SA Senator Alex Antic appeals to ‘god-fearing conservatives’ for Covid crusade

A government SA senator has told a disgraced Hillsong pastor’s live crowd that religious conservatives should join him in politics.

Liberal Senator Alex Antic has made a public call-out for “God fearing conservatives” to join him in politics under the party’s right-wing-led religious recruitment campaign.

Senator Antic made the call-out during the live “Prayer and Pushback” event, hosted by disgraced former Hillsong pastor Pat Mesiti, on Friday.

He also blasted Australian states for handing too much power to bureaucrats, and claimed the country was slowly adopting a form of totalitarianism – a system of government that prohibits all political opposition and controls its citizens.

Senator Antic called on religious conservatives to “join” him in grassroots politics to prevent rules that he said were “impinging on our freedoms”.

“My view for the longest time has been this has happened partly because good, God fearing conservative people who love their country has vacated the field of politics,” he said.

“The best thing people can do in my view in order to have their voice heard is have it heard inside the machinery of politics.”

The SA Senator said he would “love to have people join me” and urged viewers to contact him via an email connected to the Believe in Blue campaign, spearheaded by senior members in the SA Liberal Party’s right faction.

The Believe in Blue campaign came under fire last year, as the Liberal Party initially moved to ban hundreds of conservative Christians joining the SA branch.

The state party eventually backed down and did not expel or suspend the members, but an investigation into the party’s membership process was launched.

Earlier in the event, Senator Antic criticised Australia’s various methods in fighting the Covid-19 pandemic, including SA’s home quarantine app, medi-hotels and vaccine mandates for certain industries.

SA Police escort Liberal Senator Alex Antic to a medi-hotel reserved for unvaccinated travellers to SA. Picture nDean Martin

Senator Antic, whose family fled the oppression of 1950s Yugoslavia, said eastern European people “tell me all the time that they’re worried about what they’re seeing (in Australia)”.

“I’m not suggesting it’s anything even remotely similar (to 1950s Yugoslavia), but there is this feel that we are drifting into soft totalitarianism in this country,” he said.

Mesiti’s live-streamed event featured several controversial figures, including Coalition backbencher George Christensen, who was recently punished by Prime Minsiter Scott Morrison for urging parents to not vaccinate their children.

Just before Mr Christensen started speaking, Mesiti announced Facebook had shut down the stream on its platform, though it continued on YouTube.

Prominent American anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. also spoke at the event – but Mesiti claimed it was not an anti-vax event.

“We are not anti-anyone or anything, not anti-vax, this is about pro, pro,” Mesiti said at the start of the event.

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