Former Senator Jacqui Lambie came out swinging out on last night’s episode of Q&A. Without the constraints of political jargon and pandering to voters, not that Lambie typically subscribed to those anyway, she wasn’t taking any prisoners.
She started by discussing the unavoidable topic of same-sex marriage – an issue which is apparently so problematic, the government pushed the return to Senate back a week to ensure it’s solved by the end of the year. We’re sure that has nothing to do with the Coalition trying to dodge a commission of inquiry into the bank while it’s short two MPs…
Lambie asked us to please think of the no voters who made up 37 per cent of Australians who responded to the survey.
“You still have nearly 40 per cent of Australians out there hurting right now,” she began.
“People that have been ringing me that have garden weddings, making cakes. I had a bloke ring me about two weeks ago saying, ‘Jacqui, I want to know what my rights are right now because I only want to marry a man and wife in my garden’. I said, ‘Mate, I can’t help you out with that’.
“He’s going to sit in limbo for months. He has a freedom in this country and a right to say, ‘Because of my religious beliefs, I cannot marry you in my backyard’.
“This is what you are doing to people because you are going out there bull at a bloody gate as politicians do and they haven’t filled in the gaps.
“How long are these people going to have to go through more pain? They’ve lost. They’re feeling the pain. How much longer do they have to feel more pain?”
An interesting take for people who are very much in control of whether they feel pain or not.
How many more are going to fall on their swords in the citizenship crisis?
Well Lambie there’s a lot more in the wings, so many so, Parliament should be dissolved.
People had come up to her – “and I won’t mention names because I’m not like that – saying ‘I think I’m in trouble’. They haven’t even been mentioned in the paper. That is a problem.”
“We need to know what’s going on. If the Parliament is in turmoil, it needs to be dissolved and we need to go back to an election.
WATCH: Lambie breaks down as she thanks her dad.
“I’m very happy for you to get marriage equality but who is running the economy and the country?”
“We’ve got all these people with dual citizenship. Sad thing is a lot of parliamentarians know who they are and it takes 24 hours to get confirmation from the UK.
“If you’re having debates about the UK and you know who you are, do the right bloody thing and put it in and resign, like the rest of us have done, because that’s the right thing to do and that’s leadership.”
