The foaming-at-the-mouth Christian, Cory Bernardi, is a chancer who is mostly concerned with himself and his $200,000+ per annum salary. This was demonstrated clearly when although running for the Senate as a Liberal, some months later he dumped that party, while still having over 5 years to go on his Senate term. He had been dropped to second on the South Australian Senate ticket, so perhaps he saw the writing on the wall of declining relevance. This five years will give him time to get his Conservatives up and running and give him a slight chance of being re-elected. I’m sure he was grateful to the Liberals for supporting him1.
He has been guilty of numerous gaffes, one of which cost him while in opposition. He is a virulent opponent of same-sex marriage, and ludicrous comments about this cost him his parliamentary secretary position1. His comments on domestic violence have been equally stupid. He is one of those people who wants to re-criminalise abortion, and yesterday moved a motion in the Senate to remove Medicare funding from abortions, where the abortion is based on gender selection grounds. Medicare does not fund gender-selection abortions, anyway, so the motion was superficially pointless. This is just Bernardi trawling for the religious nutters in the Senate, in the hope of attracting them to his Conservatives. The motion was defeated by 36 to 10. It is instructive to see who supported the motion. Apart from Bernardi, supporters were Liberals Eric Abetz, Anne Ruston and Zed Seselja, Nationals Matt Canavan and Barry O’Sullivan, One Nation’s Pauline Hanson, Peter Georgiou and Bryan Burston and newly independent Fraser Anning2,3. Some of these in the coalition are also seeing their popularity plummet, as their rabid religiosity became more apparent during the same-sex marriage campaign. These are the people who Bernardi is courting. If they do take the bait, the Conservatives could prove to be the party for the religious nutters4. This will ensure the party’s failure in the long term as Australia becomes even less religious than currently.
Sources
- http://www.blotreport.com/australian-politics/where-to-now-saint-bernardi/
- http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2017/11/16/bernardis-bid-dump-medicare-funding-abortions-fails
- http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/coalition-senators-defy-government-position-to-cross-the-floor-over-cory-bernardi-antiabortion-ploy-20171116-gzmoey.html
- http://www.blotreport.com/australian-politics/party-rabid-religious-right/
