From wrecking ball to kingmaker: why all eyes are on Jacqui Lambie

She came in like a wrecking ball.

But Jacqui Lambie, the senator, has grown up.

“You know, you just sort of – as a woman, you’ve got to be able to have confidence in yourself and back yourself, and I just feel that’s where I am,” Lambie says, when reflecting on her second chance in the parliament.

“Having that 20 months out and having to go right back to scratch, and having to survive again and having to do TV shows and stuff like that ... And not knowing whether or not I had, you know, I would make it back in – I’ll say, I certainly don’t think it hurt me.”

She will need that self-possession to sustain her over what will be a difficult month as she contemplates what she will do on the medevac regime. All eyes are on her, as she alone will determine whether it stays or goes.

Lambie didn’t so much burst on to the political scene, as erupt, when she first entered parliament as one of Clive Palmer’s senators in July 2014. By November of that year, she had spectacularly split with her former leader, sitting as an independent, before being re-elected under her own name in 2016.

But in November 2017, a conversation with her Scottish-born father about the section 44 issues plaguing the parliament made it very clear she would become the next casualty.

“Am I gone?” she asked him.

“He said, ‘Yes sweetie, you’re gone. I think we’re gone.’”

And she was. Until May 2019, when Tasmania sent her back to the Senate.

But the woman who made headlines for outlining her preferred attributes in potential romantic partners, openness, and molten outbursts in the Senate, returned to Canberra a different operator to the one who first came in, draped in a bright yellow scarf.

“What we wanted to do was get the balance of power, right?” she says. “That’s what I was telling Tasmania – give Tasmania the balance of power … because I need to deliver some money down there.”

“But I’ve realised you should be careful what you ask for, because when you have that balance of power, you’re pulling your bloody hair out, you know? It’s like: ‘Oh my God. This decision is on me? Really? Great.’

“Well, it’s not on me, it is actually on Tasmania. I don’t run under a flag, my name is Jacqui Lambie, I’m there for the Tasmanian people.

“But all that experience, going from a wrecking ball to having to learn really quickly around Clive Palmer, to leaving him and then having the 20 months on the outside actually set me up to be a much better person this time around.”

Lambie isn’t the only one noticing changes.

Labor’s leader in the Senate, Penny Wong, says Lambie “has been getting more and more experienced” in dealing with the “significant policy and political pressures” which come with sitting as a crossbench senator.

“A lot of people have underestimated Jacqui – though I think that’s starting to change,” she says. “I’ve always found Jacqui to be a person of great consistency and integrity.

“She reminds me of a lot of the women I’ve worked with in the labour movement, in the way she is completely unpretentious and refuses to be intimidated.

“The way she came back from a difficult situation and won a Senate seat in her own right demonstrates that.

“Lots of independents have been great at grabbing the spotlight but few have been as genuinely dedicated to representing their constituents.”

Related: Jacqui Lambie rejects Dutton's claim most veterans would want medevac laws abolished

Mathias Cormann, who has led negotiations with Lambie on behalf of the government, says her passions – Tasmania, first and foremost, as well as veterans’ affairs, the issue which brought her to politics – remain clear.

“Senator Lambie is a straight shooter,” he says. “You are never left in any doubt about her views on any issues she feels strongly about.”

Centre Alliance has a loose working arrangement with Lambie and her office when it comes to issues they agree on. Rex Patrick says he has seen a “much wiser” Lambie return to the crossbench.

“In the first three days of the 46th parliament she got more for Tasmania than she did in the entire 45th,” he says. “She could bow out tomorrow and still be a winner.

“But she’s not bowing out. She’s here for the long term. She’s – mostly – controlling her normally wild passion for Tasmania constituent issues and utilising her leverage well.”

Lambie says Wong would send her text messages during her time in the political wilderness checking in, as would Katy Gallagher, who knew, intimately, what it felt like. Eric Abetz would stop and have a chat when they came across each other at events, while former South Australian senator Nick Xenophon repeatedly encouraged her to return to politics.

Her first test as a returned senator came soon after the 46th parliament was convened. With Labor still deliberating on its position, the government headed to Lambie to secure her vote for its tax package.

By the time Labor had resolved to support the package in its entirety, Lambie had already decided to back the package in exchange for the federal government forgiving a loan it had made to Tasmania for social housing. But Lambie refused to move forward until she knew where the state government would be spending the funds.

“I wanted to make sure that … the state government didn’t remove any of the money they were putting into housing, making sure that we didn’t lose any GST. I have to look at all of that sort of stuff. It’s not just saying, ‘Hey, here’s the cash’. No, no, no, no.

“And if there’s one thing I learned from Andrew Wilkie, when he did the Royal Hobart hospital, he said the worst thing I did was I didn’t target where that cash was going. And I should have had a much bigger say.”

She says learning from people like Wilkie has made a significant difference this time round, and she’s determined to get the best deal possible, even it means taking her time.

“If I’m not sure, if I think I can make that deal better, … then if it takes me a little bit longer to be able to get that solution, then I am going to take my time, and I am going to be banging that door down, until I get what needs to be done.”

Which brings Lambie to the one topic she won’t talk about in detail and the one issue everyone wants to hear about – medevac. Lambie’s vote will decide the fate of the medical evacuation laws the crossbench in the previous parliament were instrumental in passing. Lambie has spent the past month talking to doctors, refugee advocates, legal experts, national security experts, members of both major parties, the Greens and the crossbench, home affairs officials, and the government. She’s asked those she comes across when out in the community what they think.

She will spend the weekend reading the Senate committee report into the legislation, recommending it be repealed, and the three dissenting reports recommending it stay. She will re-read the submissions to the inquiry, and she will spend the next three weeks ahead of the next sitting week, continuing to talk to as many people as she can.

The one thing she won’t do is have any negotiations in the media. She said she considers the vote to be one for her conscience, not horse trading, and that there is nothing anyone can offer for her vote.

It sits heavily. For the first time in the interview, Lambie looks uncomfortable.

“I think any decision over humanity is probably one of the biggest decisions [you’ll make],” she says.

The Lambie who first came to the Senate would have allowed her unfiltered thoughts on policy to spill out her mouth. But not everything has changed. She still runs hot, and she still calls out her Senate colleagues when angry at a decision. And she’s still most comfortable outside the chamber.

Committee meetings mean her weekend will be spent in Canberra, so she took the opportunity to head to a northern suburbs football oval, where Tasmania was playing New South Wales in the police football championships. She’s asked to speak to the Tasmanian team in the sheds, where she is asked if she will put a carton on their victory.

“A carton? I’ll put the whole bloody bar on,” she says, to instant cheers.

“She’s got my vote,” a player yells. She walks out, where a NSW player asks if she’s going for Tasmania. “Of course I am, mate,” she lobs back. “We’ve come to kick your arse.” As she walks away, he turns to his mate and says “ahhhh, Ms Lambie, hey? I love it.”

And she loves it too. Even if the road to this point has been bumpy, and the road ahead remains uncharted.

“I think that I’ve grown up ” she says. “I look at all those new faces in the Senate and think ‘oh my God, I feel bloody old’, they’re so young some of them.”