Young staffer regrets making ‘evil’ Jacqui Lambie allegation

A former office junior has told a court he regrets making a negative statutory declaration about Senator Jacqui Lambie.

• ‘She was screaming at me ... I thought she was going to hit me’
• Ex-staffer’s attempt to ‘embarrass’ Lambie

A FORMER junior staff member in Senator Jacqui Lambie’s Burnie office has told a Federal Court he would happily walk away from the statutory declaration in which he described his boss as unstable.

“It is truthful but embellished,” Mitchell Walker said of the document he signed at Rob and Fern Messenger’s home in 2017.

Mr Walker then told the court some of the statements made were actually untrue.

Mr Walker was giving evidence during day seven of an unfair dismissal hearing between the Messengers – Senator Lambie’s former minder and office manager – and the Tasmanian senator in the Federal Court in Melbourne.

Mr Walker said he and the Messengers worked on the statutory declaration together but he now regretted making it. He told the court he had later asked the Messengers not to use it in any proceedings against Senator Lambie.

Jacqui Lambie's former staffer Rob Messenger. PICTURE CHRIS KIDD

“Like the bit at the end where I say I feared for the safety of myself and my colleagues and that Senator Lambie was unstable,” he said.

“It was a bad work environment for everyone – that was all that needed to be said..”

Under cross-examination by Senator Lambie’s lawyer Nick Harrington, Mr Walker gave evidence he had never made a statutory declaration before the one he was involved in drafting under request from the Messengers.

“Re-reading it made me feel uncomfortable. I regret making it in that form. Did not know all this would come from it,” Mr Walker told the court.

“It makes it sound like Jacqui was an evil person. It doesn’t sit completely well with me. In other ways she was really good to me.”

Mr Walker – whose statutory declaration was attached to the Public Interest Disclosure sent by the Messengers to then Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in 2017 – started work with the senator in 2016.

Senator Jacqui Lambie. Picture Kym Smith

He told the court Senator Lambie was away from the office more than present and it would be wrong to suggest she swore at staff and bullied employees daily.

Mr Walker told the court neither he or his sister, who also worked there, were scared of Senator Lambie.

“It was just an awful place to work for a while,” he said.

He told there court there was obvious tension between the Messengers and the Senator.

In his statutory declaration, Mr Walker said he witnessed an outburst from Senator Lambie directed towards Fern Messenger in February, 2017 – three months before the Messengers were sacked from the senator’s employ.

“They started to raise their voices and Fern was told to “do her f****g job,” Mr Walker said.