James McGrath

On 5 October 2019, Senator McGrath posted a picture on his Facebook page with the caption "Car 1. Flock of cockatoos 0." The picture depicted a dead and mangled cockatoo in the roof rack of a vehicle, presumably Senator McGrath's. This led to widespread condemnation online. [1] [2]

Having supported Malcolm Turnbull in the 2015 leadership spill, McGrath rebelled against Turnbull in 2018, with a view that a Queensland leader such as Peter Dutton would advance the success of the LNP in his home state. Consequently, he resigned from his executive position on 22 August 2018.

McGrath was elected to the Senate at the 2013 federal election. In 2014, he delivered his maiden speech, calling for the GST rate to rise to 15 per cent, federal health and education departments to be abolished, youth radio station Triple J and ABC to be privatised and defended people's right to say "hurtful and bigoted and stupid and dumb things". He served as Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister in the Turnbull Government from September 2015 to August 2018, and Assistant Minister to the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection from February to July 2016.

Between 2009 and 2010, McGrath was the deputy federal director of the Liberal Party of Australia. He was campaign director for the Liberal National Party and the Country Liberal Party between 2010 and 2012, during which the LNP recorded the largest ever electoral victory in the state of Queensland.

It was soon revealed that this was not the first post of its kind by the senator, who in 2007 posted a picture of two dead birds caught in the grill of a car with the caption "I think dinner tonight has been sorted thanks to my bullbar. Suggestions for how to cook the roadkill?" [3]. In other posts he has suggested hitting as many as six kangaroos in a single evening [4] and has referred to cockatoos as "menaces" and that "Anyone who thinks cockatoos are cute needs their head read by a suitably qualified medical professional" [5].

McGrath was born in Toowoomba and graduated from Griffith University with a Bachelor of Laws and from the Queensland University of Technology with a Master of Laws. He was admitted as a solicitor and worked as an articled clerk in a legal firm before working with the Queensland Parliamentary Ombudsman between 1999 and 2001. McGrath is a former political strategist who worked with Lynton Crosby on Boris Johnson's 2008 London mayoral campaign until June 2008 when he was endorsed by the Liberal Party of Australia after saying of Afro-Caribbean immigrants, "let them go if they don't like it here." The Sydney Morning Herald reported that McGrath was sacked from this position.

James McGrath (born 14 May 1974) is an Australian politician and Senator for Queensland since 2014. He is a member of the Liberal National Party of Queensland and sits with the Liberal Party in federal parliament.