Jacqui Lambie’s late-night email fuels brawl with sacked staffers

Tasmanian senator sent an insulting late-night email to a former staffer suing her for alleged unlawful dismissal.

Tasmanian senator Jacqui Lambie. Picture: Gary Ramage

Tasmanian senator Jacqui Lambie sent an insulting late-night email to a former staffer suing her for ­alleged unlawful dismissal, sparking a dramatic escalation of a bitter feud with those who once constituted her trusted inner sanctum.

The Federal Court in September will hear an unlawful dismissal claim against Senator Lambie by Fern and Rob Messenger, who she sacked as her office manager and chief of staff, respectively, in May 2017. The couple in January this year began contacting potential witnesses to appeal at the trial, which promises to further air the couple’s colourful allegations against their former boss.

On January 29, at 11.37pm, Ms Messenger received what she ­alleged was a “completely unsolicited” email from the independent senator. Sent from Senator Lambie’s private email address, and subject-lined “Really Fern”, it read: “How far will you actually go? Submissive, that’s why your own mother has a problem with you. Seriously I give up, why Fern, why!!! Is he worth it and how (sic) the girls going!!!”

The email sparked an immediate escalation in the lawfare surrounding the senator and her former staffers, who have already depicted her in court documents as a horror boss, prone to “excessive alcohol consumption” and rants about the state of her sex life.

Now, in addition to the unfair dismissal claim, Senator Lambie faces an application for a restraining order, made by Ms Messenger in the Burnie Magistrates Court, as well as complaints about her email to the Australian Federal Police.

At the same time, the Messengers have become embroiled in a side dispute with another of Senator Lambie’s former advisers, Norbert Keough, which in May saw their home raided by police.

The fracture of Team Lambie involves a host of colourful characters, not least Mr Messenger, a former LNP-turned-independent Queensland MP who named “Dr Death”, Jayant Patel, under parliamentary privilege.

The normally outspoken Senator Lambie repeatedly declined to comment on the email and the subsequent police complaints, her spokeswoman citing legal reasons.

However, she is understood to have given a Burnie magistrate an undertaking not to make further contact with Ms Messenger, with the matter to be heard in the magistrates court on June 29.

“It was completely unsolicited,” Ms Messenger said of the email. “I have not had any contact directly with her since my sacking in 2017. All communications are directed to … DLA Piper — her government-funded lawyers.

“It was in reaction to my sending emails to three of Lambie’s former staff, who we are calling as our witnesses. (We were) notifying them we have a subpoena to serve on them and requesting their physical addresses in order to ­arrange delivery of the subpoenas.

“’The girls (mentioned in her email) refer to my daughters … Lambie never showed any care or concern for them in the past … She is slyly attacking my greatest psychological weakness.”

The couple made a written complaint to the AFP on February 27, alleging Senator Lambie’s email could be seen to be a breach of the Commonwealth Crimes Act, which prohibits the intimidation of a witness to a federal ­judicial proceeding. The AFP has declined to say what action had been taken over the complaint.

Senator Lambie sacked the Messengers for alleged “serious misconduct” after they complained about her to the Prime Minister, Senate president and other government figures on March 27, 2017.