"I want something done about that inequality": What was Jacqui Lambie doing on the Mid North Coast this week?

Independent Tasmanian Senator Jacqui Lambie has used a Port Macquarie public forum on Thursday to double down on her controversial recent comments on Pine Gap.

Lambie was a guest of Independent candidate for Cowper, Caz Heise, at two events on the Mid North Coast. 

On Wednesday night they attended a screening of the documentary The Home Front at Macksville Ex-Services Club, and on Thursday at 8am Heise hosted Lambie at a Rydges conference room in Port Macquarie.

Lambie was asked at the latter about her comments eight days ago regarding Pine Gap, the shared Australian-US intelligence facility in the Northern Territory. Lambie had said that in response to the Trump Administration’s threat to slap tariffs on Australia, Australia should kick the US out of Pine Gap.

“Just switch it off,” Lambie said to the audience of about 100 people at Rydges on Thursday. “It’s on our soil, it’s pretty simple … they cannot get the intelligence that they need over this side of the world without Pine Gap. Just switch it off.”

The Senator spoke of a “big antenna” in the Indian Ocean that she said US submarines relied on for communications. 

“I’ll tell you what, if you want it to get slightly vicious, you can just say ‘Get your troops off here. We've got 3,000 marines off there - you’ve got seven days to remove them’. That’s hitting them back.”

She claimed Australia “can’t rely on [the US] as an ally anymore. They’re not a mate anymore”.

In a freewheeling discussion, Lambie spoke about how financial pressures were making it harder for people to volunteer, the struggles of raising campaign funds as an Independent, how she goes about winning over the people of Tasmania, and why all children should receive the same opportunities as those attending private schools.

“It’s unfair for people like me and others like you in here that have grown up in those rural areas where you've come from poor families, or sitting on or below that poverty line, and there's millions of us. Why don't we get the same opportunities that they do? Why don't we?

“I want something done about that inequality, and the only way I'm gonna be able to do that is if the generation changes. It’s going to be a very heavy six years with me.”

Lambie said she didn’t know Heise well but had “spent the last few weeks on the phone with her”.

“To me, she’s a great woman, she’s a strong woman, and that’s what we need because there’s lots of Teals we’ve got up there. They have been great, they have really lifted the purpose of Independents, not just older ones like me … Australians are really looking at us.”

Heise refers to herself as an Independent, not a Teal.

Heise said that although her campaign was endorsed by Climate 200, the seat of Cowper was more like areas of Tasmania than some of the wealthier Australian seats where Independent candidates have been elected.

“Yes we've got a teal colour, but Cowper is way more like Tasmania. We've got three of the poorest towns in New South Wales in Cowper.”

She said that “sitting here looking over the river, you know, we could be excused for thinking otherwise, but we're actually a low socioeconomic electorate, and a lot of the issues that [Lambie] is raising about Tasmania are very real, and when we're door knocking, we're hearing the same issues here around access to services, education, aged care, healthcare”.