It’ll be days before the final make-up if the senate is known but it looks like Liberal Senator Amanda Stoker is unlikely to secure a position.
Senator Stoker, who is the Assistant Minister for Women, and the Assistant Minister to the Attorney General, was given the third spot of the Liberal ticket, and it looks like there will not be enough votes to get her across the line.
Senator James McGrath who occupied the top spot on the senate ticket will be returned, as will National’s senator Matt Canavan. Labor’s Murray Watt and Senator Anthony Chisholm look set to retain their positions, while the Greens Penny Allman-Payne looks set to enter parliament for the first time.
The final spot for the senate is still up for contention with One Nation Senator Pauline Hanson battling it out with Legalise Cannabis Australia’s Bernard Bradley for the sixth and final spot.
Not making the cut will be Senator Stoker, Liberal Democrat Campbell Newman, or Billionaire Clive Palmer from United Australia.
Senator Stoker joined the senate via a casual vacancy caused by the retirement of former Attorney General George Brandis in 2018. This election is the first time she’s faced voters.
The conservative politician was intimately involved in the creation of the latest iteration of the Religious Discrimination Bill, and on several occasions appeared to contradict Prime Minister Scott Morrison regarding how LGBTIQA+ students would be treated under the bill, and the related Sex Discrimination Act.
Senator Stoker has previously claimed the faith-based schools needed to be protected from activist students seeking to set up queer clubs within religious schools, accused the Labor party of holding an agenda to destroy the family unit, and declared that sexuality is a choice. The Liberal senator has also actively campaigned against transgender rights.
In 2020 Senator Stoker admitted that she was the owner of a social media account called “Mandy Jane”. The account was used to post positive comments on her own official Facebook page. Posts using Stoker’s Mandy Jane profile referred to Stoker in the third person and copied the senator’s own comments, while changing the pronouns to make it appear that they were from a different person.
In the lead up to the election the Senator targeted conservative voters via paid Facebook campaigns. The Guardian revealed that Senator Stoker’s campaign has spent up to $60,000 targeting advertisement’s at mainly older women. Among the targeted campaigns was footage of Senator Stoker attending a recent anti-abortion rally.
Senator Stoker also sat down for interviews with the Australian Christian Lobby and men’s rights activist Warwick Marsh.
Marsh was sacked as a federal government health ambassador in 2008 after he refused to distance himself from claims in a report he co-authored. Among the claims in the report was a statement that “homosexuality is a mental disorder”. Marsh has denied he is homophobic.
OIP Staff
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