Is a key Jacqui Lambie staffer doing media work for a Lambie Network candidate — on the taxpayers’ money?

Note: this story was amended post publication. See end of story.

Jacqui Lambie has come out punching for this election. She’s not up for reelection herself, but under the Jacqui Lambie Network (JLN) banner she’s running Tammy Tyrrell, her former office manager, for the sixth Senate slot in Tasmania. They’re charging round the countryside in a van, putting up posters, featuring the two together. 

“I’m fighting for those who need a leg up,” her website reads, “but I can’t do it alone.” 

She’s not. Having initially said she didn’t have a media person, Lambie has been using staffer Carmela Chivers to do media liaison as she travels around the state. Crikey was text tick-tacking with Chivers throughout the morning about getting an interview, or 15 minutes, with Tyrrell.

Trouble is Chivers, who claimed by phone to be “helping out” on media, is employed as Lambie’s “legislator”, a senator’s staffer who focuses on drafting proposed legislation and examines proposals up for voting. 

It’s a taxpayer-funded position for doing due diligence as an elected representative. Chivers can work for Lambie’s reelection but not for the election of others — even if they’re in the same party/group. 

Has she taken unpaid leave to do the media work, or is she doing it on the taxpayers’ five cents, a clear breach of the rules? 

The job would be more than a few phone calls — though even a few phone calls is a breach. Decisions are clearly being made about who gets an interview or heads-up on an appearance, to keep Tyrrell — a political neophyte — away from tricky questions. 

Thus The Advocate newspaper in Burnie was there for her appearance at the hot rod show at the Ulverstone showgrounds, on Tasmania’s north coast. But no one else was, and it asked (or published) no questions on policy. 

Nor can there be any “aw shucks” excuse from staff. Lambie is increasingly populating her office with knowing insiders. Her chief of staff is Cameron Amos, a 30-something political professional who’s bounced around the Australia Institute, Labor and the Greens before landing with Lambie. Chivers is ex-Grattan Institute.

This is part of a pattern whereby Lambie is increasingly turning to left outfits — especially the Australia Institute — for her staff since she broke with former chief-of-staff (and for a time JLN vice-president) Rob Messenger, a former Queensland Liberal whom Clive Palmer connected her to when she was briefly a member of the Palmer United Party. 

Lambie eventually concluded that Messenger was playing her like a cheap fiddle, at which point she turned to the Australia Institute. It has saved her from disaster more than once, allegedly steering her away from anti-vax, anti-mask politics and from support for a nationwide rollout for the cashless welfare card — of which many Tasmanian voters are terrified.

However, in the process the Lambie pitch — outsider maverick — has become something of a façade as centre-left political professionals craft policy, some of which Lambie’s supporters would agree with, such as more public housing, and some of which they would emphatically not.

Nor is she lacking a buck. Her eye-searing, black-and-yellow website looks deliberately daggy, but it is professionally designed to maximise donation requests; many donors come from interstate.

Lambie has recently bought and refurbished a house just outside of Burnie — according to a long and sympathetic profile in The Monthly, itself a sure sign of Lambie’s acceptance by the elite.

Has the outsider got sufficiently inside that her staff are working her politics on the taxpayers’ dime? Chivers did not reply to a request for clarification by press time. We texted Lambie on the most recent mobile number we have that is said to be hers, but there was no reply to that either. 

Post publication, Jacqui Lambie told Crikey: 
The only reason this story exists is because its author is angry we knocked back his request for an interview. Don’t take my word for it: he said it himself. On the phone, immediately after this story went online, and I’m directly quoting, Guy Rundle said, “if you’re not going to let me go out for 15 minutes [putting] up signs, this is what you get.”

Guy said that talking to a journalist about a candidate’s availability is against the rules, which begs the question how my media advisor was supposed to know what he was going to say before he’d said it. But to try and pick apart the logic of the story is to miss the point: it’s designed as punishment. I’ve told Carmela that, as far as I’m concerned, the only mistake Carmela Chivers made was answering the phone when Guy Rundle called. Rest assured, it won’t happen again.

Guy Rundle replies: The story arose because Ms Chivers and I exchanged three texts over the course of an hour on Wednesday morning (after I put in a call on Tuesday evening) , in which I asked if it would be possible to get an interview with Ms Tyrrell, the Jacqui Lambie Network’s Senate candidate, Ms Chivers texted that it would not, and that they were focusing on local media. I then texted that it would be possible to double up with local media, and asked whether Ms Tyrrell was being kept from scrutiny.

I was then informed by someone that Ms Chivers was Ms Lambie’s legislator, and texted Ms Chivers a question about this, to which she did not reply. This is clearly not just ‘answering the phone’. This is active media work by a parliamentary staffer, either making a decision on Tyrrell’s behalf, or getting a decision from Tyrrell about media and relaying it. Is it Watergate? No, but, as I wrote, there are clear questions to be answered about whether it is a breach of regulations. If flouted by major parties en masse, it would give them thousands of hours of free political work.  So it was there, it’s a story. Hire a hands-off media worker.