Susan Lamb accused of misleading house in speech about her mother

Susan Lamb has been accused of “misleading” parliament after she made an emotional speech detailing her difficult childhood.

Susan Lamb in question time at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: Kym Smith

Susan Lamb has been accused of “misleading” parliament after the Queensland Labor MP made an emotional speech detailing her difficult childhood in a bid to stop the Turnbull government from pursuing her dual-citizenship case.

Liberal National Party senator Ian Macdonald said Ms Lamb ­created a “perception” she had no contact with her estranged ­mother. He took issue with the speech after her stepmother, Maureen Cant, offered The Courier-Mail a different version of events.

Ms Cant told the newspaper Ms Lamb was living with her mother, Hazel, when she was married and her mother had helped organise the wedding.

She also claimed Hazel tried to get custody of her daughter but Ms Lamb wanted to remain with her father, and that her mother had ­organised for a friend to collect her from primary school on the day she dropped her off and “never came back to pick me up”.

Ms Lamb’s late father died less than 14 years ago, according to Ms Cant, not “nearly 20 years”, as was claimed in the speech.

“If the stepmother’s story is true then the emotional, histrionic account (Ms Lamb) gave in the parliament seems to be completely misleading,” Senator Macdonald said. “The perception was (Hazel) left and wanted to leave and there was no contact with the mother, but the stepmother’s story is ­clearly at odds with that.”

Ms Lamb said last week she had tried to build a relationship with her mother, but that had ­“regrettably failed”.

The Turnbull government yesterday called on Ms Lamb to resign “or at the very least be referred to the High Court”, insisting she was sitting in parliament as a British citizen.

Leader of the House Christopher Pyne said “this remains a test of Bill Shorten’s leadership”, but again declined to say if the government would use its numbers in the House of Representatives to refer her if Labor did not.

Ms Lamb gained British citizenship through her Scottish-born father and failed to complete her renunciation because she did not provide a copy of her parents’ marriage certificate.

Ms Lamb said she was advised she “did not have a legal right” to obtain the certificate but Queensland’s Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages access policy recognises circumstances exist where an applicant without a direct relationship to the registered person “may have an unusual or exceptional reason for requesting” that person’s information.

It would also have been possible for Ms Lamb to ask her sister or lawyer to request the certificate, though they would have needed permission from her mother or a signed letter stating the reason for access.

Ms Lamb did not respond to Senator Macdonald’s claim she had “misled” parliament but said she made her statement so her constituents could “understand some of the traumatic circumstances of my childhood”.

Nationals MP Llew O’Brien said “technically” Ms Lamb should be referred to the court but he personally would prefer the government “not worry about it” and “move on”.