Rex Patrick
Senate Candidate for SA
Senate Candidate for SA
Recognised nationally as a warrior for transparency
Lives in Adelaide
Rex Patrick is an experienced Senator. A proud South Australian, he left his home town of Whyalla at the age of 16 to join the Royal Australian Navy, where he served in submarines for 11 years. After leaving the Navy, Rex worked in the defence industry as a project manager and then set up his own sonar and acoustics training company.
After writing a series of articles on sensible submarine procurement Rex came to the notice of a number of political figures, including independent Senator for South Australia, Nick Xenophon, who engaged him as an advisor and then later hand picked him to replace Senator Xenophon and continue the fight in the Senate for South Australia from 2017 to 2022.
During his years in the Senate, Rex fought for a wide range of issues, including: protecting the Murray Darling, ensuring 700 Collins Class submarine workers kept their jobs, preventing improper government secrecy, fighting for Australian manufacturing and ‘value add’, protecting whistleblowers, standing up for the regions, stopping drilling in the Great Australian Bight, fighting cost of living pressures and backing Australian businesses.
Since leaving the Senate, Rex has continued to hold governments to account by fighting secrecy and ensuring transparency through Australia’s Freedom of Information laws. He is also a champion for whistleblower protections and has publicly supported Australian whistleblowers, including David McBride and Richard Boyle.
Rex is ready to go back to the Senate to help clean up the mess in Canberra, and bring back some much needed transparency, integrity and accountability.
We should be a rich country
Our country’s leaders have lost their way. We should be a rich country, yet we aren’t.
We need to invest in our people, improve education opportunities, restore Australia’s manufacturing industry and grow the ‘value add’ – exporting steel, not iron ore; exporting batteries, not lithium, exporting products, not research.
“I believe Australians should be getting proper royalties for our mineral and gas exports, and be forcing multinationals to pay their fair share of tax,” Mr Rex Patrick said
Rex supports Defence, but he thinks Defence waste needs to stop and he has written widely on the deficiencies of the Defence procurement process, especially where AUKUS is concerned. “It doesn’t matter if you think nuclear submarines are a good idea or not - this is a bad deal for Australia.”
Cost of Living
Rex believes the cost of living can be brought down quickly if we have real leadership in Canberra.
“We need to drastically lower electricity prices. The price of electricity is set by the gas price so we need a national gas reservation program to ensure that Australians benefit from our abundant gas resources. Gas must go to Australian consumers first, and at a much lower price than the gas we export to other countries.”
House prices have become unaffordable for new buyers in the market. We must stop overseas investment in residential property. Rex believes that removing foreign investors will take some of the heat out of the market.
“The supermarket duopoly, Coles and Woollies, are just too powerful. They use their market power to keep food prices high. We need ‘divestiture laws’ to allow a court to break up the duopoly companies if they engage in cartel conduct.”
A word from Jacqui
I've known Rex, the ‘Transparency Warrior’ for years, we worked closely together when he was in the Senate; we share the same values, especially when it comes to transparency and accountability in government.
Rex Patrick is exactly the sort of Australian who should be in the Senate, he puts the interests of everyday South Australians first.
Rex’s life experience, in industry and the Navy, made him a formidable force in Parliament, fighting against dumb decisions and government waste, we need to get him back to Canberra.
Help us to build something great.
The small print
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