Gerard Rennick, the Queensland LNP anti-abortion and pro-Putin senator who was dumped from the party’s Senate ticket last year, has defected to the crossbench, with plans to launch his People First Party at the next election.
In contrast to the defection from Labor of WA Senator Fatima Payman, which saw extensive backgrounding of the media by the government and tens of thousands of words written demonising an invented threat of Muslim sectarianism, the defection of a middle-aged white guy from the LNP has caused barely a ripple of interest among political journalists. Not, of course, that there are any double standards in the treatment of Muslim women in politics.
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