Anti-mandate Antic lashes out after being sent to quarantine
South Australian Liberal Senator and vaccine mandate critic Alex Antic has hit out at the state’s “bureaucratic overlords” after being placed in hotel quarantine upon his return to Adelaide.
SA senator Alex Antic at a recent Liberal state council meeting. Photo: Tony Lewis / InDaily
Antic left Canberra on Thursday when federal parliament finished sitting for the year.
Under border changes that took effect on November 23, all unvaccinated travellers to SA must quarantine for 14 days on arrival.
Antic, who has declined to reveal his vaccination status, appears to have been caught by the rule.
Asked on Friday why he was taken to a hotel to quarantine for two weeks, he told ABC Radio Adelaide that was “a very good question”.
“That’s a question you might like to direct to the bureaucratic overlords at SA Health,” he added.
“I’m surrounded by COVID in a medi-hotel and that’s alarming.”
Antic said he believed the media had been tipped off about his situation, after photographers met him at the airport.
BREAKING: Senator Alex Antic escorted from Adelaide Airport to a medi-hotel and 14 days quarantine after he was granted an exemption reserved for unvaccinated travellers. Last week PM confidently said “Alex is double-dose vaccinated”. More soon via @theTiser pic.twitter.com/7DMNi8Ur4D
— Kathryn Bermingham (@KatBermingham) December 2, 2021
Antic was in the spotlight during the last parliamentary sitting when he joined a handful of upper house MPs threatening to withhold their votes on government legislation in protest at state vaccine mandates.
He later relented, but not before rising in the Senate to say Australia had been “transformed into a two-tiered society on the grounds of medical discrimination”.
Last week, Prime Minister Scott Morrison told ABC Radio Adelaide that Antic was fully vaccinated.
On Thursday, the senator refused to confirm that. However, he said he had “never said anything that I believe would mislead the Prime Minister on any issue”.
Morrison today told reporters he had been advised by Antic that he was fully immunised, expressing his disappointment if he had been misled.
“That was certainly my understanding that he had been double vaccinated, and I had discussed vaccinations and made it very clear that that’s what I understood,” Morrison said.
“I was surprised to learn that, it’s as simple as that. I was advised he was double vaccinated.”
However the prime minister said Antic was entitled to his choice to not get vaccinated.
“I was of the understanding that he had been double vaccinated and my office had been advised he had been double vaccinated,” he said.
“I could only work on that assumption, and that assumption proved to be incorrect.”
Antic – who said he had a negative COVID test on Wednesday – believed he had been “singled out”.
“I seem to have been singled out in what appears to be a political stunt and the only inference you can really draw from this is this has been quite pre-meditated,” he told the ABC.
-with AAP
