‘Your ban got lifted, get over it’: Senator Lambie and Muslim activist Abdel-Magied lock horns on Q&A

MUSLIM activist Yassmin Abdel-Magied has expressed “regret” over a heated on-air confrontation with Jacqui Lambie.

MUSLIM activist Yassmin Abdel-Magied has expressed “regret” over a heated on-air confrontation with independent senator Jacqui Lambie.

The two locked horns in a ferocious argument over the US President’s travel ban on Monday night’s episode of Q&A.

On Tuesday, only one of the two parties took this higher ground.

“I do regret shouting and losing my cool,” Ms Abdel-Magied tweeted. “Yes, it’s understandable and perhaps forgivable but I acknowledge not the way best way...

“And so, hopefully that can be forgiven, and I can learn from my experiences.”

@QandA 2/ I do regret shouting and losing my cool. Yes, it's understandable and perhaps forgivable but I acknowledge not the best way...

— Yassmin Abdel-Magied (@yassmin_a) February 13, 2017

The mechanical engineer “lost her cool” on the ABC panel show when Senator Lambie told the audience Australia should “look after our backyard first” and should “follow Donald Trump’s examply by deporting all Muslims who support sharia law.”

Ms Abdel-Magied broke in, asking Senator Lambie whether she knew what sharia law was.

When Senator Lambie insisted she did, the Youth Without Borders founder insisted that it was as simple as “me praying five times day”.

The Tasmanian senator replied: “What about rights for women? You can’t be a sharia law supporter and be half pregnant at the same time.”

The Muslim engineer and Tasmanian senator repeatedly clashed throughout the show.

Her voice rising, Ms Abdel-Magied demanded: “What are you talking about? OK, I am not going to attack you personally. 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, a woman, as a person with agency, simply because they have an idea about what my faith is about. Excuse me, Islam to me is the most feminist religion, right. We got equal rights well before the Europeans.

“We don’t take our husbands’ last names … We were given the right to own land, their property. “The fact people go around dissing in my face without knowing anything about it and want to chuck me out of a country …”

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

Senator Lambie responded: “We have one law in this country and it is the Australian law. It is not sharia law, not in this country. Not in my day.”

Ms Abdel-Magied, who explained that she was born in Sudan and moved to Brisbane as a toddler, said sharia meant following the law of the land on which you are on, adding: “You don’t know anything about my religion. You’re talking about stuff you don’t know anything about.”

Host Tony Jones broke in to warn the women: “Can I say shouting at each other is not going to help.”

Ms Abdel-Magied apologised for her “unbecoming” yelling, but said “the fact we’re normalising the kind of discussions and rhetoric that Donald Trump uses frightens me”.

She added she was Australian and loved Australia and yet Senator Lambie’s advocacy of vulnerable people did not appear to include people like her.

Jacqui Lambie says Australia should follow Donald Trump’s example and deport all Muslims who support sharia law.

“It hurts me deeply, right, when you, when my elected representatives, don’t want to have me in this country simply because of my faith or because of where I was born. And I think this kind of rhetoric is what we saw pre-World War II.”

Asked if she could see how her words could be seen as hateful to others, Senator Lambie replied: “To a minority. If that’s a minority but this is for the majority.”

A frustrated Ms Abdel-Magied responded simply: “Oh, girl!”

The senator continued: “We want to feel safe, be safe, and Donald Trump, if he wants to put those on hold for three months, he has every right to do so until he can work out exactly what is going on. If that’s going to keep America safer just like it’s going to keep Australia — stop playing the victim. We’ve had enough.

“Your ban got lifted. Get over it.”

.@JacquiLambie says we're not gonna stop climate change without nuclear power. @yassmin_a disagrees #QandA pic.twitter.com/E1u4pyvWDu

— ABC Q&A (@QandA) February 13, 2017

WOULD LAMBIE JOIN ONE NATION?

A stand-off was brewing from the start of a fiery Q&A, with Senator Lambie not holding back as she attacked the government over political donations, energy and childcare.

“We have 30 per cent of the world’s uranium in the country,” she said during a debate on renewables, telling the audience that climate change was unstoppable. “Why aren’t we looking at the nuclear power instead of what we have done with our utilities and assets in this country, sold them to big businesses overseas where they don’t pay their bloody share of the tax and are usually donors of the bloody Liberal Party?”

Ms Abdel-Magied, who used to work for an oil company, was similarly outspoken, but often appeared to coming from an opposite perspective. “I 100 per cent agree we need to be thinking about the most vulnerable people in our society,” she said. “But that is not the same as thinking about doing things better for the earth.”

Labor MP Kate Ellis, right, attacked One Nation for having members who say Port Arthur and September 11 were faked.

They also clashed over One Nation, with Jones asking Senator Lambie whether she would ever consider joining the party to be part of a more powerful entity with similar views. “I was a part of a bigger, powerful entity once,” she replied. “Didn’t work too well for me and others.”

She also claimed Pauline Hanson’s party was “not there for the underdog” because it supported the government’s bundled together “omnibus” welfare bill.

Ms Abdel-Magied was almost as concerned about One Nation as she was over Mr Trump, saying: “We’re talking as if they are not deeply xenophobic.”

Labor MP Kate Ellis also attacked the party, saying: “One Nation has members say the Port Arthur massacre was faked, 9/11 was a hoax, we saw a couple of weeks ago, not wanting to fire Jacqui up too much again, but we saw a couple of weeks ago one of them coming out saying that single mothers had made a lifestyle choice to be single mothers and they were leading to more ugly and lazy children.”

.@KateEllisMP says don't take away safe spaces for kids @yassmin_a disagrees with @SenPaterson narrow view #QandA pic.twitter.com/QNhHXJVS8o

— ABC Q&A (@QandA) February 13, 2017

BLACKOUTS AND BULLS***

Ms Abdel-Magied and Senator Lambie did, however, share a concern for marginalised Australians, joining forces on several occasions to attack Victorian Liberal senator James Paterson.

When Mr Paterson tried to explain why low-income families would face activity tests for childcare support under the government’s family tax benefits package, Senator Lambie replied: “Oh, bulls***. I’m really angry about this.

“I have come through that system. I was on welfare, on a disability support pension for 10 years trying to support for two kids. I’ve been at work where I have had to pay the childcare expenses where they’ve cost me three quarters of my wage as a young private in the army.

“We can do it a better way. If those big companies start paying their damn tax and that needs to be done and that goes for Google and Facebook, start taxing them. Don’t tell me it’s very difficult. It’s very easy to come take money off your people living on or low the poverty line but it’s too hard to go after their big donors.”

Liberal senator James Paterson was criticised for being out of touch in a debate on the Government’s new childcare package.

Ms Ellis, who is the shadow minister for early childhood education, pointed out that many children were in dangerous situations and desperately needed safe spaces, and would be left totally reliant on what their parents did under the new childcare package.

Ms Abdel-Magied agreed, telling Mr Paterson: “This is the problem with not having enough diversity in government. There are a bunch of people that don’t face these problems saying, do you know what’s good for people?”

The Liberal MP fired back: “No, it’s what the data, the evidence shows.”

Luca Belgiorno-Nettis, founder of the newDemocracy Foundation, was the most low-key voice on the panel, with Jones even imploring him to be “the voice of reason” during the verbal jousting between Senator Lambie and Ms Abdel-Magied.

Mr Belgiorno-Nettis noted that Q&A was “as much about the contest of ideas as it is about anything else” but added: “The most underused asset in politics today is the common sense of everyday people, not when they vote but when they deliberate together. Not when they are debating but when they are deliberating, when they have no incentive to win the debate.”

But even he had to confess the argument was “great theatre”.