Radicalised ‘mongrel’ George Christensen bids farewell to Parliament

According to George Christensen there are two types of politicians: poodles and mongrels.

Political poodles, the retiring Nationals MP explained in his final speech to Parliament on Thursday, toe the party line and rapidly ascend to the front bench.

By contrast, political mongrels like himself stand up for what they believe in and are marked down by those in authority as “never to be promoted”.

Nationals MP George Christensen during his valedictory speech to Parliament.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Indeed, Christensen never made it onto the Coalition frontbench during his 11-plus years in Parliament, despite coveting a ministerial role in immigration or social services.

A stint as Chief Nationals Whip lasted only a few months because he was too outspoken and individualistic to enforce party discipline.

Despite his backbench status, Christensen became one of Parliament’s most recognisable and notorious members – constantly dominating the headlines and infuriating his party colleagues.

When not threatening to cross the floor on a key piece of legislation, he was making inflammatory comments about Muslims or disputing the science of climate change.

George Christensen posed for a Good Weekend story in 2016 when he was Chief Nationals Whip.Credit: Andrew Meares

The image of Christensen wearing a singlet, holding a whip and showing off a giant tattoo of the Madonna and Child on his upper arm – taken for a 2016 Good Weekend cover story – is burnt into the retinas of anyone who saw it.

While styling himself as a champion for his north Queensland electorate of Dawson he earned the nickname the “member for Manila” when it was revealed he spent a stunning 300 days in the Philippines between 2014 and 2018.

The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age reported the devout Christian was a regular at Pony Tails, an adult entertainment venue in the red-light district of Angeles City.

After examining the trips, the Australian Federal Police found no evidence of illegality but raised concerns he had put himself at risk of being compromised.

Christensen, who was ordained as a deacon in the Anglican Church after converting from Orthodox Christianity and Roman Catholicism, met his wife April while in the Philippines. The couple has a daughter, Margaret, born in 2020.

Even before entering Parliament, Christensen was regarded by fellow Nationals as being at the far-right of the party’s ideological spectrum. Pauline Hanson’s One Nation would have been a more natural political home for him.

By the time of the 2016 US presidential election, Christensen was a devoted fan of Donald Trump train and an avid reader of alt-right websites such as Breitbart News and Zero Hedge.

Mirroring the radicalisation of the American conservative movement in the Trump era, Christensen’s views became increasingly extreme and conspiratorial over time.

By 2017 he was parroting Vladimir Putin’s talking points on Ukraine; a year later he appeared to glorify violence by posting a Facebook photo of himself pointing a pistol with the caption “do you feel lucky, greenie punks?”

The COVID-19 pandemic further accelerated his drift towards the far fringes of the culture wars.

On his website, Christensen urges visitors to reject the “great reset”, which he describes as a “globalist plan that seeks to fuse socialism and corporatism and embed it permanently into our economy and society” under the guise of the pandemic.

Last year he appeared on far-right US conspiracy outlet InfoWars, where he encouraged people to protest outside Australian embassies over COVID-19 policies and laughed along as host Alex Jones compared Australia’s COVID-19 quarantine facilities to the Nazi concentration camps at Auschwitz.

Christensen later advised parents not to vaccinate their children against the virus, earning a rebuke from Prime Minister Scott Morrison who urged Australians not to listen to his views.

In Christensen’s worldview, such behaviour makes him not a dangerous crank but a noble freedom fighter. “If the world is against the truth, then I am against the world,” he said loftily in his farewell speech, quoting Saint Athanasius.

After praising himself for securing upgraded netball courts, bridges and highways for his electorate, Christensen soon moved to more scintillating ideological terrain.

Taxpayers, he said, should not be funding a “biased fake news media outlet” like the ABC. He then hit out at Aboriginal welcome-to-country ceremonies, “woke” corporations and “globalist” elites. Taxation, he said, is a form of theft.

While Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce praised Christensen for having the courage to stand behind his divisive views, most of his colleagues are simply saying good riddance.

To those who believe he brought both the Parliament and Coalition into disrepute, Christensen chose a good term for himself in mongrel – if not in the self-aggrandising sense he intended.

Jacqueline Maley cuts through the noise of the federal election campaign with news, views and expert analysis. Sign up to our Australia Votes 2022 newsletter here.