Jacqui Lambie Ripped Into Pauline Hanson For Supporting The Liberal Party’s Welfare Cuts
"I want you to know that is what it’s like to be at the bottom of the crap pile."
In the early hours of this morning the Senate passed legislation to cut more than $1 billion in welfare funding, including support for single-income families.
The bill was passed after midnight because sometimes our politicians like to pretend they’re in that scene from Harry Potter where everyone sleeps in the Great Hall.
Vale, you legends.
Yeah, it’s so exciting to be hanging out with your mates in a big pretentious room overnight… if you’re 11 years old.
My take? It’s incredibly dumb that our politicians vote on things that will impact hundreds of thousands of Australians at stupid times when they’re all clearly very tired and grumpy.
Anyway, I digress. Sorry about the Harry Potter interlude.
Despite strong opposition from Labor and the Greens, the Coalition managed to secure support from Pauline Hanson and the Nick Xenophon Team.
Lambie vs. Hanson
But it was Senator Jacqui Lambie who really stood out during the parliamentary debate. She was a real Gryffi-, I’m sorry it won’t happen again.
Lambie shared her own experiences as a single mother raising two kids on a government pension.
“I want you to know that is what it’s like to be at the bottom of the crap pile, through no fault of our own, for many of us,” she told the Senate.
“For you to take more money off those people, you have no idea how bloody tough it is for those people. What you are doing is shameful and if you really realised the damage you are continually doing to that part of society you would stop doing it.”
Lambie getting stuck in.
It was a pretty powerful attack on the government, but Lambie saved her best burns for Pauline Hanson. She compared the One Nation leader to her own former party leader, Clive Palmer.
“I’ll give One Nation some advice,” she said. “You know why Clive Palmer [and his party] didn’t survive? I’ll tell you why they didn’t survive. Because Clive did dirty deals with the Libs.
“He stopped doing what he said he’d do for the battler. He was full of it, just like One Nation.”
It’s a pretty significant escalation of tensions between Lambie and Hanson, who agree on things like a ban on Muslim migration.
Lambie has also attacked the proposed changes to Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, and is refusing to support the government’s key election policy of business tax cuts.
If she sorts out her weird anti-Muslim stance, she could actually be a pretty decent politician.