The Morrison government’s dwindling hopes of getting a series of contentious bills through Parliament in the final sitting fortnight of the year are under threat from its conservative fringe.
Yesterday five Coalition senators — Gerard Rennick, Alex Antic, Sam McMahon, Concetta Fierravanti-Wells and Matt Canavan — crossed the floor to vote with a One Nation bill opposing vaccine mandates. Rennick and Antic have threatened to withhold their vote. Now Queensland MP George Christensen is threatening to do the same in the lower house.
Here’s Crikey’s quick guide to the Coalition’s anti-mandate fringe, how it got here, and what it wants.
Gerard Rennick
A first-term senator from Queensland, Rennick has blown up on Facebook since he started posting crowd-sourced stories of alleged adverse reactions to vaccines about a month ago — even though he admits he doesn’t know if any are true. He’s got a long history of being at odds with science, once claiming the Bureau of Meteorology was manipulating weather data to “perpetuate global warming hysteria”.
Over the past year he’s repeatedly broken with the government — over the budget deficit, the India travel ban, and calling for companies that posted profits to return JobKeeper payments. Yesterday he confirmed he’d withhold his vote unless the Morrison government improved the indemnity scheme for people injured by vaccines.
Alex Antic
Another first-term senator, South Australian Antic addressed an anti-vax rally in Adelaide at the weekend, and like Rennick has promised to withhold his vote over vaccine mandates. Antic is making a name for himself as one of the Liberals’ leading culture warriors. From the Christian right, he’s been trying to stack the SA Liberals with Pentecostals, and is a regular on Sky News after dark. An heir to Cory Bernardi’s mantle in South Australia, expect to hear more from him.
Matt Canavan
“I am vaccinated. I support the vaccination rollout. I encourage others to be vaccinated,” Canavan said yesterday in the midst of a speech dog-whistling to anti-vaxxers and supporting Hanson’s vaccine mandates bill. The Queensland LNP senator has repeatedly broken with the government to get what he wants, most recently with his staunch opposition to any action on climate change. Vaccine mandates are just his latest culture war-tinged obsession.
Concetta Fierravanti-Wells
The veteran NSW senator is a stalwart of the Liberals’ Christian right. She’s got the grab-bag of views you might expect from that corner of the party’s “broad church”: claims the 2019 bushfires were started by eco-terrorists, opposes same-sex marriage, believes in “traditional values”. Now we can add opposes vaccine mandates. Fierravanti-Wells says she’s fully vaccinated, but citing her long opposition to mandatory vaccination and “the sheer multitude of emails and communication from the Australian public”, crossed the floor to vote with One Nation.
Sam McMahon
The Northern Territory senator was furious when the government prioritised Hanson’s bill over hers on territory rights. Yet she still crossed the floor and voted for it. Last month McMahon, who lost her spot on the Senate ticket for the next election, likened vaccine mandates in the NT to Nazi Germany. When criticised, she said the comments were all fine because she has Jewish friends. McMahon is also known for allegedly being “maggoted” during a late night Senate sitting this year (her office denies this), and in one of the great mysteries of Auspol owns an absurdly large property portfolio (for a rural vet) in three countries.
George Christensen
Like McMahon, Christensen is quitting politics at the next election, and has little to lose by making a nuisance of himself. He joined the rogue senators last night, threatening to vote against the government where he sees fit unless it ends vaccine mandates and passports.
Christensen’s position is unsurprising — he’s been a frequent poster of COVID-19-related misinformation, and has been threatening to cross the floor or quit the party on all manner of issues for years. But his promise is particularly troubling for the government right now.
He’s already hinted he could cross the floor if the promised religious discrimination bill doesn’t give enough protection to faith groups. And with Bob Katter and Craig Kelly also hinting they’ll withhold their votes over vaccine mandates, the government could lose its working majority in the lower house as well.
Please excuse me for commenting off topic. I have to release steam somewhere!! Yesterday in Brisbane a litre of fuel was $1.95 per litre!!! Considering Morrison’s warning that the ALP ” wants to increase the price of fuel ” can someone ask him how the ALP has achieved this increase when notnin government??
I’m sure that if you asked the above six senators they could find a reason. Telekinesis. Satan. Shape shifting alien child-eaters. You name it.
Just heard Scumbo on Question Time announcing that fuel costs had risen only a tiny amount during his reign. Clearly, he doesn’t buy any while riding around in his free limo and has no idea what other pay. Or was he just lying again ??
He only lies when he’s talking or writing.
Pretty certain that he also lies to himself in his deepest, darkest (necessarily) ”thoughts”.
Nobody could pretend to believe the Songhill drivel without serious internal filtering.
Question Time is a shambles with the new Speaker fumbling and mumbling . Dutton answering for the incompetents on the government benches.
We had been spoilt with Tony Smith who made a great contribution in the House, dragging it from the mire established under Bronwyn Bishop. Today the pendulum has swung back, it will soon revert to a rabble.
Sorry can’t about Smith to me he is just another self serving Liberal. Better than Bishop by a long way but he let Morrison and company get away with way too much.
Well, I’d be very happy never to be at a social occasion with any of these people. 5 Nat Senators (out of 5) line up with the smirking, egregious Hanson to harvest the votes of the pissed-off-but not-sure-why demographic. And they are part of the ‘government’ that declares it doesn’t want to govern. And a government that is ahead in the 2PP polls. Australia is circling the drain.
Where exactly is the current government ‘ahead in the 2PP polls’? Last time I looked Labor was 53.5% to 54% 2PP and the LNP was 46% to 46.5% 2PP. Would you care to explain????
Whackjobs the lot of them! There should be no pandering to the AV Whackjobs under the guise of “freedumb” for any reason.
I have no time for any of the renegades but am delighted they exist at this time. Because they ensure the Morrison government is rendered useless & none of the Coalition legislation will pass. They are exposing the incompetence of the current government.
Morrison’s “pin-up gallery”? …… “Most Wanted”?
But Morrison was already useless.
It’s bad enough that Pythonesque idiots like this exist at all. How the hell did they win seats? What sort of a population actually voted for them?
I blame the rigged voting machines
Ah! Those hanging chats?
Do you mean ‘hanging chads’, ie the incompletely punched out holes in US voting cards?
Dangling daggs?
So these 6 fine upstanding parliamentarians]1] want Scomo to do something he has no power to do. He’d have trouble even pressuring the relevant premiers. What’s that German word that represents my feelings? Ahh, schadenfreude!
[1] not really, they’re kinda stupid for giving pauline oxygen on a bill that noone expected to pass.
Morrison obviously felt compelled to giving the oxygen but one assumes he was keeping some other operators in mind i.e. NewsCorp, IPA etc. who also coincidentally promote same themes as protesters…. and NewsCorp etc. will or should be the LNP’s only hope; but never be surprised by Australian electorates nowadays who follow and are manipulated by hollowed out legacy media….