Lambie in box seat

JACQUI Lambie will be the most powerful woman in the Senate this week with the power to overturn refugee ‘medevac’ laws.

The Tasmanian senator will be the deciding vote on the Government’s push to repeal the laws, which enable two doctors to sign off on sick refugees on Manus Island and Nauru being transferred to the mainland.

It’s set to be the biggest fight of the final two sitting weeks of parliament.

JACQUI Lambie will be the most powerful woman in the Senate this week with the deciding vote on whether to overturn Australia’s refugee ‘medevac’ laws.

The Tasmanian senator holds the power on the Government’s push to repeal the laws, which enable two doctors to sign off on transferring sick refugees on Manus Island and Nauru to the mainland.

It’s set to be the biggest fight of the final two sitting weeks of parliament, along with Scott Morrison’s union busting laws which go before the Senate today.

Senator Lambie last night indicated she would be negotiating with Peter Dutton to make changes to the Bill and hoped it would be voted on “by the end of the week”.

She has previously said she won’t do any deals over the legislation because “Tasmanians don’t want deals done over humanity”.

One Nation will back the Coalition’s push to repeal the laws, while Centre Alliance will vote with Labor and the Greens to block the Bill.

Senator Lambie or One Nation will also have the final say over whether the Government’s union busting laws pass parliament today.

With that political drama as a backdrop, nurses, firefighters and ambulance officers will descend on Canberra to urge the crossbench to block the industrial relations crackdown, which threatens unions that repeatedly break the law with deregistration.

“Our message to Senator Lambie, One Nation and Centre Alliance is they should stand up for workers - they should oppose the bill entirely,” Australian Council of Trade Unions president Michele O’Neil told the Mercury.

One Nation wants to raise the threshold for deregistration to require a union official to have been convicted of a criminal offence or a union to have been fined by the courts for misconduct before they can face the axe.

Senator Lambie has previously said she would back the laws if John Setka remained a CFMMEU boss but has also raised concerns about the potential for non-militant unions to be targeted over simple errors like filing paperwork late.