Australian Story: Sept 8

Tonight Australian Story goes behind the scenes with Palmer United Party Senator Jacqui Lambie during her first few weeks in Canberra.

Tough talking, combative, provocative… she’s the most outspoken of the PUP Senators and a rival to her leader Clive Palmer in the headline grabbing stakes.

In a remarkable trajectory, she’s gone from a position of powerlessness to being one of a small group with balance of power votes in the upper house.

For the last eleven weeks, up to and including her maiden speech to the upper house, Australian Story has been ’embedded’ with the new Senator. We’ve filmed her on her first ‘orientation’ day in the national capital, deciding what to wear to meet a PM she had just described as a ‘political psychopath’ and back home in Burnie, Tasmania with her family and the ‘battlers’ she says she’s there to represent.

We see her being courted for her vote by Government Ministers and we see her break down in private over the issue that she says is closest to her heart – the treatment of army veterans.

We watch her deal with controversy after controversy from her ‘well hung’ comments on commercial radio to the outrage over her ‘Chinese invasion’ broadside.

In Tasmania, we meet her parents and her two sons and find out more about her past. She talks candidly about being a single mother, addiction, a suicide attempt and a propensity for ‘taking a swing’ at opponents. She discloses the guilt she feels about the burdens placed on her children.

She describes her long battle with the Department of Veterans Affairs over an injury that ended a career as a Military Police Officer which she ‘loved’.

High profile observers provide commentary on the Lambie phenomenon, what it means, where it may lead and more broadly the secrets of micro party appeal to electors disillusioned with conventional ‘professional’ politicians.

8pm Monday ABC.