LNP defector Rennick beaten by One Nation’s Roberts for last Queensland Senate spot
Queensland’s Senate line-up has been decided, and One Nation’s Malcolm Roberts has pipped Liberal National Party defector Gerard Rennick.
One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts has won Queensland’s sixth Senate spot, edging out sitting senator and Liberal National Party defector Gerard Rennick.
Nearly four weeks after the May 3 federal election, the Australian Electoral Commission distributed preferences for the Queensland Senate votes, confirming two Labor senators, two Liberal National Party senators, one Greens senator, and one senator from One Nation had been elected.
Labor’s Corinne Mulholland, a former in-house lobbyist for Star casino group, became the second ALP senator elected, after the party lost that spot in its disastrous 2019 election result.
Senator-elect Mulholland joins Cairns-based Nita Green for the ALP.
Paul Scarr and Susan McDonald were re-elected for the LNP. Senator Scarr sits in the Liberal Party room in Canberra, while Senator McDonald aligns with the Nationals.
New federal Greens leader Larissa Waters has been re-elected to the Senate in fifth spot, after she was first voted in at the 2010 election.
The sixth spot came down to a contest between Senator Roberts and Senator Rennick, who ran under his own party name Gerard Rennick People First on a joint ticket with the Katter’s Australian Party.
Mr Rennick’s ticket attracted about one-third of a quota and One Nation secured nearly one-half of a quota.
Both Labor and the LNP’s Senate tickets attracted just over two quotas.
Senator Rennick quit the LNP in August last year, after failing in a legal bid to overturn an internal preselection vote in which the party’s state council booted him off the Senate ticket, in favour of the party’s treasurer Stuart Fraser.
Mr Fraser was also not elected to the Senate.
When comparing Mr Fraser and Senator Rennick’s individual first preference votes, Mr Fraser attracted 1935 votes and Senator Rennick secured 13,267.
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