Former Queensland senator Gerard Rennick has launched a blistering attack on the Liberal Party leadership, accusing it of weakness in its handling of Jacinta Nampijinpa Price’s remarks about Indian migrants. Rennick, now with the People’s First Party, cited reporting in The Indian Sun of research by pollster Kos Samaras of RedBridge Group Australia, which suggested as many as 85 per cent of Indian Australians voted Labor at the last federal election.
Rennick argued that the figures reflected a political reality rather than a cause for outrage. “The Indian Sun reported this poll in a way that suggested the Indian community did not find this offensive. No where does it suggest Indians are offended by the poll. Yet when Jacinta repeated the findings of the poll all hell broke lose with the Liberal Party falling over themselves to apologise for totally innocuous remarks,” he wrote.
He went further, describing the Coalition as “weak and insipid” and claiming the party had “shot one of their few politicians who call a spade a spade.” For Rennick, the controversy was a symptom of deeper failures within the Liberals. “It will be no surprise to my followers that the Liberal Party has again shown themselves to be weak and insipid when it comes to standing up to vested interests,” he said.
Rennick insisted the real issue lay in housing shortages and broader policy pressures, not the remarks themselves. “It’s worth noting that immigration isn’t the only cause of our economic problems. Taxation breaks, superannuation, monetary policy, regulation and skills training are other contributing factors,” he said. “The Labor party however are the ones that need to be held to account on what they are doing about immigration in the context of the housing shortage. Instead the Liberals have turned the guns on themselves.”
The former senator defended Price, arguing that she had been unfairly targeted for simply citing polling data. “Why couldn’t the Liberal party just stand their ground for a change?” he asked. “It’s a well known fact that migrant populations tend to vote Labor with another post by Kos Samaras showing that of the 50 electorates with the highest migrant populations, 48 of them vote Labor.”
The comments come after weeks of political fallout, which saw Opposition Leader Sussan Ley apologise on behalf of her party and later remove Price from the shadow ministry, saying her position was untenable after she refused to apologise directly. “May I take this opportunity, as leader of the Liberal Party, to apologise to all Indian Australians and indeed others who were hurt and distressed by the comments that were made, comments that I said at the time should not have been made,” Ley said.
For Rennick, that response only underlined his broader claim that the Liberals had lost their direction. “This latest act of cowardice is just another reason why the Liberal party is a lost cause. The only way forward from this is to build a genuine grassroots party that will preselect candidates with conviction,” he said. “If you want to make a change for the better please consider joining.”
While the Coalition wrestles with the fallout and its strained ties with multicultural voters, Rennick is pitching his People’s First Party as an alternative for conservatives disillusioned with the major parties. He framed the debate as bigger than one senator’s comments. “The Labor party are the ones that need to be held to account,” he said. “Instead the Liberals have turned the guns on themselves and shot one of their few politicians who call a spade a spade.”
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