496 Melbourne University Law Review [Vol 40:456 ment declined to accept him as a Vietnamese citizen in practice.244 Notwithstanding this, his appeal to the UK Supreme Court was unsuccessful because the court adopted a very technical approach to assessing whether or not he was a Vietnamese national.245 Indeed, the need for an explicit assessment of dual nationality is acknowledged in other contexts in the Citizenship Act. For example, in the context of renunciation, s 33(7) of the Citizenship Act provides: The Minister must not approve the person renouncing his or her Australian citizenship unless the Minister is satisfied that the person: (a) is a national or citizen of a foreign country immediately before the Minister’s decision on the application; or (b) will, if the Minister approves the application, become a national or citizen of a foreign country immediately after the approval.246 Further, in the context of cessation of citizenship following conviction of an offence, new s 35A(1)(c) provides that ‘[t]he Minister may determine in writing that a person ceases to be an Australian citizen if ’, inter alia, ‘the person is a national or citizen of a country other than Australia at the time when the Minister makes the determination’. In addition, the Minister must be ‘satisfied that the conduct of the person to which the conviction or convictions relate demonstrates that the person has repudiated their allegiance to Australia’,247 and that, having regard to a list of factors, including most relevantly, ‘the person’s connection to the other country of which the person is a national or citizen and the availability of the rights of citizenship of that country to the person’,248 it is ‘not in the public interest for the person to remain an Australian citizen’.249 However, with respect to ss 33AA(1) and 35(1)(b)(i) ---- the two new categories of constructive renunciation of citizenship ---- neither the legislation itself, nor anything in the background materials, provides guidance as to how the Australian government will verify that a person is a dual national. As Irving and Thwaites observe, ‘the purported ‘‘automaticity’’ of these revocation mechanisms has been treated as making it unnecessary to provide for any 244 Ibid 1595--6 [3]. 245 Ibid 1606 [38]. 246 See also Citizenship Act s 34(3)(b). 247 Ibid s 35A(1)(d). 248 Ibid s 35A(1)(e)(v). 249 Ibid s 35A(1)(e).