‘ No report’ of office perils

Lambie staffer defends her silence

NO complaints were made to the department which deals with federal government workplace health and safety issues by Jacqui Lambie’s Burnie office despite the office being labelled “highly dangerous” by its former manager.

Former office manager Fern Messenger told an unfair dismissal hearing in the Federal Court on Monday she did not trust the department to deal with her complaints.

“They never fixed our office front door despite death threats,” Mrs Messenger said during cross- examination from commonwealth lawyer Jenny Firkin.

But Ms Firkin suggested Mrs Messenger was accusing the department of negligence in a bid to obscure the fact she did not make a single workplace report about the senator who she later accused of bullying, bad language and threatening behaviour.

“You failed in your duties as office manager,” Ms Firkin suggested.

“No, I reported it to the senator herself,” Mrs Messenger replied.

Mrs Messenger is under cross- examination on day six of the hearing in Melbourne.

She and her husband Rob, the senator’s former chief of staff, claim they were sacked in May 2017 as a reprisal for making a Public Interest Disclosure about the senator’s behaviour to then- prime minister Malcolm Turnbull.

The court also heard Mrs Messenger’s two teenage daughters were employed in the office during school holidays.

“You would not expose your daughters to a dangerous or unsafe workplace. You had no issue with Senator Lambie being there with them,” Senator Lambie’s lawyer, Nick Harrington, challenged Mrs Messenger before Justice John Snaden.

“I was there. I could protect them,” Mrs Messenger replied.

A mediator had contacted the couple in the days before they lodged their complaint but they did not pursue that mediation.

The court heard they went to the doctor, got more time off work due to stress, met a junior worker and helped him lodge a statutory declaration outlining his workplace issues and attached that to their PID and sent it to Canberra.

Senator’s Lambie’s show cause letter — asking the couple to explain why they should continue to be employed — turned up six hours after they sent the PID.

Mr Harrington alleged the Messengers were motivated by bad faith.