Gerard Rennick People First
Apr. 17th, 2025 11:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
b_auspolGerard Rennick People First
Website: https://peoplefirstparty.au/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/senatorrennick
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gerard.rennick
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/senator_rennick/
(New party for 2025)
Nobody loves quitting their party and starting new parties with their name in the title as much as far right conservative Coalition members do. Gerard Rennick is another of the many bad decisions for senator that the QLD LNP have made over the years. Rennick’s a particularly choice selection of theirs, having been placed low enough on the 2016 double dissolution ballot to still not win a Senate seat in 2016, having been accused of buying his position on the Senate ballot in 2019, and having been pushed back into an unwinnable ballot spot by the LNP for the 2025 election, leading to his decision to quit the party in a snit. In between he’s advocated for anti abortion causes, supports vaccine conspiracy theories, is pro-Russia and sceptical of their assassinations, and he’s a right wing climate denialist who thinks the BOM is tampering with climate data.
So what’s his party like? Well, a lot of the same.
Party Analysis
Rennick wants to raise the tax free threshold to $40,000, in a sort of mega LMITO. They also want income splitting between couples. They want superannuation to be completely voluntary and that money back in people’s payslips, as reading between the lines they hate industry super funds in particular. Upfront discounts for paying super should be reinstated. Fringe benefits tax should be removed (so the long lunch is back! Welcome back, 1980s), and then a lot of adjustments to various tax policies that mostly looked like “foreign investment is bad, small businesses hate payroll tax, and remove the tax exemption on native title payments in the name of ‘equity’ for non-First Nations folk”.
They have a flexible childcare funding policy, which on the surface sounds like it’s trying to help families: they want to give parents money to spend on whatever form of childcare they want. However this is because the party is incredibly anti early childhood education. Their suggestions on what parents might want to fund with their childcare money is “a nanny, a friend, or another flexible childcare solution such as the parent”. Basically, they don’t think kids should have access to quality, professional early childhood education, but should be at home with a parent or the closest person possible.
The party is anti bureaucracy and wants to streamline the public service (who they are convinced are making the big bucks)…but also wants to set up both a government owned bank (through the post office, like every single other party with this policy) and also a government insurance office. Now personally I’m sympathetic to the view that given the changing climate a lot of property is likely to become uninsurable in the not-so-distant future without a government backed option, but the concept that “government organisations are bad…but we need more of them” is an obvious set of mental gymnastics from Rennick. Also they want to build more infrastructure - but purely funded by Australian government bonds. Also the party really wants our government owned gold stored in Australia not in the UK, for some reason. If we did need to sell it for some reason, wouldn’t it be better for it to be not as far away from the people buying it as possible? (I do not think gold reserves for financial reasons have a lot of purpose in the present day).
Rennick likes coal and gas and nuclear and doesn’t like those dastardly renewables (though the party does like hydro), and they want more mining, logging and fishing. They’re also hugely mad any farmers might want to make money by having solar or wind turbines on their farms. They’re suspicious of climate change and consider net-zero leftist ideology.
The party is pretty strongly anti-foreigners. They want heavily reduced immigration, reduced international investment and land purchasing, they’re suspicious of international companies and they don’t believe in multiculturalism.
The party is anti compulsory childhood vaccinations (charming, especially during a measles epidemic in America). Their anti-bureaucracy fetish also wants to devolve things like health and education to the states with as little national oversight and correlation as possible. Oh, and they want to cut beer excise.
Finally, they’re pro-whistleblower protections, in the context that they are sure that the government bureaucracies are getting up to terrible things and need to be held accountable.
Is this party trying to kill me?
No open policies on gun ownership that I saw, but they are anti-vaccination, particularly for children and for newly developed vaccines. That counts.
Is this party trying to harm me?
Absolutely. They don’t like vaccines, they don’t believe in climate change and they’re pretty suspicious of anyone they think is not exactly like them.
Conclusion:
This is your classic radical right ideologue party with more than a small libertarian bent. There’s very little open conspiracy minded policy on the website, but there’s a lot that’s nasty, small-minded and afraid of change and people who aren’t exactly like them.
Website: https://peoplefirstparty.au/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/senatorrennick
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gerard.rennick
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/senator_rennick/
(New party for 2025)
Nobody loves quitting their party and starting new parties with their name in the title as much as far right conservative Coalition members do. Gerard Rennick is another of the many bad decisions for senator that the QLD LNP have made over the years. Rennick’s a particularly choice selection of theirs, having been placed low enough on the 2016 double dissolution ballot to still not win a Senate seat in 2016, having been accused of buying his position on the Senate ballot in 2019, and having been pushed back into an unwinnable ballot spot by the LNP for the 2025 election, leading to his decision to quit the party in a snit. In between he’s advocated for anti abortion causes, supports vaccine conspiracy theories, is pro-Russia and sceptical of their assassinations, and he’s a right wing climate denialist who thinks the BOM is tampering with climate data.
So what’s his party like? Well, a lot of the same.
Party Analysis
Rennick wants to raise the tax free threshold to $40,000, in a sort of mega LMITO. They also want income splitting between couples. They want superannuation to be completely voluntary and that money back in people’s payslips, as reading between the lines they hate industry super funds in particular. Upfront discounts for paying super should be reinstated. Fringe benefits tax should be removed (so the long lunch is back! Welcome back, 1980s), and then a lot of adjustments to various tax policies that mostly looked like “foreign investment is bad, small businesses hate payroll tax, and remove the tax exemption on native title payments in the name of ‘equity’ for non-First Nations folk”.
They have a flexible childcare funding policy, which on the surface sounds like it’s trying to help families: they want to give parents money to spend on whatever form of childcare they want. However this is because the party is incredibly anti early childhood education. Their suggestions on what parents might want to fund with their childcare money is “a nanny, a friend, or another flexible childcare solution such as the parent”. Basically, they don’t think kids should have access to quality, professional early childhood education, but should be at home with a parent or the closest person possible.
The party is anti bureaucracy and wants to streamline the public service (who they are convinced are making the big bucks)…but also wants to set up both a government owned bank (through the post office, like every single other party with this policy) and also a government insurance office. Now personally I’m sympathetic to the view that given the changing climate a lot of property is likely to become uninsurable in the not-so-distant future without a government backed option, but the concept that “government organisations are bad…but we need more of them” is an obvious set of mental gymnastics from Rennick. Also they want to build more infrastructure - but purely funded by Australian government bonds. Also the party really wants our government owned gold stored in Australia not in the UK, for some reason. If we did need to sell it for some reason, wouldn’t it be better for it to be not as far away from the people buying it as possible? (I do not think gold reserves for financial reasons have a lot of purpose in the present day).
Rennick likes coal and gas and nuclear and doesn’t like those dastardly renewables (though the party does like hydro), and they want more mining, logging and fishing. They’re also hugely mad any farmers might want to make money by having solar or wind turbines on their farms. They’re suspicious of climate change and consider net-zero leftist ideology.
The party is pretty strongly anti-foreigners. They want heavily reduced immigration, reduced international investment and land purchasing, they’re suspicious of international companies and they don’t believe in multiculturalism.
The party is anti compulsory childhood vaccinations (charming, especially during a measles epidemic in America). Their anti-bureaucracy fetish also wants to devolve things like health and education to the states with as little national oversight and correlation as possible. Oh, and they want to cut beer excise.
Finally, they’re pro-whistleblower protections, in the context that they are sure that the government bureaucracies are getting up to terrible things and need to be held accountable.
Is this party trying to kill me?
No open policies on gun ownership that I saw, but they are anti-vaccination, particularly for children and for newly developed vaccines. That counts.
Is this party trying to harm me?
Absolutely. They don’t like vaccines, they don’t believe in climate change and they’re pretty suspicious of anyone they think is not exactly like them.
Conclusion:
This is your classic radical right ideologue party with more than a small libertarian bent. There’s very little open conspiracy minded policy on the website, but there’s a lot that’s nasty, small-minded and afraid of change and people who aren’t exactly like them.
