The parliamentary career of Western Australian Liberal MP Dr Dennis Jensen appears to be at end.
The outspoken politician has been ousted from his seat in favour of former state party director Ben Morton.
The member for the division of Tangney reportedly lost the ballot gaining only a handful of votes.
The ABC has reported that Dr Jensen stormed out of the pre-selection meeting when the results were announced.
Dr Jensen has held the seat since 2004. It is not the first time the party’s pre-selection committee has attempted to oust the politician.
In 2006 the committee selected Matt Brown to replace Dr Jensen, but then Prime Minister John Howard intervened.
In 2009 the committee selected Glen Piggott for the seat, but the state party interjected. This time round it looks like there will be no lifelines for the conservative MP. The Liberal party’s state council is expected to endorse his replacement when they meet on Saturday.
Dr Jensen had a long history of controversial statements
Dr Jenson is an outspoken opponent of marriage equality, a denier of climate change and has been critical of indigenous Australians. He gained national attention when he boycotted Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s apology to the Stolen Generation. Dr Jensen later famously said that indigenous Australians should “get over it.”
The former scientist and air traffic controller told parliament in 2013 the proposals to allow same sex couples to wed were an “attack on marriage”.
” The bearing and rearing of children is the fundamental purpose of marriage. There are those that see marriage as a simple expression of love. It is that, but far more, and the far more is the reason that same-sex marriage does not make sense.” Dr Jensen argued in 2013.
The conservative MP said that the phrase ‘marriage equality’ was an example or Orwellian double-speak and LGBTI people faced no in-equality. Dr Jensen said lesbian, gay and bisexual people were free to marry any opposite gender person of their choice.
“You already have marriage equality. Anyone—gay, bi, heterosexual—can marry a partner of the opposite sex. There is no discrimination here.” Dr Jensen told parliament during the debate.
The MP said the optimal situation for the raising of children is by their biological mother and father. Dr Jensen said it was his belief that it was preferable that children were raised by opposite gender parents than two parents of the same gender.
Recently Dr Jensen advocated for the proposed marriage plebiscite to be held off until 2017 because he felt that the Australian people would need a long time to have a “comprehensive” and “careful” discussion about the effects of changing the marriage laws.
Dumping follows revelations that the MP is an aspiring novelist
Last week excerpts of an novel the MP wrote and shopped around to publishers several years ago came to light with The Australian newspaper highlighting some of the work’s more erotic scenes.
Dr Jensen has said the sudden interest in his unpublished book was part of a smear campaign to damage his reputation. The MP apologised for using his official parliamentary stationery when trying to woo publishers.
Dr Jensen’s book ‘The Sky Warriors’ focused on a war between Australia and our nearest neighbour Indonesia.
OIP Staff
Good to see the WA Libs have ejected one of their nuttier climate change deniers from the Fed Parliament come July 2 https://t.co/L5Q6FcpyLx
— Stephen Mayne (@MayneReport) April 3, 2016
I feel like Dennis Jensen today has demonstrated that the system still does work a bit at least.
— PirateMonkey(YearOf) (@jonkudelka) April 3, 2016
Surely by now Dennis Jensen has gotten used to losing pre-selection. This is the third time. https://t.co/iWkQe6uyNs
— Rob Stott (@Rob_Stott) April 3, 2016
Sources
Hansard
In what universe is this clown a “liberal”?