Labor MP Susan Lamb has opened up about the "deeply personal" moment when she was six years old and abandoned by her mother, but the Turnbull government still believes she should quit Parliament as she is a dual UK-Australian citizen.
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The Queensland-based MP for Longman has previously said that she and her mother, Hazel Cant, are estranged and that she had taken the “reasonable steps” required to give up her British citizenship.
Ms Lamb is a British citizen through her father and she began the process of renouncing her UK citizenship about two weeks before nominations for the 2016 election closed; her application to renounce her British citizenship was rejected by the UK Home Office because she did not provide a copy of her parent’s marriage certificate.
She has indicated that she was unable to obtain the certificate because under Queensland law if a parent is alive - as her mother is - they must give permission for the marriage certificate to be released. Turnbull government sources disagreed with this assessment.
Ms Lamb wept openly as she spoke publicly for the first time about the break with her mother, revealing the harrowing details of her abandonment.
"One day when I was six years old my Mum dropped me off at school and she never came back," Ms Lamb said, crying before a silent House of Representatives.
"I remember lots of tears, lots of confusion, I remember my Dad trying to explain."
She paid tribute to her father, an "amazing man" who had raised her as a single parent and then listed all of the significant moments in her life that her mother had missed.
He had died, she said, 20 years ago and for a decade before that had been unable to care for himself.
"She wasn't there to support me when I needed it ... I don't know what was going on in my mum's life back then ... I don't know what is going on now."
"I don't speak about this trauma ... so when people ask me why I don't just call my mother, well this is why.
"I'd rather not share this with anyone ... let alone the Parliament of Australia."
Ms Lamb said she had never held a British passport or even been to visit her father's country of birth and insisted that she was still eligible to sit in the Parliament.
Soon after the emotional speech, Small Business Minister Craig Laundy told Sky News that while he had sympathy for Ms Lamb, the speech had confirmed she was still a UK citizen sitting in the Parliament.
“We have a dual citizen sitting in the Parliament," he said. We've had people with [merely the] rights to citizenship that have stood down and gone to a byelection.
“We have a citizen who is refusing to even test the case ... she should at least refer herself to the High Court.”
Turnbull government sources said they would keep up pressure on Ms Lamb to step aside, but said it was up to Bill Shorten to refer her to the High Court.
A senior Labor source said the opposition would call the government's bluff and see if they would break convention and unilaterally refer Ms Lamb to the High Court.
As recently as Monday, Defence Industry Minister Christopher Pyne threatened to refer her to the High Court.
Ms Lamb's mother last month told the Courier-Mail that she would have helped her daughter obtain the marriage certificate if she had contacted her.
Ms Lamb is one of four MPs - including the ALP's Justine Keay and Josh Wilson, and NXT's Rebekha Sharkie - who had not formally renounced their British citizenship before nominations closed for the 2016 election.
