‘Have a crack:’ LNP senator starts own party

Senator Gerard Rennick has sensationally quit the Liberal National Party and started his own party after he was dropped from the LNP ticket ahead of the next federal election.

Queensland Senator Rennick will re-contest the next election as an independent under the banner of the Gerard Rennick People First party vowing to fight for the Australian people.

While he knows it will be an uphill battle, the senator said he did not want to die wondering.

“You’ve got to have a crack right,” Senator Rennick said.

While he would rather have stayed in the LNP, now that he was off the ticket he said he wasn’t going to cry over spilt milk.

“You got to do, what you got to do,” he said.

“It was time to move on and I have literally moved on.

“What it will do is give me a little more flexibility in terms of talking about the issues I recently ran for in politics anyway.”

Senator Rennick wants to give greater flexibility to the Australian people by letting them have more control over their childcare needs, super, banking and insurance.

He would like to see childcare paid directly to parents so they can choose the type of childcare they need.

“There are millions of shift workers who cannot pick their child up at 6pm at night, there are other people who work part time and might only need childcare for three or four hours during the day, but you have to pay for a 12-hour day,” he said.

“If you could just pay for three or four hours for a nanny there is a lot more flexibility that way.”

Senator Rennik would also like to see the tax-free threshold lifted to $40,000 making it fairer for low-income earners.

“I don’t think it is fair that workers can’t get a tax deduction for cost-of-living but businesses get a tax deduction for the cost of running a business,” he said.

“Let’s try and keep them going and keep their head above water to encourage as many people back to the workforce as possible.”

Another change he wants is a public bank, infrastructure bank and a government insurance bank to provide financial services to the Australian people.

“A lot of people cannot get insurance, and they are tired when they do have insurance have to pay another 10 per cent every year just to keep their insurance going,” he said.

“Superannuation should be voluntary, if you are on $40,000, you are paying about $4000 in tax and $5000 in super.

“Even if you are up to $120,000 you want to be paying off your house before you start worrying about saving for your retirement.”

“Everything is geared against young people getting ahead, too high taxes, too high HECS debt, you can’t pay HECS debts off.

“You might have $20,000 in super but you can’t pay off your HECS debt with it.

We are supposed to believe in personal responsibility, but people can’t pay off their HECS debt or pay off a house.”

Senator Rennick said he had nothing to lose by trying and wanted to raise these issues and get people thinking about bigger strategic stuff.

“The two major parties aren’t talking about big picture issues as to how we change the structural architecture of our economy,” he said.

“If we can cut off the debt and find more opportunities for young people, just to get them back into housing.”