#rex patrick

Pauline Hanson IS in the Epstein Files despite One Nation supporters saying she isn't.

Running where: NSW, QLD, SA, TAS for the Senate

Prior reviews: federal 2016, federal 2019, federal 2022

What I said before: “I disagree with Lambie regularly, but she does seem genuinely responsive to community concerns, personal testimonies, and informed advice” (federal 2022)

What I think this year: What to make of Jacqui Lambie and her Network! She was originally elected for the Palmer United Party in 2013 but soon made a reputation for herself separate from Clive Palmer. She began her political career clearly on the right, but as time has gone on, she has become harder to pin down, embracing policies and ideas from both the left and the right. As a generalisation, I would say she now lands on the centre-right rather than the far-right, and her form of centre-right agenda is the type found among the working classes rather than Turnbull-esque business execs or Xenophon/teal middle classes. Lambie is a loud and sustained voice for a constituency in Tasmania big enough to provide electoral success for over a decade.

But she is also not very good at playing with other children. At the 2022 federal election, at which Lambie was not up for re-election, Tammy Tyrrell won a seat for JLN. Two years later, JLN candidates won 3 seats in Tasmania’s 35-seat state parliament and formed part of the balance of power. But the state count had not even been finalised when Tyrrell resigned from JLN for reasons that have never been aired fully in public, sitting as an independent at first and then registering the party Tammy Tyrrell for Tasmania (which is not contesting this election, as her term does not expire until 2028). As for the three little Lambies in the state parliament, it took merely five months for the flock to be dispersed: Lambie sacked two of them before they could resign. It was farcical and Kevin Bonham has summarised the proceedings in suitably condemnatory language.

So, what’s Jacqui doing this year, given that three of the four other people elected under her name have in the past 13 months ceased to represent the JLN? Why, endorse Senate tickets in three states beyond Tasmania, of course! She does not seem to have lost faith in her ability to work with others, even if the evidence suggests that we be wary. She is also recontesting her own Tasmanian seat, stating that if successful this will be her final term. I guess it’s now or never to build an interstate movement, then. But the previous time she attempted this, the 2016 double dissolution, her party couldn’t crack even 0.5% of the vote in any of the mainland states where she fielded candidates (her lead candidate in Victoria from 2016, amusingly enough, cropped up in WA this year at the top of the ticket for Stop Pedophiles! Protect kiddies!, and if you didn’t follow the WA state election you should read my three-parter in which I tried to deduce what the hell was going on).

One difference between 2016 and 2025 is that Lambie’s put a bit more effort into finding lead candidates for her interstate tickets. I don’t think they have any realistic chance of competing for a seat, but the b_auspol review of the NSW candidate suggests decent vetting, and in SA the lead JLN candidate is Rex Patrick, a former Senator who originally represented the Nick Xenophon Team before founding his own party. On reflection, my review of Patrick’s party in 2022 was unfair and I clearly wrote it in a hurry. I depicted him simply as belonging to a long line of parochial SA-focused candidates who can be bought with a few baubles. I remain lukewarm about some of Patrick’s politics, but he has been an energetic promoter of transparency in government. He promotes himself as the “Transparency Warrior” and the folks who handle Freedom of Information requests would be very familiar with him by now. The afore-linked page bills him as Australia’s “most experienced” FOI applicant/appellant, having lodged 297 requests.

Lambie’s website promises that she—and presumably anyone else elected for JLN—will “keep the bastards honest”, making her just the latest in a line of independent and minor-party candidates to appropriate the famous slogan of the Australian Democrats. The party’s election policies are really just a list of priorities and they don’t inspire me. We’ve got boring right-wing anxiety about foreign property ownership and frankly unimaginative energy policies focused on making gas cheaper (although at least there’s also a policy to install solar and battery power in social housing). JLN wants “fair” resource royalties without specifying what those would be, and somebody needed to proofread the list of priorities because it includes “multinational tax avoidance” as if that’s their policy, rather than that they want to stop it.

Much of Lambie's pitch is simply based on her personality, but a few policies get more detailed pages. Unsurprisingly, given Rex Patrick’s candidature, one is on government corruption. Another on foreign interference is classic Australian Sinophobia of the sort we’ve all seen before. This is not say that China does not seek to assert political hegemony in a multipolar world where the US’s status is crumbling by the day, just to state that JLN’s foreign policy has a narrow focus, reflective of an Australian anxiety that has often exaggerated the risk from China and too often deployed language of national security to excuse simple racism.

Speaking of the US, another signature Lambie policy is “Make Australia Make Again”, which looks nostalgically to Australia’s manufacturing sector of the post-WWII era. That time has passed; we are one of the world’s wealthiest countries and we have a post-industrial knowledge and services economy (over 62% of GDP). We don't have a large manufacturing sector because we can afford to buy goods from other people and pursue more lucrative forms of wealth creation. Lambie proclaims the failure of free trade, but some voters might look more warily at Lambie’s pro-tariffs position than they would have a couple of months ago before Trump imposed some of the most ill-conceived tariffs in history. For all their prominence, mining and manufacturing each contribute less than 6% of GDP; the days of manufacturing contributing 30% of GDP are dead and gone because we can do other things more efficiently with our labour and resources. Sorry Jacqui, this is a policy for the past, not for the future.

Recommendation: Give the Jacqui Lambie Network a weak preference. I would suggest placing the JLN directly above the Liberals but I would struggle to justify much higher unless you’re in SA and like Rex Patrick. JLN is, though, superior to extreme-right outfits like Family First.

Stephen Parry is indeed a dual citizen and has resigned, as both President of the Senate and a Senator - so if you thought that this “citizenship imbroglio” was over, you were sadly mistaken. So there will be plenty of drama coming our way in the next few weeks as the High Court will have to decide what to do with the results of the Tasmanian recount.  

Nick Xenophon has also, as he indicated earlier, resigned his position in the Senate in order to contest a seat in the SA election next year. The Nick Xenophon Team is no more, having changed their name to SA-Best Federal, so they now align more closely with their State branch. 

Running where: SA

Prior reviews: None, this is a new party, although my 2016 review of the Nick Xenophon Team and my 2019 review of the Centre Alliance are relevant

Rex Patrick was appointed to the Senate to fill the casual vacancy created when Nick Xenophon quit in 2017, hence the link above to my review of the Nick Xenophon Team in 2016. Patrick had been one of Xenophon’s staffers, and before that he worked for Liberal senator David Johnston. Xenophon’s term was 2016–22, so Patrick was not up for re-election in the 2019 federal contest and his party, now named the Centre Alliance, failed to pick up any additional senators. So, in August 2020, he left the party, believing that he had a better chance of retaining his seat if he ran as an independent. Basically, he was going to have to slug it out with Stirling Griff for top billing on the Centre Alliance ticket, and 2019 showed that the party would likely struggle to get even one quota, never mind two. He then went on to register a party under the name Rex Patrick Team (RPT), pretty much a team of one.

As things have transpired, Griff is now the running mate for Xenophon’s independent tilt to get back into the Senate. I thought RPT was unlikely to get near a quota the moment it was formed, and with Xenophon back in the mix I think it’s safe to say Patrick’s days in the Senate are almost over. Still, what do he and his purported team stand for?

Patrick’s platform skews towards South Australian interests, especially country interests. Most of it is pretty middle-of-the-road stuff that tries not to alienate anyone too much. He makes a big deal of being a “South Australian country boy at heart” (he was born in New Zealand but grew up in Whyalla). In his quest for greater government transparency and a federal ICAC, he’s running with the Democrats’ old slogan of “keep the bastards honest”.

Having served in the navy, it’s unsurprising that Patrick has a strong interest in defence, in particular defence jobs for South Australia. He wants greater manufacturing and heavy industry in SA and supports government intervention and protectionism if it provides this outcome. His approach to environmental management is basically “more water for SA from the Murray-Darling Basin”. Although he recognises the reality of climate change, his policy uses a lot of words to say not much more than “net zero by 2050, maximise renewable energy production in SA, I like electric cars, and how about a national aerial fire-fighting fleet?”

Basically, if you want South Australian boosterism, here’s your guy. One of his few truly national policy offerings is to make your first university or TAFE degree free, funded by reforming corporate taxation and mining royalties. If something would broadly benefit the whole country but have costs for SA, I have doubts that he would support it; likewise, I suspect he is a bit too acquiescent a crossbencher if a government is prepared to give SA a couple of shiny new toys in return for his vote.

My recommendation: Give Rex Patrick Team a middling preference.