Australian court to rule on deputy leader's fate on Friday
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Australia's High Court will soon rule on whether seven lawmakers including the deputy prime minister and two senior ministers are eligible to sit in Parliament in a case that threatens the conservative government's slender majority.
The court will announce its decision on Friday. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull says he is confident the judges will not take a literal interpretation of a 116-year-old section of the constitution that bans "a subject or citizen of a foreign power" from sitting in Parliament.
The fate of Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce is most crucial to the government.
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If the court rules that he was illegally elected due to New Zealand citizenship he inherited from his father, the ruling coalition could lose its single-seat majority in the House of Representatives, where governments are formed.