Senator Jacqui Lambie has at last formally quit the Palmer United Party. She will remain in the Senate as an independent. It was hardly a surprise. Last week her party leader, Clive Palmer, publicly accused her of lying to Parliament. Over the weekend he suggested she’d been deliberately “sent in [to the PUP] by someone to disrupt” it, and raised the possibility that Lambie had rorted the Disability Support Pension while she was campaigning before last year’s election. None of this was said under parliamentary privilege, but it’s unlikely Lambie will want to engage the deep-pocketed Palmer in a legal dispute.

Lambie’s chief of staff, Rob Messenger, said yesterday that Liberal Party members had been urging Lambie to stay with the PUP, and it’s easy to understand why. The Abbott government’s task of finding six of the eight cross-benchers to vote with it just got even more difficult – especially as Lambie has now given a “100 per cent guarantee” that she won’t vote in favour of university fee deregulation or the $7 GP “co-payment”. The co-payment seems to be on ice, though Education Minister Christopher Pyne and the Go8 universities are hoping to get the legislation through in the next fortnight – the last of the sittings before Christmas.

The government now faces the real prospect of returning next year with its legislative program in tatters. The Mid-Year Economic & Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO) is due out in December and will confirm a worsening budget position. The government’s low polls are unprecedented so soon into a first term. And the government’s media cheer squad is becoming increasingly frustrated, with Alan Jones, Andrew Bolt and the Australian‘s editorial laying the boot in during the last week.

Russell Marks
Politicoz Editor