Bogan King posted:

Solemn Sloth posted:

https://twitter.com/inthehansard/status/870610715366707200

Starshark posted:

They can't really depose Turnbull without looking like RuddGillardRudd, can they? They're sort of stuck with this dead fish. And I love it.

Starshark posted:

They can't really depose Turnbull without looking like RuddGillardRudd, can they? They're sort of stuck with this dead fish. And I love it.

Starshark posted:

They can't really depose Turnbull without looking like RuddGillardRudd, can they? They're sort of stuck with this dead fish. And I love it.

Starshark posted:

Actually I was chucking out copies of the Arse from my library and I noticed they did an article on Dutton with some poo poo about being a warrior or something. Didn't read it, through it out with the rest of the poo poo, but my sense was they were trying to talk him up.

Graic Gabtar posted:

gently caress its june already

Bogan King posted:

https://twitter.com/inthehansard/status/870610715366707200/photo/1

You Am I posted:

It's almost like Hanson is becoming the type of politician that she always rails against: just there for the benefits and perks, but can't be bothered turning up to committees. Didn't she want Ashby to turn up as her proxy instead of herself for a senate hearing?

CrazyTolradi posted:

Just as I thought, the Bendigo Three are self representing because lawyers won't do the crazy dumb poo poo they want them to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60UPnY27jVQ

CrazyTolradi posted:

Just as I thought, the Bendigo Three are self representing because lawyers won't do the crazy dumb poo poo they want them to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60UPnY27jVQ

quote:

Aurizon to close Rockhampton workshop, 180 employees affected
Posted Thu at 7:19pm

Rail freight operator Aurizon has announced job cuts as part of a major overhaul of its Queensland workforce, with about 180 employees to be impacted.

The company said its historic Rockhampton workshops were no longer viable.

There will be a staged closure by late next year, with 62 jobs to go from the Mackay and Townsville depots.

A further 126 permanent train crew positions will be phased out or replaced by contractors at other bases.

Aurizon head of operations Mike Carter said the business had to evolve with changes to the market.

"Aurizon needs to continue to change in line with what our customers need if we are to remain competitive," Mr Carter said.

"Historically, most of our train crew have been permanent full-time employees and we have been unable to match fluctuations in weekly and monthly demand in train haulage services from coal customers or contract wins or losses."

Australian Manufacturing Workers' Union spokesman Bernie Misztal said the move was a "kick in the guts", and accused the company's executives of paying more attention to their bonuses than workers.

"I honestly believe there's no need to phase [Rockhampton] out if it had good management in there," he said.

"That place would be a worthwhile business to own."

The Australian posted:

Marika Court barely recognises the Margaret Court she has read about over the past fortnight.

“My mother has the biggest, kindest, most loving heart of anyone I know,” she says of the 74-year-old. “She is the one helping when other people have given up or just walked on by.”

Grand slam champion Margaret Court is wearing the labels racist and bigot on the inter­national stage where she was once lauded as the greatest tennis player who ever lived. She is hearing calls for her name to be dumped from the tennis court at Melbourne Park that honours her.

Her decision to repeatedly broadcast her views about gays, including that they must not marry, and on transgender children — she says they are being influenced by the devil — are ready-made news for websites across the globe. They are also the stuff of nightmares for any publicist charged with managing her reputation. Except she does not have a publicist. Instead, she has an unshake­able belief she is following the scriptures.

So pretty much any reporter who calls her mobile can have fresh quotes from the Pentecostal pastor explaining all manner of controversial views, including that gays and lesbians can retrain their minds. “As a man thinketh so is he,” she said yesterday.

Marika, 41, who is also a pastor at Mrs Court’s church, is clearly distressed that these are the only things so many people know about her mother.

“This is a woman who found a man rummaging through her bin on the verge and invited him in for dinner,” Marika said.

“When we were kids, she was constantly pulling meat out of the freezer and giving it to people because she was worried they couldn’t afford to eat well.”

Mrs Court’s Victory Life church hands out 24 tonnes of food a week to the poor.

She said that since she excoriated Qantas for its marriage equality stance in a letter last month to her local newspaper, The West Australian, she had received some 800 emails of ­support. She said some may be surprised that her supporters included gay men who are part of her church and, like her, do not believe in gay marriage.



Among them is a Perth man who said he came out as gay at 17, was now married to a woman and described himself as “experiencing a degree of same-sex attraction”. He said his wife asked him to share his story anonymously because of threats and intimidation from Mrs Court’s opponents.

“Pastor Margaret Court recognises that each person’s life is a constant process of transformation,” the man said. “She knows that nobody’s life is perfect. Hers isn’t. And mine definitely isn’t. Pastor Margaret’s heart cry for children to be able to be raised at every possibility by their biological mother and father is an ­honourable way of standing up for the most vulnerable in our ­society. This should be applauded, not criticised. Pastor Margaret may not support gay ideology, but neither do all same-sex attracted people across Australia.

“Those who call her bigoted or homophobic do not know her and have never experienced the ­tangible compassion she has for every person, irrespective of their sexual attraction.”

Yesterday, Mrs Court said she regretted that the backlash to her comments had caused pain for some in her family.

Mrs Court’s nephew Phil Shanahan, who runs a tennis academy named for her in Albury, NSW, said he had received “ugly” abuse from around the world and threats of a boycott. He said he loved his aunt and she was en­titled to express her views. He said his door had been “smashed” in the middle of the night and said his family was “nervous”.

Mrs Court said she did not understand why she has been ­accused of being a supporter of South African apartheid, particularly when she clearly recalled being frustrated by the policy on a tennis tour with Evonne Goola­gong. The allegation stems from comments she is reported to have made in the 1970s, describing South Africa as managing its “situation”. “I don’t know what I said — I could have said something but I have never been in favour of apartheid,” she said.

On Thursday, transgender woman Catherine McGregor, a cricket writer and newspaper columnist, offered a view of the controversy over Mrs Court that was both critical of the pastor and those who wish to rename Margaret Court Arena.



McGregor said Mrs Court had gone beyond her faith in her comments but added: “I don’t think that persecuting a 74-year-old Christian pastor is actually going to take us anywhere.”

She said calls for Margaret Court Arena to be renamed was “Stalinist airbrushing of someone’s history ... that is wrong”.

Mrs Court is unguarded when talking about her experience of depression as a young mother of four. Her husband of almost 50 years, former WA Liberal Party president Barry Court, was away a lot working on the couple’s farm.

Mrs Court said it was around then that she turned from Catholicism to being a Pentecostal.

Former Victorian premier Jeff Kennett denounced calls to rename Margaret Court Arena: “It would be an absolute travesty in the practice of democracy in this country if they bow to those sorts of pressures ... it would be a travesty if expressing one’s views somehow leads to a penalty. I don’t agree with her views, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have a right to express them.”

quote:

The party line

The Chinese Communist Party is waging a covert campaign of influence in Australia – an aggressive form of “soft power” – and while loyalists are rewarded, dissidents live in fear.


University student Tony Chang had suspected for months that he was being secretly monitored, but it was a panicked phone call from a family member in China that confirmed his fears.

It was June 2015 and Chang’s parents had just been approached by state security agents in Shenyang in north-eastern China and invited to a meeting at a tea house. It would not be a cordial catch-up.

As Chang later detailed in a sworn statement to Australian immigration authorities, three agents warned his parents about their son’s involvement in the Chinese democracy movement in Australia. The agents “pressed the point that my parents must ask me to stop what I am taking part in and keep a low profile,” the statement said.

From a Brisbane share house littered with books and unwashed plates, the Queensland University of Technology student told a Fairfax Media-Four Corners investigation that the agents had intelligence about his plans to participate in a protest in Brisbane on the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, and also during the Dalai Lama’s visit to Australia.

Chang’s activities in Brisbane meant that his terrified father in China feared that he too was being “watched and tracked”.

His father, a cautious, apolitical man, had already spent years worrying about his unruly son. In 2008, when Chang was 14, he was arrested for hanging Taiwan independence banners on street poles in Shenyang. His family was forced to call on Communist Party contacts to ensure Chang was released after several hours of questioning.

Tony Chang awaits questioning in a police station in China in 2008. Tony Chang awaits questioning in a police station in China in 2008.
After Chang was questioned again in 2014 for dissident activities, he decided it was no longer safe to remain in China. He applied for an Australian student visa.

The June 2015 approach to his parents back in China was the second time in two months that security agents had warned Chang’s family to rein in his anti-communist activism in Australia. These threats helped convince the Australian government to grant Chang a protection visa.

Chang’s treatment as a teen is typical of the way the party-state deals with dissidents inside China. But the monitoring of the student in Brisbane and his decision to speak out about the threats to his parents in Shenyang, despite the risk it poses to them, provides a rare insight into something much less well known: the opaque campaign of control and influence being waged by the Chinese Communist Party inside Australia.

Part of this campaign involves attempts to influence Australian politicians via political donors closely aligned with the Communist Party – something that causes serious concern to Australia’s security agency, ASIO.

But the one million ethnic Chinese living in Australia are also targets of the Communist Party’s influence operations.

On university campuses, in the Chinese-language media and in some community groups, the party is mounting an influence-and-control operation among its diaspora that is far greater in scale and, at its worst, much nastier, than any other nation deploys.

In China, it’s known as qiaowu.

Some analysts argue the party’s efforts are mostly benign, ham-fisted or ineffective. Former Australian ambassador to China Geoff Raby stresses that influence operations are conducted by many countries. He singles out Israel as an example.

But the most recent chief of Australia’s diplomatic service, Peter Varghese, who is now chancellor at the Queensland University, told Fairfax Media and Four Corners that China’s approach to influence building is deeply concerning, not least because it is being run by an authoritarian one-party state with geopolitical ambitions that may not be in Australia’s interest.

“The more transparent that process [of China’s influencing building in Australia] is, the better placed we are to make a judgment as to whether it is acceptable or not acceptable and whether it is covert or overt,” Varghese says.

“This is an issue ASIO would need to keep a very close eye on, in terms of any efforts to infiltrate or subvert our system which go beyond accepted laws and accepted norms.”

The depth of the concern at the highest levels of the defence and intelligence establishment can be measured in recent public statements by the departing Defence Force Chief and the director general of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation.

Australia’s domestic spy chief Duncan Lewis warned Parliament that foreign interference in Australia was occurring on “an unprecedented scale”.

“And this has the potential to cause serious harm to the nation's sovereignty, the integrity of our political system, our national security capabilities, our economy and other interests,” Lewis said.

A China expert, Swinburne professor John Fitzgerald, agrees.

“Members of the Chinese community in Australia deserve the same rights and privileges as all other Australians, not to be hectored, lectured at, monitored, policed, reported on and told what they may and may not think.”

The coercion category

The definitive text on Beijing’s overseas influence operations is Qiaowu: Extra-Territorial Policies for the Overseas Chinese by China expert James To. Citing primary documents, To concludes the policies are designed to “legitimise and protect the Chinese Communist Party’s hold on power” and maintain influence over critical “social, economic and political resources”.

Those already amenable to Beijing, such as many student group members, are “guided” – often by Chinese embassy officials – and given various benefits as a means of “behavioural control and manipulation,” To says.

Those regarded as hostile, such as Tony Chang, are subjected to “techniques of inclusion or coercion.”

Australian academic Dr Feng Chongyi is another who falls into the “coercion” category. In March, Feng travelled to China to engage in what he calls the “sensitive work” of interviewing human rights lawyers and scholars across China.

Feng expected to be closely watched and harassed when he arrived in Beijing but accepted it simply as an irritating feature of his job.

“It’s an open secret that our telephone is tapped, we are followed everywhere.”

“But that is a little thing that we have to accept if we want to work in China,” the University of Technology Sydney China scholar and democracy activist tells Fairfax Media and Four Corners.

Feng is a small, energetic man who has retained his Communist Party membership in the hope that he will live long enough to see some results from what has become his life’s mission: democratising China.

But he is also a realist, which meant he was initially unconcerned when, on March 20 and after he’d arrived in the city of Kunming, he was approached by agents from the Ministry of State Security. Feng was driven to a hotel three hours away to be questioned.

He expected the matter to end there but, a day later, he realised he was being followed by security agents to the sprawling port city of Guangzhou. There he was told his interrogation would continue.

“That’s the time when I really realised something serious is happening,” he recalls.

Big trouble

In a Guangzhou hotel room, the security agents subjected Dr Feng to daily six-hour questioning sessions, all of it video-taped.

Many of the questions were about his activities in Sydney, including the content of his lectures at UTS, the people in his Australian network of Communist Party critics, and his successful efforts to stop a concert glorifying the Communist Party founder Chairman Mao Zedong.

Then the agents turned their attention to Feng’s family, asking him specific questions to show him that his wife and daughter were also being closely watched. He describes this change in tactics as a means of getting him to fully submit to his inquisitors’ demands. It is the only part of his story that the wily academic hesitates to recall, as if emotion might overtake him.

“I can suffer this or that but I’ll not allow … my wife and my daughter and my other family members [to] suffer from my activities,” he says.

“That is the thing that’s quite fearful in my mind.”

When his inquisitors demanded Feng take a lie detector test on March 23, he called his wife who told him to make a run for it.

A few hours later, after midnight, Feng crept out of his hotel, hoping to board a 4am flight. But as he sought to check in, an airport official told him he could not leave China because he was suspected of endangering state security.

“At that point, my wife told my daughter that I was in deep trouble,” says Feng. Feng’s daughter immediately called a foreign affairs specialist in the Australian government and asked for help.

Feng’s questioning continued for six more days until his daughter was contacted by an Australian government official and told Feng would be permitted to board a flight back to Australia.

In his final interrogation session, the MSS agents presented Feng with a document to sign that forbade him from publicly discussing his ordeal. But by then, his detention had already been covered by several Australian media outlets. When Feng landed at Sydney airport on April 1, a small group of supporters was waiting for him with banners.

Feng believes his treatment in China was designed to send other academics, along with his supporters in the Chinese Australian community, a message to “stay away from sensitive issues or sensitive topics”.

“Otherwise they can get you into big trouble, detention or other punishment.”

Campus patriots

Mostly though, the Communist Party’s influence on Australian university campuses takes a subtler form, and works through the Chinese Students and Scholars Associations. The Communist Party targeted these patriotic associations after the Tiananmen Square student uprising as a way of maintaining control over overseas students.

In Australia, which has 100,000 Chinese students, the associations are “sponsored” by Chinese embassy and consular officials.

Lupin Lu, an amiable 23-year-old communications student who is president of the Canberra University Students and Scholars Association, explains to Fairfax Media and Four Corners how Chinese embassy officials played an active role in organising a large student rally to welcome Premier Li Keqiang when he visited Australia in March. On the day, the rally had two shifts, the first starting at 5am.

Lu insists it was students rather than the embassy calling the shots.

“I wouldn’t really call it helping,” she insists of the embassy’s role, while confirming it provided flags, transport, food, a lawyer and certificates for students that would help them find jobs back in China.

“It’s more sponsoring,” Lu explains.

Premier Li Keqiang and Malcolm Turnbull at Parliament House in 2017. Photo: Andrew Meares Premier Li Keqiang and Malcolm Turnbull in 2017. Photo: Andrew Meares
Lu says her fellow students are willing to assemble at 5am to welcome Premier Li because of their pride at China’s economic rise. Other factors are an early education system that extols the virtues of the Communist Party and the reality that positive connections with the government can help a person land a job in China.

Federal police officers still describe with awe events in 2008 at the Olympic torch rally, when hundreds of chartered buses entered Canberra from NSW and Victoria, delivering 10,000 Chinese university students “to protect the torch”.

“If the Aussie embassy in London issued a similar call to arms to Australian students in London, there would be two students and a dog,” an officer says.

Lu had another way of motivating her fellow students to assemble before dawn: she stressed the importance of blocking out anti-communist protesters.

Would she go so far as to alert the embassy if a human rights protest was being organised by dissident Chinese students?

“I would, definitely, just to keep all the students safe,” she says. “And to do it for China as well.”

Going viral

The extent to which this student nationalism is directed and monitored from Beijing, and what this means for academic freedoms, is uncertain.

Former China ambassador Geoff Raby plays it down, saying Australian universities “are pretty much aware this activity goes on”.

But last year, ANU Emeritus Professor and the founding director of the Australian centre on China in the World, Geremie Barme, was so concerned he wrote a lengthy letter to Chancellor Gareth Evans.

Barme’s fears were sparked by a series of viral nationalistic videos created and posted by a Chinese ANU student, Lei Xiying. One of Lei’s videos, “If you want to change China, you’ll have to get through me first”, attracted more than 15 million hits.

“I would opine that Mr Lei is an agent for government opinion carving out a career in China’s repressive media environment for political gain,” wrote Barme.

The ANU defended the student’s activities on free speech grounds, but Barme said the university was ignoring Lei’s likely sponsorship by an authoritarian government that routinely threatens scholars and journalists.

“Make no mistake, it is officially sanctioned propaganda,” Barme said. He urged the university to confront the issue by debating it openly.

His supporters say that request was ignored.


Real media

A gracious host, Sam Feng is in a gregarious mood when he invites us to the headquarters of Pacific Times, the once proudly independent community Chinese-language newspaper he founded in the 1980s.

Over Chinese tea, Feng scoffs at suggestions that his paper is involved in financial dealings with an arm of the Chinese Communist Party that shapes its coverage.

“It is false. It is fake … They don’t need to do that,” says Feng, while insisting that questions of bias should be directed to Western media outlets whose coverage supports the US version of the world. “We are real media,” Feng explains of his small team of staff.

But corporate records suggest his paper is less independent than he claims. Subsidiaries of the Communist Party’s overseas propaganda outlet, the Chinese News Service, own a 60 per cent stake to Feng’s 40 per cent in a Melbourne company, the Australian Chinese Culture Group Pty Ltd.

The results of this joint-venture deal appear evident in the newspaper’s content, vast chunks of which are supplied direct from Beijing where propaganda authorities control the media.

Academic Feng Chongyi describes Pacific Times as one of several Australian Chinese-language media outlets that have forgone any semblance of editorial independence in exchange for deals offered by the Communist Party’s propaganda apparatus.

“It used to be quite independent or autonomous,” he says, “but ... you can see the newspaper now is almost identical [to] other newspapers that exclusively focus on the positive side of China.”

In a backroom in Sam Feng’s West Melbourne headquarters is evidence suggesting his Beijing dealings extend beyond what is placed in his newspaper. A well-placed source leaked to Fairfax Media photos of dozens of placards resting against a wall of the room.

“We Against Vain Excuse for Interfering in South China Sea,” reads one of the placards.

“We Against Vain Excuse for Interfering in South China Sea,” reads one of the placards.
To a casual observer, the placards would barely warrant a glance.

But along with other information provided by the source, they point towards what Australian security officials suspect: that the Chinese Communist Party has had a hand in encouraging protests in Australia.

“The Chinese would find it unacceptable if Australia was to organise protests in China against any particular issue,” says former DFAT chief Peter Varghese.

“Likewise, we should consider it unacceptable for a foreign government to be [encouraging], organising, orchestrating or bankrolling protests on issues that are ultimately matters for the Australian community or the Australian government.”

The placards stored at Pacific Times were handed out to hundreds of protesters who marched in Melbourne on July 23, 2016, to oppose an international tribunal ruling – supported by Australia – that rejected Beijing's claim over much of the South China Sea.

Of Pacific Times owner Sam Feng, the source says the newspaper owner seeks to keep the Chinese Communist Party onside for commercial reasons: “He is a nationalist. But he just cares about business.”

A review of the corporate records of other large Chinese Australian media players reveals the involvement of Communist Party-controlled companies. Those who turn down offers to become the party’s publishing partners and seek to print independent news face the prospect of threats, intimidation and economic sabotage.

Don Ma, who owns the independent Vision China Times in Sydney and Melbourne, tells Fairfax Media and Four Corners that 10 of his advertisers have been threatened by Chinese officials to pull their advertising.

All acquiesced, including a migration and travel company whose Beijing office was visited by the Ministry of State Security every day for two weeks until they cut ties with the paper.

Ma is happy to speak publicly because he has already been blocked from travelling to China. His journalists, though, request their names and images not be used when we visit Ma’s Sydney and Melbourne offices. They are fearful of retribution.

Ex-DFAT chief Peter Varghese and Swinburne Professor Fitzgerald says Australia should require more accountability and transparency around the way the Communist Party and its proxies are operating in the media and on university campuses.

Fitzgerald warns Communist Party influence operations in Australia not only risk dividing the Chinese community, but sparking hostility between it and other Australians.

“The Chinese community is the greatest asset we have in this country for managing what are going to be complex relations with China over the next decades – in fact for centuries to come – and we need them to help us in managing this relationship.

“If suspicion is sown about where their loyalties lie then we lose one of our greatest assets in this country now.”

The Vision China Times’ Don Ma has not only endured economic sabotage from the Communist Party but a campaign of vilification from pro-Beijing members of the local Chinese community.

Yet he keeps publishing, not only because he embraces freedom of the press but because many members of the disparate Chinese community urge him to keep doing so.

“I felt that the media here, all the Chinese media, was being controlled by overseas forces,” says Ma.

“This is harmful to the Australian society. It is also harmful to the next generation of Chinese. Therefore, I felt I wanted to invest in a truly independent media that fits in with Australian values.”

DancingShade posted:

I guess if they can't make people scared of Russians for some drum beating then they'll try the Chinese next. If you squint the article looks like it's about the USSR.

Konomex posted:

Yes, that's obviously it. China being a non-democratic country with a history of human rights abuses has nothing to do with this completely biased news story about China trying to track and influence it's citizens beyond it's borders.

Milky Moor posted:

China also does, actually, have University students reporting back to the government about the other Chinese students and their activities.

quote:

Jacqui Lambie targeted in nine-page complaint letter by former chief of staff and office manager


SENATOR Jacqui Lambie took staff shopping for “sex toys” at adult stores, complained about needing “a root” and stumbled over words of more than two syllables when giving speeches, according to disgruntled workers.

The accusations are among a litany of complaints aimed at the Tasmanian crossbench senator by former chief of staff Rob Messenger and his wife Fern, who was Senator Lambie’s office manager until a dramatic split earlier this year.

A letter of complaint from the couple alleges that Ms Lambie’s staff were “walking on eggshells” due to her “unpredictable” behaviour and “angry mood swings”.


It is understood the bitter spat between Ms Lambie and the Messengers erupted after the federal election.
Mr Messenger accuses Ms Lambie of using vulgar and obscene language in the office, describing anyone she disagreed with her as a “c..t arse”.

He wrote: “You see nothing wrong with ... regularly announcing to staff members — including a young male — that you ‘haven’t got laid in a long time’ and you desperately ‘need a root’.”

Following a highly publicised radio interview in 2014 when Ms Lambie said she was looking for a rich man with a “package between their legs”, Mr Messenger said staff were forced to field an “extraordinary number of abusive phone calls” and were exposed to “extreme abuse or ridicule”.

When contacted, Ms Lambie said: “Because of privacy legislation I am unable to comment about former staff members.”

“You bluntly and succulently (sic) said ‘I would be f---ed’ if we ever left.”

It is understood the bitter spat erupted after the federal election, prompting the Messengers to make an official complaint to the Commonwealth under Public Interest Disclosure laws. Ms Lambie fired back, issuing a legal “show cause” notice to the pair over claims Mr Messenger used a private email address for work purposes and allegations they were trying to monitor or spy on their former boss.

At the time, Ms Lambie — one of the senators who hold the balance of power in the upper house — claimed Mr Messenger, a former Queensland Liberal National Party state MP, left because he did not agree with the “direction” she was taking as a politician.

In the nine-page complaint letter, Mr Messenger claims he and his wife were the “brains behind the message” and had a “slavish devotion to duty”, working 80-hour weeks to prepare policy and parliamentary contributions, major interviews, election advertisements and newsletters.

He claims Ms Lambie “parroted the lines” he prepared and “dropped in a few umms and ahhhs” to pretend she was answering spontaneously.

He wrote: “Watching the delivery of my speeches live on the Canberra office TV situated above my desk was a time of great excitement and often frustration — because your reading and speaking skills are very poor, causing embarrassment and cringe-worthy mispronunciations — which would spoil the effect of a well-written, reasoned speech and argument.

“Sometimes during those moments when you stumbled over words with more than two syllables — or misread a speech — I would verbalise my frustration towards the TV monitor at your failure to competently read and pronounce simple words.

“Those private expressions of disappointment are now being used to incorrectly allege that I yelled at or swore at staff.”

Mr Messenger was also keen to claim credit for Ms Lambie’s Senate successes, saying his tactics had resulted in Ms Lambie winning “a fair pay rise” for the ADF, while speeches he wrote for her had convinced senators to launch inquiries into veterans’ suicides, human rights breaches, the ADF “Jedi sex scandal” and the dairy industry.

He said Ms Lambie admitted she was “the billboard”, but the Messengers were “the brains behind the message that went on the billboard”.

“In fact, on some occasions ... you bluntly and succulently (sic) said ‘I would be f---ed’ if we ever left,” he wrote.

Mr Messenger also claims in the letter that over the past two years other staff had expressed “serious concerns” about Senator Lambie.

The Messengers were contacted for comment but did not return calls or emails.