It has been a busy day for two of Australia’s most colourful female politicians.
Palmer United Party Senator Jacqui Lambie has been removed from her positions as deputy Senate leader and deputy whip.
Lambie has also been suspended from all party meetings, party leader Clive Palmer announced this morning.
The demotion comes after Lambie failed to show up to a series of party meetings and created tensions within the party by attacking Palmer and other party members.
“This will be enforced until such time she gives an undertaking to cease personal attacks on party members and to follow major decisions of the party room,” Palmer said in a statement today.
Lambie recently warned that Palmer and party colleagues Glen Lazarus and Dio Wang that they need a “bloody better plan of attack than what they’ve been using”. Palmer responded by calling Lambie a “drama queen”.
It has also been speculated that Lambie will leave the party altogether as she recently removed the party logo from her website.
“It’s very interesting that she hasn’t resigned from our party,” Palmer told Fairfax Radio.
What it also interesting is the fact that Pauline Hanson this morning announced she will be returning as the leader of One Nation after twelve years of retirement from the party.
Hanson also announced she will run as a candidate in next year’s Queensland state election.
“I’m very disillusioned, that’s why I’ve decided to get back into it to lead the party,” she told SBS News.
“I thought that maybe Clive Palmer the PUP party, would be the answer – I don’t think he is.”
Hanson is returning to her anti-immigration campaign platform to try and win back a seat in the Queensland parliament. She also plans to rename the party Pauline Hanson’s One Nation.
“The Labor party opened up the floodgates. We had the refugees coming into Australia, we ended up with terrorists out of that. We ended up with people not loyal to the country, and now it’s up to the Abbott government to actually turn this around,” she told Fairfax Media.
Palmer said he was not concerned that Lambie’s demotion and Hanson’s promotion would mean the PUP would lose supporters to One Nation in Queensland.
