Two of Tasmanian senator Jacqui Lambie's former staff have lost their Federal Court case against her, with a judge finding none of their allegations stacked up and their evidence at trial was at times "vengeful".
Rob Messenger and his wife Fern had claimed they were unfairly dismissed from their roles as chief of staff and office manager by the senator in May 2017 after complaints about workplace health and safety.
Mr Messenger, a former Queensland state MP for the National Party, first met Senator Lambie in 2013 when she was running for the Senate as a member of Clive Palmer's Palmer United Party.
He and his wife Fern joined Senator Lambie when she was elected to parliament, and stayed with her as she broke away from Mr Palmer's party to become an independent.
They worked with Senator Lambie until they were dismissed in 2017.
The cause of that dismissal was the subject of a Fair Work complaint dating back to that year.
During the hearing, Mr and Mrs Messenger detailed their concerns about Senator Lambie's alleged swearing, drinking and tendency to discuss her sex life in the office.
Mr Messenger also alleged Senator Lambie had excessively bullied a staff member and he told the court that at times he felt like Senator Lambie's personal bodyguard, particularly during an interaction with "angry" high school students.
Meanwhile, Mrs Messenger told the court she felt scared for her safety after a heated fight with the senator.
The court heard that after this fight, the Messengers escalated things by detailing their concerns in a letter to then-prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, who they believed was their "ultimate supervisor".
After being issued a show-cause letter they again copied the prime minister into their correspondence, which would later be published by News Corp.
The letter reportedly claimed Senator Lambie took staff shopping for sex toys and complained about needing "a root".
It also complained about her "angry mood swings" and claimed the Messengers were the "brains behind the message".
The senator earlier told the court that after this she knew there was "no turning around and going back from this".
But the Messengers insisted it was their workplace complaints that got them dismissed, something Judge John Snaden found to be untrue, instead accepting Senator Lambie's evidence.
Letter to PM an 'exercise in embarrassing Senator Lambie'
Justice Snaden also described the correspondence to the prime minister as "little more than an exercise in criticising and embarrassing Senator Lambie" and found it was unlikely most of the complaints were made nor did they constitute workplace complaints – with the exception of one.
In his comments, Justice Snaden wrote that because the Messengers represented themselves during the hearing, the "trial took considerably longer than it should have".
"Furthermore, the Messengers were, at times, unable to contain the obvious personal animus that they reserve for Senator Lambie," he wrote.
"Despite repeated warnings, the Messengers appeared at times determined to turn the trial into some kind of broad-ranging judicial inquiry into Senator Lambie's character; or, which is worse, into a trial by media."
Rob Messenger airing 'scandals' for the media at trial, judge says
He also wrote that the Messengers did not present as credible witnesses.
"Throughout the trial, they were consistently argumentative, and exhibited the clearest and most constant desire to exact upon the senator as much reputational damage as they could by ventilating the many and various matters about which they claimed to have complained during their employment," he wrote.
"Despite repeated warnings from the court — stated in escalating terms over the course of the trial — [Mr Messenger] exhibited an unrelenting tendency to air matters of scandal prejudicial to Senator Lambie, most apparently for the consumption of media representatives who observed and reported on the trial.
He said Mrs Messenger "exhibited similar tendencies".
"She frequently overstated matters in the service of her case and regularly punctuated her evidence with gratuitous observations — usually slurs — self-evidently designed to humiliate or disgrace the senator," he wrote.
"Like Mr Messenger, she proceeded at times throughout both her evidence and her conduct of the trial more broadly as though the proceedings served as some form of judicial inquiry into the many and varied character shortcomings that she attributes to Senator Lambie.
"She, too, was warned against doing so; but, all too often, those warnings appeared not to dent her enthusiasm."
Justice Snaden dismissed all allegations. Costs have yet to be awarded and the Messengers have 28 days to appeal.
