Alex Antic

Alexander Charles Antic (born 1974) is an Australian politician who has been a senator for South Australia since 2019 representing the Liberal Party.

Early life and education Antic was born in Adelaide in 1974, the son of Vicki Anderson and Ratomir "Ral" Antic. In his maiden speech to parliament he stated his belief that he was the first Australian senator of Serbian descent. His father arrived in Australia from Yugoslavia in 1957 and eventually became director of thoracic medicine at Royal Adelaide Hospital.

Antic holds arts and law degrees from the University of Adelaide. He served on the Adelaide City Council from 2014 to 2018, representing the south ward. In that role, he argued that local governments must concentrate on the delivery of services, rather than "being used as a vehicle for identity politics". He also used his position on the council to press for the preservation of Australia Day.

Parliament Antic was elected to the Australian Senate at the 2019 federal election, taking office on 1 July 2019. In the Liberal preselection process, he had out-polled sitting senator Lucy Gichuhi, a fellow member of the party's conservative faction.

In September 2023, Antic joined a cross-party delegation of Australian MPs to Washington, D.C., to lobby the U.S. Department of Justice to abandon its attempts to extradite Australian publisher Julian Assange from the United Kingdom. The other members were Barnaby Joyce, Monique Ryan, David Shoebridge, Peter Whish-Wilson and Tony Zappia.

In March 2024, Antic defeated Liberal moderate and Shadow Health Minister Anne Ruston, to gain the leading position on the South Australian Liberal senate ticket for the 2025 Australian federal election. When asked about taking the position from a woman, given the Liberals' low number of women in parliament, Antic responded that “the ‘gender card’ is nothing but a grievance narrative”. Antic’s success in securing the top spot on the ticket led to criticism from other South Australian Liberals.

Political views Antic is aligned with the right faction within the South Australian Liberals, and, during the Morrison government, was identified with the National Right faction of the Liberal Party. He has been described as a ‘far-right rebel senator’ who has ‘built up a big online following, particularly after the pandemic, by harnessing scepticism of vaccine mandates, anti-government grievance and hostility to woke culture.’ He appears regularly on Sky News Australia Antic’s relationships in the far right, and that he has voted against other Liberal members, had led to speculation that he may defect from the Liberals to join One Nation. He also lambasted "the tyranny of political correctness", and criticised the push towards developing renewable sources of energy.

In 2024, Antic voted against the Australian Government's proposed legislation to ban children under 16 from social media. He was the only Liberal Party senator who voted against it.

In 2026, Antic was the only Liberal Party senator to vote against the Albanese government's hate speech legislation.

Anti-vaccination position In November 2021, Antic was one of five Coalition senators who voted in support of One Nation's COVID-19 Vaccination Status (Prevention of Discrimination) Bill 2021, against the government's position.

In December 2021, it was alleged that Antic misled Prime Minister Scott Morrison about his COVID-19 vaccination status after Morrison claimed Antic had been double-vaccinated during a radio interview. Antic returned to Adelaide from Canberra having obtained a travel exemption for unvaccinated persons, the exemption having only been granted on appeal, on the condition he spent 14 days in quarantine at a Medi-hotel. However, on arrival he allegedly refused to provide his vaccination status to officials at Adelaide Airport, and then posted a video to social media claiming he had been "detained by overzealous bureaucrats", in what he called a "political stunt".

In June 2026 Antic mocked the H5N1 Avian flu, which had just been discovered for the first time in Australia as 'spin from pharmaceutical companies', all designed, in his view, to push people into getting a flu shot this winter.

LGBT 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 that featured drag queen Courtney Act reading a children's book. In response, Act stated that "to use terms of abuse when no abuse is actually happening, really takes away from the occasions when it is happening [...] I'm on television, reading a children’s book, there was nothing untoward about it. It was really quite a shocking thing to be accused of".

In late 2023, Antic proposed a bill to ban gender reassignment surgery and treatment for teenagers.

Digital technology and smart cities In June 2022, Antic raised broad concerns about Australia's digital future being a surveillance and privacy risk, including that sensitive biometric data could be a target for hackers and malicious foreign agents. In December 2022, Antic released a video about the smart cities programs as a "rise of the digital surveillance state" with concerns that is represented a dystopian future and claiming "your city is tracking you". Antic's comments were used by No Smart Cities Action Group to protest the Salisbury smart cities controversy, while Antic denied involvement with the group and requested for his image to be removed.