The former paramedic who took his fight against vaccine mandates to the NSW Supreme Court will seek to win over “Howard’s Battlers” as he runs for parliament at the upcoming federal election.
John Larter has been endorsed by the Liberal Democrats as a Senate candidate, sixjmtzywgnalling a further showdown between the minor parties for disaffected, lockdown-weary voters.
The Liberal Democrats party is in the process of changing its name after losing a High Court bid to overturn a complaint from the Liberal Party that argued the names were too similar.
Mr Larter will run on a freedom-heavy platform as the libertarian party joins the United Australia Party and Pauline Hanson’s One Nation in hoping to win votes by tapping into the frustration and pain voters felt from the Covid-19 lockdowns.
The United Australia Party and One Nation have both confirmed they will run candidates in all 151 lower house seats as well as multiple Senate candidates in almost every jurisdiction.
Senator Hanson’s top political adviser, James Ashby, conceded on Friday that the parties could compete for disaffected voters but said he hoped people would preference the major parties last.
It was a sentiment shared by Mr Later, who said he believed there were “a lot of votes to go around” between the UAP, One Nation and the party that had named him as a candidate.
Mr Larter rose to prominence in the latter half of 2021 after he mounted an unsuccessful and controversial legal challenge against NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard over vaccine mandates that eventually cost him his job with NSW Ambulance.
Mr Larter will attempt to invoke the success of another, more famous John in his upcoming bid for parliament, saying he hopes to appeal to “ordinary people and mums and dads” in the same way former prime minister John Howard was swept to power by his “battlers”.
“In my opinion the Liberal Party has essentially disenfranchised their right factional area. They’ve sort of gone too woke,” Mr Larter said on Friday.
“A lot of those people who have historically voted for the Liberal Party are looking for those other parties.”
It will be his second attempted foray into federal politics after his run as a Liberal candidate for the NSW lower house seat of Cunningham in 2004 when he was defeated by Labor’s Sharon Bird.
Mr Larter said he remained a paying, longtime member of the Liberal Party’s NSW branch and an independent councillor on the Snowy Valleys Council in his hometown of Tumut.
He will be number two on the Liberal Democrats’ Senate ticket after John Ruddick, a former Liberal Party member who defected and last year said he would run in the seat of Warringah against Zali Steggall.
Mr Ruddick and Mr Larter have both attended “freedom” rallies to protest against vaccine mandates and perceived government heavy-handedness on pandemic management.
“It’s not the country I grew up in, now. Scott Morrison’s been an absolute failure. That’s what’s spurred me on to run with the Liberal Democrats,” Mr Larter said.
“I think it’s an opportune time to show these major parties that middle Australia has had enough.”
