fully documented on Tas Times, HERE.
Abetz obviously does not have the written document from the German Government accepting the renunciation of his German Citizenship.
He requires this document to take up his seat in the Parliament from 1994. After two world wars the Australian authorities had made this a standard requirement for German residents holding dual nationality wishing to enter the Parliament of Australia.
I suggest that Abetz may have a letter written by himself to the German Authorities but the date that it was written cannot be established without the mandatory German Government acceptance suitably endorsed and dated.
I suggest that it will be unlikely that Abetz will submit any documents to the Mercury before close of business today (Friday).
If he does not he should resign his seat in Parliament, for his exsisting 6 year term of office has10 months to run.
He was elected under the rules given in Electoral Backgrounder No 19 published in September 2004. I quote, “Information for Dual/Plural Citizens….Germany. German citizenship may be renounced with the approval of the Minister of the Interior. Persons should contact the Embassy of Germany in Canberra”.
Abetz was a participating member of the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee 2004-2007 on the subject of citizenship; it should be noted that this clause was subsequently removed. I ask, Why?
First published Friday, July 30.
Sue Neales, Mercury, Saturday:
Abetz ready to head to court
SUE NEALES | July 31, 2010 07.54am
TASMANIAN Liberal senator, former federal minister and Opposition leader in the Senate Eric Abetz is preparing to defend his legal right to remain a senator, through the High Court of Australia.
Senator Abetz maintains allegations this week that he is not eligible to be an Australian senator because he may still hold German citizenship are without foundation.
But Senator Abetz declined yesterday to make public a letter that could hold the key to the pending legal challenge in the High Court by Tasmanian antique dealer John Hawkins.
Despite promising the Mercury to supply a carbon copy of a letter written in 1993 to the German Embassy in Canberra, in which Senator Abetz says he repudiated any remaining claim to German citizenship, he yesterday declined to release the letter.
“This matter may be destined for the High Court and may possibly be subject to legal proceedings,” Senator Abetz’s spokesman said yesterday.
The Australian Constitution makes a person who is the citizen of another country or who holds dual citizenship incapable of being elected to the Federal Parliament.
Senator Abetz, who has been a Tasmanian Liberal senator since February 1994, is standing for election for a fourth six-year term in the Senate at the August 21 election.
His nomination as top candidate on the Liberals’ Senate ticket in Tasmania was confirmed by the Australian Electoral Commission yesterday.
On Thursday, Mr Hawkins flagged his intention of legally challenging Senator Abetz’s right to be re-elected as senator, using the High Court sitting in its capacity as the Court of Disputed Returns.
Senator Abetz’s spokesman yesterday said the Liberal Upper House leader “has, and always has been, eligible to be elected. He is a naturalised citizen of Australia. These claims are untrue and unsubstantiated”.
Senator Abetz, who was born in Germany in 1958, migrated to Tasmania with his family in 1961 and became an Australian citizen in December 1974.
But constitutional expert Professor George Williams, head of the University of New South Wales’ Gilbert and Tobin Centre of Public Law, yesterday said eligibility to sit in the Australian Parliament was not as simple as being a naturalised citizen.
He said there were numerous pitfalls for any politician born overseas, or whose parents or even grandparents had been born overseas, to fall into, unawares and without intent, which could make them ineligible to sit in Parliament.
Professor Williams said any case against Senator Abetz would rest on whether the High Court judged that he had taken all “reasonable steps” to forfeit or denounce his earlier German citizenship.