Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull yesterday appointed his minister of foreign affairs as acting prime minister as he tried to stem the fallout of a citizenship crisis that has cost his government its parliamentary majority.
Turnbull delayed until tomorrow a long-planned trip to Israel and held an emergency Cabinet meeting to shore up support after Australia’s High Court on Friday ruled that Australian Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce and four other lawmakers should be expelled from parliament because they held dual nationality.
The court’s shock decision had immediate ramifications, stripping the coalition government of the one-seat majority it holds in the lower house, forcing it to call a by-election in Joyce’s seat and sending the Australian dollar lower.
Photo: Reuters
The opposition Labour Party has said it is considering a legal challenge to every decision made by Joyce since last year’s election.
Turnbull yesterday said that the deputy position would remain vacant until after the Dec. 2 by-election for Joyce’s seat.
Australian Minister of Foreign Affairs Julie Bishop, a member of Turnbull’s Liberal Party, would instead be acting prime minister when he travels to Israel tomorrow, three days behind schedule.
Turnbull is under particular pressure after refusing demands from the opposition to remove Joyce, who has renounced his New Zealand citizenship, from the Cabinet while the court decided his fate.
The High Court ruled on seven lawmakers, some of whom had already resigned. All seven accepted that they were dual nationals at the time of their election, but claimed they were unaware of their status.
A Ministry of Foreign Affairs official yesterday said that a delegation that visited China for an APEC meeting did not receive any kind of treatment that downgraded Taiwan’s sovereignty. Department of International Organizations Director-General Jonathan Sun (孫儉元) said that he and a group of ministry officials visited Shenzhen, China, to attend the APEC Informal Senior Officials’ Meeting last month. The trip went “smoothly and safely” for all Taiwanese delegates, as the Chinese side arranged the trip in accordance with long-standing practices, Sun said at the ministry’s weekly briefing. The Taiwanese group did not encounter any political suppression, he said. Sun made the remarks when
The Taiwanese passport ranked 33rd in a global listing of passports by convenience this month, rising three places from last month’s ranking, but matching its position in January last year. The Henley Passport Index, an international ranking of passports by the number of designations its holder can travel to without a visa, showed that the Taiwan passport enables holders to travel to 139 countries and territories without a visa. Singapore’s passport was ranked the most powerful with visa-free access to 192 destinations out of 227, according to the index published on Tuesday by UK-based migration investment consultancy firm Henley and Partners. Japan’s and
BROAD AGREEMENT: The two are nearing a trade deal to reduce Taiwan’s tariff to 15% and a commitment for TSMC to build five more fabs, a ‘New York Times’ report said Taiwan and the US have reached a broad consensus on a trade deal, the Executive Yuan’s Office of Trade Negotiations said yesterday, after a report said that Washington is set to reduce Taiwan’s tariff rate to 15 percent. The New York Times on Monday reported that the two nations are nearing a trade deal to reduce Taiwan’s tariff rate to 15 percent and commit Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) to building at least five more facilities in the US. “The agreement, which has been under negotiation for months, is being legally scrubbed and could be announced this month,” the paper said,
MIXED SOURCING: While Taiwan is expanding domestic production, it also sources munitions overseas, as some, like M855 rounds, are cheaper than locally made ones Taiwan and the US plan to jointly produce 155mm artillery shells, as the munition is in high demand due to the Ukraine-Russia war and should be useful in Taiwan’s self-defense, Armaments Bureau Director-General Lieutenant General Lin Wen-hsiang (林文祥) told lawmakers in Taipei yesterday. Lin was responding to questions about Taiwan’s partnership with allies in producing munitions at a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee. Given the intense demand for 155mm artillery shells in Ukraine’s defense against the Russian invasion, and in light of Taiwan’s own defensive needs, Taipei and Washington plan to jointly produce 155mm shells, said Lin,
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