William Fraser Anning (born 14 October 1949) is an Australian former politician who was a senator for Queensland from November 2017 to June 2019. Anning is known for holding far-right, nativist, and anti-Muslim views, and has been criticised for his use of the Nazi euphemism for the Holocaust, when he proposed a plebiscite to be the "Final Solution" to "the immigration problem" in his maiden speech. Anning also generated controversy for his statements shortly after the Christchurch mosque shootings in New Zealand, in which he blamed the attacks on "the immigration program which allowed Muslim fanatics to migrate".
Anning was elected to the Senate after a special recount was triggered by the removal of One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts. Anning chose not to join One Nation in the Senate, sitting instead as an independent until June 2018, when he joined Katter's Australian Party (KAP) as its first senator. Anning was expelled by KAP in October 2018 for his views on race and immigration. Anning sat again as an independent, until registration of Fraser Anning's Conservative National Party was granted in April 2019. He failed to get re-elected to the Senate in the 2019 federal election, when standing under his own party's banner.
White Rose Society and ABC News have detailed the white supremacist links of some of Anning's closest advisers. His companions have included convicted criminals such as Neil Erikson and members of the militant white supremacist group True Blue Crew, whose members and supporters have been linked to right-wing terrorism.
Anning was sought by creditors over unpaid debts in late 2019, and declared bankrupt on 16 March 2020.
Early life and family history
Anning grew up in north-west Queensland on Wetherby Station, one of the Anning family's pastoral properties near the town of Richmond. He is a direct descendant of Charles Cumming Stone Anning, a pastoral squatter who immigrated to the Australian colonies in the mid-19th century to acquire landholdings. Charles and several of his sons established the Reedy Springs property north of Hughenden in 1862, and soon expanded their claims by forming the nearby properties of Chudleigh Park, Mount Sturgeon, Charlotte Plains and Cargoon. In response to the spearing of their cattle by Aboriginal Australians, the Annings would ride out with firearms, attack Aboriginal campsites and capture young boys who survived in order to use them as labour on their cattle and sheep stations. The Annings at times also requested the services of the local Native Police paramilitary unit to assist in clearing "blacks" off their runs. Frank Hann, another pastoralist in the region who regularly participated in extrajudicial punitive raids on Aboriginals, described in his diary in 1874 that he saw "Anning [coming] back from hunting blacks".
Fraser Anning's grandfather Francis "Frank" Albert Anning spent much of his time at Reedy Springs but also bought into further properties such as Wollogorang, Savannah Station and Compton Downs. One of Frank's sons was W. H. (Harry) Anning who took up the Wetherby property and whose wife gave birth to Fraser Anning in October 1949.
Political career
Anning holds strongly anti-abortion views. He opposes same-sex marriage and was one of twelve senators who voted against the Marriage Amendment (Definition and Religious Freedoms) Act 2017, which made same-sex marriage legal in Australia. In 2017, when Cory Bernardi moved a motion opposing Medicare funding of gender-selective abortion, Anning was one of ten senators who voted for the motion, which was defeated with 36 votes against.
On 22 March 2018 Anning announced that he would support the Turnbull Government's proposed company tax cuts.
Anning introduced a private members' bill calling for less stringent import laws for mace, pepper spray and tasers, to "allow women to defend themselves". It was supported by David Leyonhjelm, Peter Georgiou, Cory Bernardi and Brian Burston, but rejected by both major parties and the Greens.
In 2018 Anning described the perpetrators of attacks on South African farms as "subhuman", also claiming that a state-orchestrated "genocide" was underway in South Africa.
Anning stated in a Senate speech that he believed Safe Schools was "sexually deviant propaganda" and undermined "the white family". He criticised the curriculum as "gender fluidity garbage".
On 5 January 2019 Anning attended a far-right rally in Melbourne led by far-right extremist Blair Cottrell, founder of the United Patriots Front.