THE South Australian Liberal Senator called a “COVID denier”, “anti-woman” and part of a “far-right takeover” was elected president of the South Australian Liberal Party in a ballot of party delegates on Saturday morning.
“The smear campaign (against Alex Antic) lost 119–73 and One Nation has welcomed it. The so-caled “moderate” Liberal old guard did not,” the action group Reform Australia commented.
The ABC slightly toned down their description of Antic from “far right” to “the right-wing backbencher, who has praised members of One Nation and repeatedly crossed the floor against the Coalition”, while reporting the defeat of SA Upper House so-called “moderate” leader Nicola Centofanti in the ballot.
When it began to emerge that the grassroots membership was swinging towards Antic and his populist causes, the mainstream media began to talk up federal party intervention.
An ABC commentator wrote: “It’s at the stage now where all roads you’d have to think are leading to federal intervention,” one moderate source told this column, pointing to the federal Liberal Party’s takeover of the New South Wales branch.
The SA Liberals have historically – at least in recent decades – been dominated by left-wing moderates who would be comfortable among today’s Teals, or even Greens. Antic has previously committed to giving the Liberal grassroots a “genuine say in the policy direction” of the party and that’s exactly what they did over the weekend.
The backers of Antic have been the same Liberals who drifted across to One Nation when they found their left-leaning party elite not willing to listen.
Now, with Antic in the presidency, the voices of the anti-populist party elite like Alexander Downer, will fade into obscurity. Downer, as the former British High Commission, played a role in the international attempt led by British MI6 operative Christopher Steele, to smear Donald Trump with the Russiagate allegations.
Reform Australia continued their lively narrative: “They dragged him to a medi-hotel during covid over his vaccine status. Yesterday they had to call him Mr President.
The media is calling it a takeover. The moderates are calling it the end of the party. One Nation is calling it a course correction. Same event. Three sermons.
This is the man they spent months and money trying to stop. Mystery candidates. Career-ending threats. Federal executive hovering. The usual “he’ll make us unelectable” script.
The members voted anyway. He is the senator they dragged to a medi-hotel over vaccine status. The one who called passports and mandates coercion. The one who kept saying my body, my choice when the slogan was only allowed one way.
He stood with Joanna Howe while they smeared the Women’s Council as “anti-women” for noticing late-term abortion is not healthcare.
He put up a bill to stop the chemical and surgical transition of teenagers. He tried to put the words man and woman back in the Sex Discrimination Act and he was the only Liberal senator who crossed the floor on Albanese’s hate speech laws.
You can’t be half-pregnant on free speech. The rest lost their nerve. He didn’t. They lost the state election, finishing third, then lectured the membership about electability.
If the party is now “too right,” it’s because the ‘safer’ version kept losing and the members got tired of being told to shut up.
Antic wants members to have a say. That is being sold as extremism. State Council spoke. The old guard is still writing the press releases.”
