If you were to judge Jacqui Lambie based solely on the fact that she at all times speaks her mind, you’d think she was a wonderful politician. Unfortunately, the things that she does say are, for the most part, completely insane.
She’s a woman with so many different, wildly varying viewpoints that she fires off at every single occasion that, regardless of your political orientation, you would be hard-pressed not to agree with her about something. While you might get this effect from someone who considered themselves something of a “sensible moderate”, none of her opinions are moderate and very, very few of them are sensible.
In the same breath this evening she managed to state passionately that we need to tackle wealth inequality (a quite left-wing view) and that climate change is a sham and renewable energy is a huge waste of time (an insane person view).
Her no-nonsense approach to things like the pension and welfare are wonderful to see from someone whose similarly-minded political equivalents are only one beer away from advocating for hunting the poor for sport, but she does have big blindspot: Muslims. She does not like Muslims.
She’s also not afraid to get extremely shouty on national television about her feelings on Muslims. Unfortunately (or fortunately, if verbal bloodsport is the kind of entertainment you’re into), tonight’s ‘Q&A‘ panel featured someone of the Muslim faith, which made her pet form of bigotry all the more awkward to see expressed. TV presenter and author Yassmin Abdel-Magied tonight did us all the favour of not putting up with any of Lambie’s bullshit.
Starting out with the best of intentions, as she always does, Lambie answered a question about immigration by saying the country should focus more on looking after its pensioners and those that need support for addiction, which seems fair and reasonable. As soon as Tony Jones asked her to clarify, however, shit got dark.
She stated her position that any Muslims who support Sharia law should be deported and, when asked by Abdel-Magied whether she actually knows what Sharia law is, things quickly descended into chaos. As Abdel-Magied points out, Lambie is going off about something she doesn’t really understand:
“My frustration is that people talk about Islam without knowing anything about it and they’re willing to completely negate any of my rights as a human being, as a woman, as a person with agency simply because they have an idea about what my faith is about.“Islam to me is the most feminist religion: we got equal rights well before the Europeans. We don’t take our husbands last names because we aren’t their property. We were given the right to own land.“The fact is, what is culture is separate from what is faith. The fact that people want to go around dissing my faith without knowing anything about it and want to chuck me out of a country… the fact is… in Sharia it says you follow the law of the land you are on.”
After this, things descend swiftly into chaos once more, leaving the conversation mostly unresolved bar Lambie taking weird potshots at Islam as asides throughout the rest of the program.
You can have a watch below:
Is it time to define new rules so that migration doesn’t disturb the peace? @JacquiLambie & @yassmin_a disagree vehemently #QandA pic.twitter.com/nRXyj3p2hG
— ABC Q&A (@QandA) February 13, 2017
Photo: ABC.
