No parents’ marriage certificate but Susan Lamb ‘eligible to run again’

The UK Home Office will process Susan Lamb’s application to renounce her British citizenship, the opposition says.

Susan Lamb announcing her resignation to the House of Representatives at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: AAP.

The UK Home Office will process Susan Lamb’s application to renounce her British citizenship despite the ousted Labor MP’s failure to provide her parents’ marriage certificate, Deputy Opposition Leader Tanya Plibersek said yesterday.

Debate over the missing certificate, which British authorities requested in July 2016 to confirm that Ms Lamb had acquired British citizenship by descent, prompted a tearful speech to parliament last year in which Ms Lamb explained she could not view the document because the registry needed consent from her estranged mother, Hazel. Ms Lamb’s father is deceased.

Ms Lamb’s mother later told The Australian that her daughter never sought help obtaining the certificate and she “would have definitely helped her” had she asked, undermining the MP’s claim to have taken “reasonable steps” to renounce her citizenship before the 2016 election.

The Labor Party submitted a new application to renounce her citizenship on Wednesday, only hours after the High Court cruelled her hopes of staving off a by-election in the ultra-marginal southeast Queensland seat of Longman.

Ms Plibersek yesterday stated confidently that Ms Lamb would be eligible to contest the by-election, saying she had already been re-endorsed by the party’s national executive.

“Susan Lamb will be eligible.

“The British Home Office have said that they are able to process her paperwork without her parent’s marriage certificate,” Ms Plibersek said.

Ms Lamb must shed her British citizenship before she can nominate to contest the seat.

The Home Office’s spokesman said he was unable to comment on Ms Lamb’s case for privacy reasons.

The Liberal National Party has not yet endorsed a candidate to stand against Ms Lamb, although several potential candidates are being vetted.

One Nation candidate Matthew Stephen yesterday assured reporters he was solely Australian, saying his ancestors arrived on the First Fleet that colonised Australia in 1788.