I only recently discovered that, like Cory Bernardi in early 20171, Gerard Rennick had been dumped from a winnable seat in the Senate, and had got the hump and attempted, also like Bernardi, unsuccessfully to set up his own party, to try to hang onto his political ‘career’. Rennick, the Queensland Liberal National Party (LNP) senator was dumped from a winnable spot on the party’s Queensland ticket in July 2023 in a preselection punch up. Senators Paul Scarr and Susan McDonald were preselected, as expected, in the top two spots. After a close vote, the third spot went to Stuart Fraser, a Brisbane businessman and party treasurer. Fraser is known as a moderate, and many of the moderates believed that Rennick, with his bizarre beliefs and utterances, represented a threat to the LNP’s efforts to regain credibility among urban voters2.
As a consequence, in August 2024, Rennick stated on social media: “Yesterday I resigned from the LNP in order to run as an independent senator at the next federal election so I can continue to fight for the Australian people”. He added “In order to get my name above the line on the Senate ticket I will have to set up a party which I hope to call People First”3.
In the May 2025 federal election, he hoped to retain his senate seat under the umbrella of the People First Party, but failed to be reelected. So, the average IQ of the sSenate increased ever so slightly with the demise of Rennick’s political career.
Gerard Rennick has been the subject of derision on this blog before, in several articles. He is one of those ignorant buffoons who is certain that their utterances are true, despite them being easily shown to be false. He is a perfect example of the Dunning-Kruger Effect, which states that the thick are often incredibly confident, while the intelligent are filled with doubt.
He spouts absolute drivel in trying to refute anthropogenic climate change to the extent that climate scientist Professor Michael E. Mann from the University of Pennsylvania said “Everything … you’ve said is gibberish, a stringing together of scientific terms reminiscent of monkeys typing on a typewriter. You have shown you have no understanding at all of the science. Quit while you’re ahead. In fact, quit politics, for the good of your country!”4 He is also a half-baked anti-vaxxer who thought it was no big deal if children were infected with Covid, seemingly unaware that it could be very dangerous4.
After the Australian Capital Territory government introduced a plan for free childcare, Rennick said this preschool plan was a Labor Party plot to strengthen government control over child raising. This was despite a similar plan in NSW being started by the then Liberal Party government4.
In his first parliamentary speech, Rennick also tried to give the impression of knowledge by using scientific terminology without knowing what it means. He also conflated concepts such as thermodynamics and relativity, again without knowing what they mean. He often spouts complete howlers in the process. This one was a classic: “As anyone who understands science knows, E = mc2. Energy comes from the combustion of energy in the sun. Six hundred billion tonnes of hydrogen are burnt every second. That’s converted into 596 billion tonnes of helium and four billion tonnes of energy”5.
The drivel in the second half of this parliamentary speech continues along the same vein, using scientific terms the meaning of which he seems completely ignorant. In addition, he quotes Planck’s Radiation Law and Wien’s Law incorrectly6.
Rennick has also accused the Bureau of Meteorology of tampering with their temperature data in order to “perpetuate global warming hysteria” and of “rewriting weather records to fit in with the global warming agenda”. It should go without saying that these assertions are lies, but with the plethora of climate change deniers among far-right political parties such as One Notion and the LNP, that these are lies unfortunately needs to be reiterated time and again7.
Even stranger are his views on Ukraine. In one of his parliamentary speeches, he said that the overthrow of the Yanukovych government was “a violent coup in 2014 that overthrew a democratically elected government”8. This is, like much of Rennick’s utterances, abject horseshit.
In late November 2013, Ukrainians took to the streets in peaceful protest after then-president Viktor Yanukovych chose not to sign an agreement that would have integrated the country more closely with the European Union, despite campaigning on such a platform9.
As the protests continued into 2014, the government began cracking down on the demonstrators. The size of the protests only grew in reaction and turned into what was termed “the revolution of dignity.” Those who continued protesting risked assault, kidnapping, unlawful arrest, and loss of their jobs. On January 16, the government introduced a series of repressive laws severely restricting civil society and the right to protest. On January 22, the first protesters were killed in clashes in Kyiv; in all, over 100, mostly civilian protesters died, the majority on February 20 and 219.
On February 22, after President Yanukovych had fled the country, the parliament voted to oust him and hold new elections. On May 25, Ukrainians elected Petro Poroshenko as president. After October elections, a new pro-reform coalition government came into power in December 20149. Hardly a violent coup, but facts do not enter into Rennick’s consciousness. It is instructive to realise that when Yanukovych blew through, he went to Russia, where he now lives in exile. Very telling.
Hilariously, Rennick maintains that all the attempts by European powers to end the fighting in eastern Ukraine after separatists took over Donetsk and Luhansk, were simply “a deep state ploy, instigated by the Biden crime family and the deep state Democrats, to advance imperial interests … to stop Russia from selling gas to Germany”8. This garbage is the sort of drivel which comes directly from the deranged mind, such as it is, of the Orange paedophile and his halfwit associates.
This speech was delivered in February 2025, three years after Russia invaded Ukraine. It was this invasion which eventually put paid to Russian gas exports to Europe, not any actions by the Biden family. Given the huge corruption of the Trump family, casting aspersion on the Biden shows a monumental inability of Rennick to understand what is happening in the world.
To be too wacky for the LNP shows that Rennick is either profoundly stupid or is getting much of his funding, and his speeches, from the people who think the orange paedophile is just the ticket in his destruction of US democracy.
Sources
- https://blotreport.com/2017/02/12/where-to-now-saint-bernardi/
- https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/jul/07/renegade-queensland-senator-gerard-rennick-dumped-from-winnable-spot-on-lnp-ticket
- https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/aug/26/gerard-rennick-quits-lnp-liberal-national-launch-people-first-party
- https://blotreport.com/2023/05/27/gerard-rennick-and-the-dunning-kruger-effect/
- https://blotreport.com/2023/05/29/gerard-rennick-and-the-dunning-kruger-effect-2/
- https://blotreport.com/2023/06/03/gerard-rennick-and-the-dunning-kruger-effect-3/
- https://blotreport.com/2019/04/24/a-stem-world-or-no-world/
- https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Hansard/Hansard_Display?bid=chamber/hansards/28695/&sid=0154
- https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/explainers/understanding-ukraines-euromaidan-protests
Bravo! Well said. And all comments on Rennick intelligence, or lack thereof, apply also to Trump.