Regret over Lambie slurs

Ex- staffer backs off claim Senator ‘ evil’

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 untrue.

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

Mr Walker said he and the Messengers worked on the statutory declaration but he now regretted making it. He said he had asked the Messengers not to use it in any proceedings against the senator.

“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, Mr Walker said he had never made a statutory declaration before the one he drafted under request from the Messengers.

“Re- reading it made me feel uncomfortable. I regret making it in that form,” he said.

“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 a Public Interest Disclosure the Messengers sent to then prime minister Malcolm Turnbull in 2017 – started work with the senator in 2016.

He told the court it would be wrong to suggest Senator Lambie swore at and bullied employees daily. He said neither he nor his sister, who also worked there, were scared of Senator Lambie.

Mr Walker said there was obvious tension between the Messengers and the Senator. In his statutory declaration, he said he witnessed an outburst from Senator Lambie towards Fern Messenger in February, 2017 – three months before the Messengers were sacked.

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