L-R: senators Sam McMahon, Matt Canavan, Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, Gerard Rennick and Alex Antic (Image: AAP/Mick Tsikas)

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.