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What lies in store for Gerard Rennick’s fledgling political party?

A Little BackgRound

After losing Liberal Party pre-selection for another term in the Senate, Rennick formed a new party. He has been a vocal critic of how the Covid pandemic and vaccines were handled. He is a tax and finance expert and he champions sovereign wealth. He knew early on in his Senate tenure that he was unlikely to survive in the Liberal Party. He’s a maverick in the true Aussie tradition.

Just five months out from the 2025 election People First Party was born. It generated a lot of enthusiasm and won an extraordinary average of 4% of the vote in almost all the seats it contested. He only just missed out on a Senate seat to One Nation’s Malcolm Roberts.

Seventeen months on, the party has grown to 3,746 members and 2,589 volunteers (statistics it bravely displays on its homepage). There are seventeen active branches across Queensland, NSW, WA and the ACT. A recent attempt to merge with the Australian Citizen’s Party fell through. Rennick is in merger negotiations with other parties such as Katters’ Australia Party and HEART in NSW.

Much of the party’s growth is down to Rennick’s hard work. He is well known in the right-wing social media ecosystem. He travels a lot across the country, talking at branch meetings and supporting the organization’s growth. The party’s key feature is his gift for unscripted speeches about complex financial and tax issues that require a good head for numbers. Most of his posts online are short, talking-head clips about particular issues as they arise in the news. They’re impressive. People can intuit that he’s onto something. But it isn’t long before our eyes glaze over.

The Magic In Success

After a few years, new political parties get the measure of their success. Their strengths take them a certain way until they plateau… usually. One Nation came and went and came again sitting on a low plateau for decades. Another obscure minor party that formed back in 2010, Sustainable Australia Party, has only won a few Council seats and one term in the Victorian Legislative Council despite very credible policies, slick presentation and substantial philanthropic donations. Its drawback is its management style – it doesn’t know how to harness enthusiasm. Many parties come and go. Many minor parties, like Family First, only survive because of a small, dedicated supporter base who cling to a cherished belief.

A political party’s rise to any kind of significance comes from of a magical combination of circumstances. The Australian Democrats in the 1970s had charismatic Don Chipp, a disaffected Liberal vowing to ‘keep the bastards honest’. The Liberal Party was born out of a maelstrom of divided conservative forces, including soldiers who had just returned from fighting Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. They were looking for a party that represented the aspirations of the middle class, the shopkeepers, the small business owners, the little, ‘forgotten people’ in the middle of big business and big unions. Robert Menzies encapsulated the hopes and mind-set of mid-century Australia. The Liberal party found a place in Australia’s political and cultural zeitgeist and consequently, its history.

The Australian Labor Party has had a long streak in the national consciousness. One that looks to have run its course.

One Nation has found its place. Finally, after decades opposing multiculturalism and mass immigration, Pauline Hanson has become a cultural icon and her time has come. She was right all along, and now that enough people can see the fallout from those ruinous policies, they care not for her short-comings. And she has quite a few of them.

She does not have the poise of a stateswoman. She’s President-for-life of One Nation. Management of the party has been shambolic at times. But as more competent people join it, it is improving.

How does People First Party fit into all this?

Rennick calls it ‘The minor party with major solutions‘. Recognizing what an uphill battle lies ahead, he has come to selling the party on the work it will do in Senate Estimates and other Parliamentary Committees. In other words, once it wins a few seats. But he has not sold that as a temporary stop on the road to government. Take government away and you lose a lot of people who don’t want to ‘waste their vote’.

Achieving major party status is a herculean task. Something has to draw masses of people like a magnet. To make that happen, People First may have to reevaluate its strategy.

I joined People First when it started because of its credible policies that put Australia and Australians first. I first met Gerard at a Sustainable Population Australia meeting. He understands carrying capacity.

People First is the thinking person’s One Nation. It’s an intellectual powerhouse. But that can backfire if it’s not marketed carefully.

The big difference with One Nation is that Gerard wants to avoid the Culture Wars.

The work of government is primarily deciding what to do with the public purse. That’s Gerard’s strength. But a national government also embodies the country’s people. It legislates on cultural issues, such as funding translation services, to name just one.

The Tibetans didn’t want to believe the Chinese were coming for them. Labor and the Left are waging a culture war on Australians whether we like it or not. We have no choice but to fight it. That’s why One Nation are surging and the Liberals are fading.

Bite The Bullet, Mate.

People First need to show the Australian people it has their back. Not just with the boring nuts and bolts. The intellectual calibre in the party is a pro, but it can be a con, too. It can put people off, make them feel they’re being talked down to and lectured at. It has to speak their language. That means more inspiring, patriotic messaging like this rare example.

It would do well to style itself as the benefactor of the Liberal mantle, either to replace it or shake it out of its culturally agnostic stupor and merge with it. It will never achieve that by avoiding the culture wars and it will never find its place in our history. To do that, the party needs to know what Australia’s culture is and where it’s going. Unlike British culture, ours is still emerging. Unlike Britain, Australia’s conservative parties have long been in flux. The ossified Labor Party have, until now, been Australia’s Tories.

If People First want to thrive in its next incarnation as the Australian Peoples Party, it must stand up for Australian culture. To do that, it must decide where it stands in the monoculture vs multiculture debate. I see the solution as Australian Biculturalism and Eco-Nationalism. These are the themes of my debut book, Australian Renaissance, currently at a publisher’s house being prepared for release.

People First can make an important contribution to Australian politics. I have great faith in its promise… or at least I thought I did. Until something happened while I was drafting this post…

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