LIBERAL Senator Cory Bernardi has labelled Senator Jacqui Lambie “too thick to pay any real attention to” — and suggested he knows better than those leading his party.

Senator Bernardi hit back at independent Lambie, who this week told Parliament he was “like an angry prostitute lecturing us about the benefits of celibacy”.

He said it was like an episode of “dumb and dumber”.

“There’s an inherent dignity in being a Senator,” he said.

“I just don’t think that Jacqui Lambie has demonstrated that. I just think she’s too thick to pay any real attention to, that’s my view. I choose to ignore her.”

And responding to claims his push to remove the words “insult” and “offend” from Australia’s race-hate laws were undermining the work of the Turnbull Government, Senator Bernardi said his judgment had “proved to be more prescient than many of those that want to claim to be calling the shots”.

“If you’re talking about me derailing government ideas, nothing derails a government idea like losing a vote in the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 or 50 years,” he told Sky News.

“I’m not going to suspend what’s important to the Liberal Party in favour of those people who can’t even control the Liberal Party in the lower house.”

The first sitting week of the 45th Parliament ended on an embarrassing note for Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on Thursday when Labor took control of the agenda.

Exploiting a weakness in the Coalition’s numbers caused by MPs who had left early, including three ministers, the Opposition won three consecutive votes on a motion about a banking Royal Commission in the lower house.

Mr Turnbull has blamed MPs who left early without the permission of Chief Whip Nola Marino or Leader of the House Christopher Pyne, claiming he has since read them the riot act.

But Labor claims it proves the Government is asleep at the wheel.

Opposition infrastructure spokesman Anthony Albanese told Sky it showed the government was “lazy”.

Senator Bernardi has secured support for a Bill to change 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act from all Coalition backbench Senators except one. But Mr Turnbull stated it was not a priority for the government

“I would suggest to you that next year the government would be very keen to revisit 18C because they will be desperate to reconnect with their base,” Bernardi said.

“And quite frankly I am not going suspend my political judgment in favour of those who really haven’t done such a good job of focusing the support behind the Liberal Party in recent years.”