Lambie's rant puts her in legendary company
With her bizarre rant at Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce, Tasmanian Senator Jacqui Lambie has put her place in Australian politics beyond question.
In recent years, it appears to have become tradition to leave reason at the door and skew straight for the ridiculous, and Lambie has thus far proven herself a deft hand in this regard.
As too, has the target of her most recent diabtribe, Barnaby "Dogsbane" Joyce himself. Without doubt, Mr Joyce's heated radio interview on the fate of two Hollywood puppies will go down in history as one of the most thoroughly Aussie exchanges to ever go to air.
There is, of course, nothing new about any of this. Eyebrow raising political interviews pre-date the internet which makes it a miracle that we could ever fully enjoy this classic from the proto-Jacqui herself, Pauline Hanson.
It is perhaps too easy to pick on rookie MPs and Senators though. As Senator Ricky Muir proved in his big television debut, things can easily go wrong. To be fair to Senator Muir, he has improved markedly since this TV trainwreck went to air.
At least he wasn't Opposition Leader at the time. Tony Abbott was both experienced and seasoned when this cringeworthy encounter with 7 News' Mark Riley become the stuff of legend. The then-future Prime Minister didn't say anything silly though. In fact, he didn't say anything at all.
And that approach could hold lessons for former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. His expletive laden tirade painted the controversial Labor leader as one of the country's toughest bosses and reinforced for one and all the old proverb that silence can in fact be golden.
