Independent senator Jacqui Lambie has accused Labor of betraying its values by proceeding with the planned stage three tax cuts while refusing to lift the JobSeeker payment, and urged “lazy voters” to blow up the major party system by deliberately voting against sitting MPs.
Lambie, who holds a crucial swing vote in the upper house, doubled down on her criticism of the tax cuts for high-income earners – which she voted for in 2019 – and accused the federal government of hypocrisy for pleading that budget constraints precluded increasing the jobless allowance.
“The [major] parties encourage you to vote [on] brand, and you get dudded when you do”: Jacqui Lambie.Credit:Dean Sewell
“[Labor is] saying: hey, guess what, we’ll have to trim the budget to keep our spending in line, got to live within our means,” Lambie told the Festival of Dangerous Ideas in Sydney on Saturday.
“That’s only those living below or on the poverty line. But all the rich people out there [are] gonna get a nice big tax cut. Because apparently they need that to live within their means.”
Lambie acknowledged as a politician earning more than $200,000 a year she would benefit from the tax cuts, which will cost the budget nearly $250 billion over 10 years. But she said she would rather the money helped those struggling with the soaring cost of living, as “it’s pretty sad out there”.
The remarks come three weeks after Lambie told The Sun-Herald and The Sunday Age the tax cuts should be scrapped because “it’s obvious that our economy isn’t in great shape since COVID”.
Jacqui Lambie is the first politician to speak at the festival since it began in 2009.Credit:Dean Sewell
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has pledged to keep the final stage of the tax cuts package, even though the government would have the numbers in the Senate to scrap, delay or modify them. The changes include abolishing the 37 per cent tax bracket and taxing all income between $45,000 and $200,000 at a flat rate of 30 per cent.
Lambie portrayed the government’s refusal to lift the real rate of JobSeeker as a broken promise, although Labor flagged before the election that it was abandoning plans to review the payment.
She cast this as a betrayal of Labor’s base, saying: “The [major] parties encourage you to vote [on] brand, and you get dudded when you do.”
“We’re under no illusions about how tough people are doing it”: Treasurer Jim Chalmers.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen
The government recently trumpeted significant increases to welfare payments, which were high because the payments are indexed to inflation – currently 6.1 per cent and rising. Treasurer Jim Chalmers said early this month: “We’re under no illusions about how tough people are doing it.”
Lambie cheered the teal wave that swept through urban Liberal heartland in May, calling it “the breakthrough the country’s been waiting for”, but said she feared the rise of minor parties and independents would be seen as a “temporary phenomenon, never to be repeated”.
She called on “lazy” voters to shun the major parties and, echoing rhetoric espoused by her former leader Clive Palmer (she was first elected as a Palmer United Party senator), urged her audience to vote against sitting MPs in safe seats in order to “kill safe seats” and make every seat marginal.
“Voters are lazy because they’re told it’s OK not to pay attention to the person you’re voting for as long as you know where the party stands,” Lambie said.
A paragraph of her scripted notes which she did not read aloud said: “The reason parties prosper is because voters are lazy, and the reason voters are lazy is because parties are bad.”
The festival’s curator, Simon Longstaff, said Lambie was the first politician the festival had ever invited, and was chosen because she speaks with authenticity and “what you see is really what you get”.
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