He also cited family reasons.

“The matter of public importance is nothing more than a sop to those who want to relive their high school debating club years,” he said.

PREDICTABLE

“Votes and proceedings could just simply be dialled in, they are that predictable. We vote for, or against, depending on what the Party says.

“What happened to individuality in this place? What happened to critical thinking? What happened to true representation?”

The retiring Queensland MP said federal parliament ran the risk of degenerating into a “sheltered workshop”.

“There needs to be greater room for backbenchers to say what they really think publicly in this chamber and to vote accordingly,” Mr Christensen said to applause.

“Otherwise we run the risk of Parliament House degenerating into a sheltered workshop for people who can’t think for themselves.”

He said the government’s heavy-handed responses to COVID and climate issues were being driven from the top – and not from the people.

“We’ve blown up freedoms, bodily autonomy, medical privacy, human rights, community cohesion and many businesses and jobs – all for a virus with a 0.27 per cent infection fatality rate,” Mr Christensen said.

“It should never have happened, yet some of it is still happening.

“Then there’s the net-zero policy which I vehemently disagree with on the basis that it’s ultimately going to cost jobs.

“There’s the digital identity bill, which we’re passing, that’s being pushed by the elite globalist World Economic Forum.

GLOBALISTS

“We don’t answer to them. Our democracy is one that should be from the ground up, the people up – not from the globalists down.”

Mr Christensen said he’d found it difficult to serve in a government whose values “more and more differed” from his own.

“Continuing on as the member for Dawson for the LNP – or otherwise – when my values more and more differed from the government, weighed heavily on me.”

Mr Christian provided a list of values he believed were critical to conservative, patriot Australians.

“Some of these may be unpopular and not in keeping with the times or the ways of the world,” he said.

“But to quote St Athanasius, ‘if the world is against the truth then I’m against the world’.

“I begin with the most important matter, life.

“The right to life is the most fundamental liberty of all and we should be acting to defend it.

“Freedom of speech is paramount for any democracy including speech we don’t like.

He said efforts to ban speech with political buzz words like “hate speech, vilification, disinformation and misinformation” were harmful to democracy.

“Likewise, foreign-owned big tech oligarchies should not be allowed to censor political and philosophical discourse in this country.

WOKEISM

“The legacy media is biased. It lies and has become a cheer squad for big government and wokeism.

“We should call it out but, where it’s privately owned, we should never seek to have government interfere with it.”

Mr Christensen said taxpayers should not be funding a biased, fake news media outlet.

“The ABC must be reformed,” he said.

“People should not be forced into any medical procedure under threat of losing their jobs or any other form of restriction, coercion or duress.

“As a government, we should have acted on this.”

Mr Christensen was particularly harsh on his government’s climate activism.

“We should never sacrifice people’s livelihoods, jobs, businesses and farms, our regions or our nation on the altar of the political religion that is man-made climate change,” he said.

“Net-zero emissions will mean net-zero jobs.

“The World Economic Forum, the UN and other globalist bodies should not dictate to Australia the laws we should have.

“Democracy in this country is from the bottom up, not top down.”