The Palmer United party (PUP) is at risk of splitting after the Tasmanian senator Jacqui Lambie said she did not care what her leader, Clive Palmer, thought of her plan to unilaterally protest against a below-inflation military pay deal.
Lambie, one of three PUP senators who are critical to the fate of government bills, vowed to vote against all Coalition legislation until Australian defence force (ADF) members were offered a better deal than 1.5% annual increases.
In one of several interviews she conducted on Friday, Lambie said she was “not going to stand around and watch Clive Palmer backflipping all over the place”.
Asked directly about the position of her party leader, Lambie said: “Well, you know what? It’s getting to the point where I just don’t care what Clive Palmer’s position is on this at the moment, but if he had a conscience then he’d stand right beside me and our troops and our veterans and make a stance on this now.”
Lambie, who earlier in the week urged defence members to protest by turning their backs on any Coalition politicians who spoke at Remembrance Day services, called on her Senate colleagues Dio Wang and Glenn Lazarus to stop “sitting in the middle” and to join her in voting against forthcoming legislation as a matter of conscience.
“It seems like for the time being I’m on my own for this,” she said. Lambie said Palmer had not tried to talk her out of her stance but she “would appreciate it if he was standing beside me”.
“He sort of heard me out and that was it,” she said. “The next I heard was yesterday on the radio that even though he agrees with what I’m saying that pretty much he won’t be standing by me on it, so that’s Clive Palmer’s call. But Clive Palmer can no longer sit on the fence. He’s either standing by me or he’s standing near the Liberal National party, but I’m not going to stand around and watch Clive Palmer backflipping all over the place.”
Lambie did not directly threaten to quit the PUP but said she would “continue to fight like hell and if Clive Palmer doesn’t want to stand beside me then that’s Clive Palmer’s call”.
“Clive will have to decide whether or not he wants to see his party separated in the Senate,” she said. “That’s all Clive Palmer has to decide on.”
Palmer issued a statement saying he had consistently opposed the government stance on reducing ADF pay entitlements.
“In relation to Senator Lambie and her comments, she is very passionate about this issue as she did wear a uniform and served this country for more than 10 years,” Palmer said.
“The beauty of democracy is that people are allowed to have their own positions on matters such as these. Though I want to make it clear that I will not make a political stance or statement on Remembrance Day or Anzac Day to dispute pay rates, I believe there is a political process when it comes to matters such as these and I will be respecting that process.”
The ADF’s three-year pay deal, which includes 1.5% annual pay rises and the loss of some entitlements, was endorsed by a tribunal on Monday. The chief of the ADF, Air Chief Marshal Mark Binskin, said it was “as good an outcome” as he could negotiate with the government in the current budgetary climate.
Lambie said she would not normally use one bad government decision as a reason to block other unrelated bills but the effective cuts to ADF pay and conditions were extraordinary in “timing, arrogance and level of political cruelty”.
She added that a lot of the government’s forthcoming bills were “not good legislation anyway”.
“There’s not a lot of it that’s flash,” said Lambie, who firmly opposes the university fee deregulation bill.
The opposition leader, Bill Shorten, said he did not entirely agree with Lambie’s course of action but shared her frustration.
“If Tony Abbott really valued our soldiers, pilots and navy personnel, he’d pay them properly,” Shorten said.
Abbott pointed to the budget situation when asked about the ADF’s below-inflation pay deal on Tuesday. “We’d all like to pay our serving defence personnel more, but there’s going to have to be very tight pay restraint across the public sector,” the prime minister said.
Lambie, the most vocal of the PUP senators, has previously spoken out against the burqa and sharia, and Palmer distanced himself from those comments. In September, Lambie refused to rule out leaving the party, saying instead that it was her “intention” to work with the party.
