NATION Call for Lamb chop over citizen status
THERE are calls for federal Labor MP Susan Lamb to resign from Parliament after she revealed she never revoked any dual citizenship passed on to her by her Scottish father.
Ms Lamb, whose electorate is Longman, north of Brisbane, this week revealed she had attempted to revoke any dual citizenship through her Scottish father, but had difficulty accessing family history documents due to complexities caused by her estranged mother and deceased father.
The UK Home Office said it could not revoke her citizenship because it “cannot be satisfied from the documents available that you hold British citizenship”.
Previous High Court rulings state “it is not sufficient ... for a person holding dual citizenship to make a unilateral declaration renouncing foreign citizenship when some further step can reasonably be taken which will be effective”.
LNP MP Luke Howarth, whose Petrie electorate neighbours Longman, said that if her father was Scottish the rules were clear.
“It’s really simple. She had dual citizenship at the election. It’s really simple, she should resign,” Mr Howarth said.
Ms Lamb said Mr Howarth could not know her family circumstances, had “overstepped the line and should back off”. “I provided every piece of information I could be reasonably expected to access — that’s what the expert legal advice says,” she said.
Meanwhile, NSW Liberal Senate hopeful Hollie Hughes, who was meant to replace ex- Senator Fiona Nash, was ruled ineligible because she held a Federal Government job.
Ms Hughes was ruled ineligible by the High Court yesterday as her job at the Administrative Appeals Tribunal was considered “an office of profit under the Crown”.
It leaves retired army general Jim Molan as next in line for the vacant Senate position.
Greens Senator Andrew Bartlett, sworn in this week to replace Larissa Waters who was caught up in the citizenship scandal, rejected suggestions his former work with the Australian National University would cause him issues.
“The High Court was fully aware that I worked for a university at the time they chose to declare me elected to the Senate and did not consider it a matter which they needed to give serious consideration to,” he said.