Jacqui Lambie’s team rediscovers mystery coffee machine

The caffeine-powered staff of Tasmanian senator Jacqui Lambie will be breathing a sigh of relief after they unearthed the office coffee machine some eight months after reporting it vanished.

The small Breville Nespresso coffee machine turned up in the back of a cupboard this week, after The West reported it was among the many items MPs had recorded as lost or missing in the first half of the year.

Senator Lambie filed a report to the Finance Department in March saying the machine couldn’t be found.

A departmental officer who went looking for it in April noted on official paperwork that the machine had been “purchased by Mr Abetz years ago” – a reference to the former Liberal senator Eric Abetz, whi is now well ensconced in the Tasmanian State Parliament.

“Not in office now,” the bureaucrat noted.

But happily, Senator Lambie’s spokesperson said on Friday the coffee machine had been found this week after not being used for some years.

Apparently it had been used when the senator first took office, but after concerns about caffeine and frothy milk overconsumption, the machine was packed up in its box and put in the back of a cupboard.

The team has now told the Finance Department of the rediscovery, and paperwork duly updated.

Digital cameras were the most common item to go missing from politicians’ offices.

In the first part of the year, 14 cameras worth about $16,000 were reported lost or stolen.