Former Liberal senator to run in South Australian election
Updated ,first published
Former Liberal senator Cory Bernardi has become the latest political figure to join Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, which is rising ahead of the fractured Coalition in the polls.
Hanson announced Bernardi would be the leading candidate for the party’s upper house in the March election in South Australia.
“Cory has strong, solid conservative values that are a perfect fit for One Nation, and he is a leading South Australian keen to make the positive differences in his own country that the Liberals have not had the courage to make,” he said.
Bernardi served as senator until 2020. His own party, the Australian Conservatives, failed to gain any traction in 2019 after splitting from the Liberals.
He said the major parties were failing voters.
“There’s no effective opposition to the government; it’s effectively one party, ‘one party’, and that’s a bad thing for South Australians because they’re being left behind,” he said.
South Australian polls Anticipating political oblivion For the province’s Liberals, some are projected to hold as few as three seats in the lower house.
There is unconfirmed speculation that Liberal senator Alex Antic will join Bernardi. Both are far-right and to the right of the Liberal Party on the Christian right.
Former Victorian Liberal MP Bernie Finn, who fell out with the Liberals over his opposition to abortion, joined One Nation ahead of November’s Victorian state election, with the tiny party sidelining disgruntled right-wingers who had previously caused controversy.
When asked by this imprint on Friday about the possibility of asylum in One Nation, Antic said: “I haven’t always gotten along well with the media, but there’s nothing worse than spoiling a surprise. I guess it’s in your best interest to wait and see.”
Antic has built a large online following, especially after the pandemic, by capitalizing on skepticism about vaccine guidelines, anti-government grievances and hostility to woke culture.
The senator has dominated the South Australian division of the Liberal Party for several years. But more recently, the Moderates, led by the likes of Senator Anne Ruston and former Coalition defense minister Christopher Pyne, have worked with more mainstream opponents on the right, such as Nicolle Flint, to reduce Antic’s influence as the South Australian Liberals face a state election wipeout in March.
There was no reference to Antic in Hanson’s statement on Bernardi, released late on Monday ahead of his press conference in Adelaide on Tuesday.
Antic had been telling colleagues for months that he was disappointed about coming to Canberra and had become estranged from his Liberal colleagues. It removed the Liberal logo from its constituency office over the summer.
One of Antic’s colleagues in the Senate spoke candidly about this possibility, saying, “There is a lot of speculation, and if it is true, this will make a lot of people happy.”
Hanson’s chief of staff, party strategist James Ashby, mocks the major departures. He told Sky News last week that the announcements expected on Tuesday “will shock people with how significant it is”.
“As One Nation we need to be the unofficial opposition and we’re on a recruitment drive that a lot of people say we don’t have,” Ashby said, promising “familiar faces and big names”.
Despite outlining few detailed policies and having a history of stoking racial concerns, One Nation is shaking up the Coalition and starting to take some votes away from Labor as its primary votes move ahead of the Liberals and Nationals.
Hanson’s uncompromising rhetoric on immigration caused his shares to rise as voters’ concerns about immigration increased. The departure of former National leader Barnaby Joyce also served to make the right-wing party more mainstream.
A. The Redbridge Group/Accent Research survey was released Sunday. Australian Financial Review It showed One Nation was the second most popular party, ahead of the Liberal or National parties. Labor fell 1 point from December to 34 percent; The combined vote for the Liberal and National parties fell from 26 per cent to 19 per cent; and One Nation went from 17 to 26.
This imprint’s Resolve Political Monitor from January showed the Coalition on 28 per cent and Hanson’s party on 18 per cent.
Joyce said on this imprint’s Inside Politics podcast last week that polling figures were weak and could decline by the election, but argued they represented a huge opportunity to build lasting support while the Coalition is mired in a policy and personnel crisis.
Hanson’s office declined several times last week to comment on Antic’s move.
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Paul Sakkal is the chief political correspondent. It has previously covered Victorian politics and won the Walkley and Quill awards. Reach him securely on Signal @paulsakkal.14Connect with: X or email.
