Alex Antic

Biography

ABOUT SENATOR ANTIC

Senator Alex Antic is a Liberal Senator representing South Australia in the Federal Parliament.

Senator Antic was sworn in as the 608th Senator in the Australian Senate on 2 July 2019.

Before entering Parliament, Senator Antic completed a law degree at the University of Adelaide, worked as a commercial lawyer from 2002 to 2019 and served as a Councillor on the Adelaide City Council from 2014 to 2018.

He is the Chair of the Senate Standing Committee on Publications, and a member of the committees for Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport, Law Enforcement, Australian Commission for Law Enforcement and Integrity, and National Broadband Network.

who is Senator Antic

Alexander Charles Antic, an Australian politician representing the Liberal Party, has been serving as a Senator for South Australia since 2019. Born on 17 December 1974 in Adelaide, Antic is the son of Vicki Anderson and Ratomir Antic. He proudly claims to be the first Australian Senator of Serbian descent, as his father migrated from Yugoslavia to Australia in 1957 and later became a director of thoracic medicine at the Royal Adelaide Hospital.

Antic holds degrees in arts and law from the University of Adelaide. Prior to entering politics, he worked as a senior associate with Tindall Gask Bentley lawyers. He also served on the Adelaide City Council from 2014 to 2018, representing the south ward. During his tenure, Antic emphasized the need for local governments to focus on delivering services rather than engaging in identity politics. He also advocated for the preservation of Australia Day.

In the 2019 federal election, Antic was elected to the Senate and assumed office on 1 July 2019. Notably, he out-polled sitting senator Lucy Gichuhi, a fellow member of the party’s conservative faction, in the Liberal preselection process.

As a Senator, Antic has expressed support for the development of an Australian nuclear power industry in his maiden speech in September 2019. However, he has also faced controversy, such as his opposition to the decriminalization of prostitution in South Australia in November 2019, citing concerns about exploitation of sex workers and contrasting it with his stance on the use of grid girls at the Australian Grand Prix and Clipsal 500.

In November 2021, Antic voted in favor of One Nation’s COVID-19 Vaccination Status (Prevention of Discrimination) Bill 2021, against the government’s position, along with four other Coalition senators. In December 2021, he faced allegations of misleading Prime Minister Scott Morrison about his COVID-19 vaccination status, after Morrison claimed Antic had been double-vaccinated during a radio interview. Antic had obtained a travel exemption for unvaccinated individuals to return to Adelaide from Canberra, but allegedly refused to provide his vaccination status to officials at Adelaide Airport and posted a video on social media claiming to have been “detained by overzealous bureaucrats” in what he called a “political stunt.”

In a Senate estimates hearing in November 2022, Antic accused the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) of “grooming children with adult content” over a Play School segment featuring drag queen Courtney Act reading a children’s book. In response, Act stated that such accusations were unfounded and took away from genuine instances of abuse, emphasizing that the segment was innocent and not inappropriate for children.