Anti-vax Liberal Gerard Rennick links jabs to AIDS

Liberal senator Gerard Rennick has compared the Covid-19 jab to AIDS in a late night anti-­vaccination speech.

Liberal senator Gerard Rennick. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

Liberal senator Gerard Rennick has compared the Covid-19 jab to AIDS in a late night anti-­vaccination speech.

The Queenslander delivered the speech to the Senate last week, after the Albanese government refused to reveal how many claims for death and injuries had been paid out since the Covid vaccine rollout.

“Every day I still hear from people that have suffered injuries from the vaccine or suffer through mandates or suffer some form of discrimination,” Senator Rennick told the upper house.

“We have recently passed through about 10 million cases of Covid in the last six months. If that’s not evidence to say that the vaccines aren’t effective, then I don’t know what is.”

In the speech, Senator Rennick said Covid-19 vaccines were “unsafe” and “ineffective”, comparing the biochemistry process to “like when you’re cooking sausages on the barbecue and you see blobs of fat merge together”.

“So what we’ve got now is a vaccine that has delivered a protein in an unregulated manner. That’s similar to a pathway of cancer, where, basically, you get the unregulated reproduction of toxic molecules,” he said.

“Where you have your body attacking your own cells, you’re creating a pathway similar to ­acquired immune deficiency ­syndrome.”

When The Australian reached Senator Rennick on Wednesday, he stood by the comparison of the Covid vaccine to AIDS, a severe and life-threatening disease caused by HIV (human immunodeficiency virus).

Senator Rennick said “there’s not a lot of this stuff written down but I do speak to people who’ve got PhDs in genealogy and cancer research”.

The 51-year-old former accountant – who is not vaccinated – has attracted widespread criticism within his own party for his anti-vax views and decision to meet with the so-called “freedom convoy” of protesters who occupied Canberra in February.

Former prime minister Scott Morrison urged Senator Rennick to listen to the medical experts in December, after he labelled the approval of the Pfizer vaccine for children aged five to 11 as “completely irresponsible”.

Senator Rennick’s Facebook following surged when he began sharing stories of people claiming to have suffered side effects from Covid-19 vaccines. Many of the claims have been disputed by health officials and Senator Rennick conceded to The Guardian that he could not be sure the stories were “100 per cent accurate”.

After threatening to abstain from voting on Morrison government legislation last year, Senator Rennick struck a deal with then health minister Greg Hunt to compensate people who had lost as little as $1000 of income after a vaccine injury. The compensation threshold was lowered from $5000.

Government Services Minister Bill Shorten refused to answer Senator Rennick’s latest queries about how many claims for vaccine deaths and injuries had been paid out; how many were outstanding; how many had been dismissed; and whether a non­disclosure agreement was a condition of these payments.

In a written response, he said fewer than 1 per cent of applications under the Covid-19 vaccine claim scheme had been approved.