As the Turnbull government prepared to pass a clutch of welfare cuts late on Wednesday night, Tasmanian senator Jacqui Lambie rose to her feet, her eyes welling and her voice shaking with rage.

"There were times when I would sit in a corner and cry, I was so ashamed," she told the Senate, choking back tears. "This is what it is like. It is not a choice for many of us to be on welfare. It is shameful and it is embarrassing, and it is bloody tough."

Senator Lambie, who raised two sons as a single mother on the disability pension, revealed how she had been forced to keep food in an esky beneath the house for three weeks after the family's fridge broke.

"I want you to know that's what it's like to be at the bottom of the crap pile, through no fault of our own, for many of us," she said.