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Senator Jacqui Lambie has been asked on ABC Afternoon Briefing about her proposed amendments to the union penalty bill.



As Guardian Australia reported on Tuesday, Lambie is trying to strike a deal with the government “as soon as possible” on the bill, which lowers the threshold for deregistering unions or disqualifying their officials.

Lambie replied: “We are still talking through those amendments ... The hold-up is when it comes to, there’s a points system, on whether or not it’s constitutional, so that’s what we’re doing at the moment. I do believe that the other amendments are sitting there, there’s just a couple of other issues and one of them is the points system. That could be a little bit constitutional. So do we work it around so we still get the same result and the same outcome and we’re just trying to tie that in now”.

That’s a very interesting answer. The points system was introduced by Centre Alliance amendments as a sort-of three strikes policy to prevent disqualification of union officials for minor offences. The government accepted the amendments in a bid to pass the bill.

It’s possible Lambie has blown the whistle on a problem not just with her proposed amendments but the scheme of the bill put to the Senate and defeated in November.

I’ve asked the attorney general, Christian Porter, to clarify.