Jacqui Lambie shares her plan B amid toilet paper ‘emergency’

Jacqui Lambie has shared some toilet paper alternatives as supermarkets began applying restrictions on the sales of the coveted item.

Coles has joined Woolworths and Costco in establishing limits to toilet paper purchases as stocks are dwindling amid fears of coronavirus quarantine.

Speaking on the Today show on Thursday, the Tasmanian senator was asked if she had stocked up.

“I noticed you guys have got a box of Kleenex, I’ll be taking that with me,” Lambie said.

She said she had another alternative if she ran out of tissues.

“I did come up with a Plan B. I thought because when we first got up here back in Parliament we had no toilet paper, and the thing I had sitting on my desk there was The Australian newspaper,” she said.

“I get that daily and I thought the worst thing I can do is cut strips off that as a Plan B and use that if necessary.”

On Thursday, the NT News printed an eight-page pullout for readers to use as “toilet paper in case [they] can’t find any at the shops”.

Authorities and experts have advised Australians that stockpiling goods is not necessary.

“I’m involved in the middle of all of this,” said NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard. “I’m certainly not out buying up. I think we should be quite calm about the issue.”

Infectious disease expert and former adviser to the World Health Organization Professor Peter Collignon said people are “really overreacting”.

“Of course, it’s hard to predict how the supply chain around the world will cope,” Collignon told The Guardian.

“But people are really overreacting to this. We need to restore some balance here. In Australia we produce more food than we can eat because we are a net exporter of food. You’re not going to run out of food, you might not have same choice of foods but you won’t be left without.”