During Tasmanian Senator Tammy Tyrrell’s first speech to Parliament, she referred to being nervous as “cacking my daks” — the sole use of the phrase in Hansard.
Similarly rough around the edges, it’s tempting to describe Tyrrell as “Jacqui Lambie Mark II”.
The 54-year-old mum-of-two is, like Lambie, not your stereotypical politician, having previously worked in paddocks and factories. She was elected in 2022 on the Jacqui Lambie Network (JLN), after working for Lambie for eight years. Her website repeatedly refers to looking out for those who “need help”, sharing Lambie’s ideological vagueness.
But talking to Tyrrell, who quit the JLN in March to sit as an independent, it’s clear she has a different style from her former boss. While Lambie is known for her fiery sprays, for taking whacks at everyone from Jim Chalmers to Peter Dutton, Tyrrell is calm and non-confrontational, preferring to avoid making enemies. She has nice things to say about every politician she brings up; she loves to “sing and dance” on the Senate floor.
“My mum used to tell me that you can attract more with honey than vinegar,” she says. “I don’t yell. I don’t scream. I disagree with people, but I will disagree in a calm way because I believe that you can learn more from a disagreeance.”
And disagreeing she is. In the past week, Tyrrell has come out firmly against the government’s social media ban and misinformation bill. Labor won’t need her vote on the former, but it’s been interesting watching Tyrrell prosecute her case, labelling the policy “as deep as a kiddy pool”. “Clever little” teens will work around bans, she argues, meaning usage will be driven underground, while those who obey the ban will enter platforms at 16 with no experience of them.
“They’re going to walk smack-bang into — it won’t be Facebook because that’s an old lady platform, but Instagram, TikTok, Reddit,” she says, arguing the focus should be on education and support. “They’re going to come into it from a dangerous place because they don’t understand the rules of engagement … We can’t silo them like that.”
As for the misinformation bill, for which Labor will need crossbench votes, Tyrrell calls it a “slippery slope”, arguing people must be free to express opinions. Tuesday’s post laying out her reasoning has more than 6,500 likes, along with hundreds of thank-yous.
Tyrrell has had a few wins lately — she got up an inquiry into freight equalisation, backed by the entire Senate. She’s successfully negotiated with Labor on housing and aged care — though as a longtime staffer, she’s conscious of the way the major parties try to “fandangle” and “sweet talk” the crossbench. She’s open to working with any “political colour” to get the best deal for voters, recently using her private senator’s time to highlight a Greens’ supermarket divestiture bill.
“It was a little bit funny, but it was a little bit sad as well, because they wanted to know my hidden agenda,” she says. “It’s unheard of anybody helping out another party, colour, independent — unless you’re one of us who are on our own. We had to reassure them that there was no malice intended. It was all about doing the right thing.”
“I think the crossbench is very important,” she adds. “None of us are up here for — excuse my technical term — shits and giggles. We’re up here to actually make a difference because that’s what we’ve told our community, and that’s what they’ve elected us to do.”
The crossbench suits Tyrrell’s style — “I don’t want to be the top dog,” she says. “I just want to do a good job and bring home the goods, because that’s what I’m there for.”
That said, it’s tricky to describe what Tyrrell stands for more broadly. She agrees that “there’s a lot of people who wouldn’t know Tammy Tyrrell”. But my attempts to draw out a clear ideology are met with platitudes about those struggling to make ends meet, the importance of being herself, and the idea of “community”.
In this way she is like Lambie, who recruits people “without any ideology” for the JLN. It seems especially strange, then, that their relationship broke down. The reasons for Tyrrell’s resignation remain contested: Lambie suggested it was prompted by plans to go national; Tyrrell claims she was told to go, having been told she wasn’t representing the JLN correctly.
As Lambie recently told The Saturday Paper, “I don’t know why she doesn’t just say ‘I left because I wanted to leave’ and stop blaming people.” Tyrrell, meanwhile, insists it was clear she was no longer wanted. She still sounds upset, comparing it to a break-up — one she doesn’t completely understand herself.
“Everything that I’ve said publicly is true,” says Tyrrell. “She may not remember some of it because, y’know, that’s her goddamn given right to remember or not. But when you say things like that to another human being who’s had your back for the past 10 years, somebody’s got to be the grown-up in the room and go, y’know what? This relationship’s not working…”
Tyrrell likens Tasmanians to “the kids”, kids they’re still jointly caring for. The relationship is complicated, she says, but the pair still collaborate and vote similarly.
“I still care about her. I looked after her for eight years as a staffer, and I came back every time that she got reelected, because I believe in Jacqui Lambie… She has been a good voice for Tasmania. It’s just that this year, it got to the point where it was like, y’know what? I can do just as good for Tasmania working with you rather than having to deal with whatever is going on in your world that you are putting on me.”
But have the people of Tasmania who voted for a second Jacqui Lambie senator got what they voted for?
“I think they’re getting more. They’ve actually got two passionate women fighting for Tasmanians,” says Tyrrell, who plans to run again, under “Tammy Tyrrell for Tasmania”, though the seat is hers until 2028.
“There’ll be a few people that think, nah, we’re not getting what we bargained for. But they’re getting more.”
