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Gerard Rennick (born 5 November 1970) is an Australian politician who has been a Senator for Queensland since July 2019. He is a member of the Liberal National Party of Queensland and sits with the Liberal Party in federal parliament.

Early life

Gerard was born and raised on a property outside Chinchilla, on the Darling Downs. In his youth he worked as a farmhand, fruit picker, bartender and pump attendant.

He completed his education in Toowoomba at Downlands College, before moving to Brisbane where he completed a Bachelor of Commerce degree at the University of Queensland. He also has a master's degree in Taxation Law from the University of Sydney and a master's degree in applied finance from FINSIA. He is married with three children.

Political career

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported that Rennick donated $35,000 to the Liberal National Party of Queensland in the year before winning the third slot on the party's senate ticket—a position that eventually saw him elected to a six-year term. The LNP rejected as "offensive and ridiculous" any suggestion the donations played a role in his preselection, and highlighted the fact that some of their members self funded their elections.

During a speech on the Prohibiting Energy Market Misconduct Bill, he referred to Queensland Labor Senator Murray Watt as Labor's "chief yapping poodle."

On an interview on Sky News, Rennick spoke about government overreach in the "classroom and the bedroom" and compared it to a Communist takeover by the bureaucracy. When asked to clarify, Rennick said "there are... groups within Australia, they are not Chinese groups, they are Australian groups, that seek to undermine our individual liberties and I think that is a greater threat to our sovereignty ."

Positions

Tax Reform

Rennick has used his background in finance to advocate for tax reform. He called for profits in Australia to be taxed at the same rate as profits of foreign owned entities. He claims that this will fund cuts to both payroll tax (even though this is a state based tax) and income tax.

Climate

Rennick has been viewed as a "right wing climate denialist" by the ALP, and was singled out by ALP leader Anthony Albanese as someone "who thinks the Bureau of Meteorology is part of global conspiracy".. The view that Rennick does not accept the mainstream scientific findings is widely held in the community, including by the Greens and the media.

He has repeatedly accused the Australian government's Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) of falsifying climate data, and tampering with climate data to "perpetuate global warming hysteria". On 12 November 2019 Rennick again accused BOM of not following proper processes when recording statistical data, although he admitted he had not yet met with the BOM, adding would "get to that eventually". Rennick stated that he had read the 2011 independent peer review panel findings into the BOM's methods but nonetheless he accused the BOM of incompetence due to the BOM's supposed failure, in his eyes, to meet the recommendations of the review, even though the key finding of the review was that the methodologies used by the Bureau were satisfactory. Rennick, who is not a scientist, continued to accuse the BOM of not following proper procedures because, inter alia, Australian weather stations do not yet have 3 temperature gauges, as is now best practice in the USA and Canada. This was not a recommendation of the independent review panel, which only recommended that equipment "redundancy" be deployed in weather stations over time, to which the BOM agreed, stating that "System redundancy will be introduced gradually over a ten-year period at a rate that is dependent on available funding."

Rennick has also accused the BOM of "keeping two sets of books", comparing scientific data collection to financial records and accountancy.

Rennick has questioned scientists in the media and at Senate estimates on scientific theory and records, including charges that scientists have destroyed records. During that questioning Rennick accused the Bureau of ignoring scientific advice and destroying records, and suggested that the BOM showed a lack of commitment to scientific accuracy. When questioning the CSRIO, Rennick based part of his argument on Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. Many of Rennick's questions to the BOM were taken on notice. BOM director, Andrew Johnson responded to these accusations by stating that the "Bureau stand by the quality and integrity of those datasets.”

Rennick has challenged BOM on the margin of error in their thermometers, which according to the independent panel's findings, should be reduced from ±0.5°C to ±0.2°C. The BOM has not replied to Rennick's queries about the implementation of procedures recommended by the 2011 review, although the BOM did agree in 2012 to tighten the error margins in their response to the independent review, and has shown progress in implementing this. The BOM also reported that the 6-monthly checks of their weather stations showed that 97% were within 0.2 °C and 99.5% of the stations were within 0.5 °C.

Senator Murray Watt called Rennick's BOM allegations "nuts", adding that such allegations were sourced "from right-wing think tanks". Rennick has admitted that many of his opinions are sourced from biologist Jennifer Marohasy, who represents the Institute of Public Affairs, a right wing think tank in part funded by coal magnate, Gina Rinehart.

Superannuation

On 13 November 2019 Rennick called superannuation a "cancer", stating in his speech; "Millions of dollars gets sucked out of the pockets of the battlers in the bush and sent to the blowhards in Sydney and Melbourne to manage, all for a small cost of around $37 billion a year in management fees." He said union-linked industry super funds were "laughing all the way to the bank" while no money was reinvested in regional areas. In the same speech he accused the Labor party of selling regional Australia "down the toilet" during the Hawke-Keating era through their globalist, privatisation agenda - selling off such government owned corporations as Qantas and the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. "Now regional Australia has to pay more for flying regionally than it costs to fly overseas...The CBA, like every other bank in this country, became obsessed with housing rather than driving business and investment, especially in the regions."

Childcare

Rennick's position is that "subject to financial considerations, if we can leave children at home with at least one parent, that's something worth striving for," but he suggested that "early childhood education is... not the best way to invest in our future".

Foreign relations

Rennick has advocated for closer ties with Russia because "they're part of the West; they drink, they're Christians, they play soccer, they're Caucasian". Rennick has called for deescalating tensions with Vladimir Putin and Russia; "They are a genuine superpower and it’s not in the world’s interest to have antagonistic relations with superpowers...There’s a bigger picture here and it is world peace."

Rennick raised doubts that Russia was behind the Skripal chemical weapons attack in the United Kingdom.

Rennick is a non-interventionist and has spoken out against regime change wars. He outlined his position clearly during his maiden speech.

Immigration

Rennick has compared Australia's immigration policy to farmers who "overstock paddock", and has claimed that immigration was more damaging to Australia's environment than carbon pollution. He also wants a reduction in the number of temporary visa holders in Australia which numbers over 2 million.

Other positions

Rennick has been a long term advocate for reforming the federation; government building and retaining profit making infrastructure such as dams, ports and electricity power plants; sustainable immigration to ensure quality of life for all Australians; higher taxes on profits sent offshore; and he has called on universities to underwrite the costs of education.

Rennick opposes the closing of maternity wards by the state government in regional Queensland.

Rennick is also opposed to the adoption of poker machines in the state of Queensland. He consequently has accused the Labor state government of being "utterly incompetent and morally corrupt".

He also spoke about having a constitutional convention to clearly define and separate the responsibilities of the Federal and State Governments in the federation - "It is time for COAG to hold a constitutional convention to clearly define and separate these responsibilities with proposed changes put to a referendum."

References

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• Liberal National Party of Queensland politicians
• Living people
• 1970 births
• People from the Darling Downs
• Members of the Australian Senate for Queensland
• University of Queensland alumni
• University of Sydney alumni