“Make Australia Great Again”. A white slogan on a red hat. The grinning face of Senator Cory Bernardi just beneath.
The conservative MP, who is today quitting the Coalition to start his own “alt right” party, is modelling himself off US President Donald Trump. Hat slogan and all.
He formally resigned the Liberal Party in an address to the senate this afternoon. The South Australian Senator is determined to follow a more “conservative way” built on “enduring values and principles” to create real change in Australia.
Bernardi was in the US during Trump’s presidential campaign. He was there on a secondment for the United Nations.
“It was very unfashionable to support him [Mr Trump] and yet I support [him],” he told the ABC in November. “It’s not about his character, it’s not about his policy positions, but I thought he’s a catalyst for change and that many of the issues that he’s been targeted about and criticised for, I think are absolutely mainstream.”
And what are those “mainstream” issues that both Trump and Bernardi want to be the catalyst for change?
Bernardi, who is the son of an Italian immigrant, has applauded both Trump’s stance on national security, as well as the language he’s used to discuss the threat of terrorism.
“Trump is saying what so many in America (and around the world) whisper in the safety of their personal discussions,” Bernardi wrote for the Herald Sun last September. “[Trump’s] unabashed Americanism mirrors the people’s concerns.”
Senator Bernardi is not fan of the burqa – or the “you-know-what“, as President Trump refers to the Islamic headdress.
Top Comments
"Political Correctness" as a term needs to go.. along with any phrase ending in "great again".. It is used as an excuse to be horrible by people who prefer to travel the low road.. Why can't we just be polite???.. If your words or actions can potentially hurt someone, why not rethink your language?.. Not because it's legislated, just because being nice to and empathetic of people should be the norm!.
Just be nice.. Please!
BTW.. Cory Bernardi on secondment at the UN?... Curious choice to send ..
Bernardi is as sinister as Abbott. Women will never vote for him. Both send us backward into the past, rather than forward to the future. They waste our time undoing good work that advances our society. Voters around the world are not 'returning' to conservative values, they are simply stating their current distaste for the alternative. It will pass.
I'm a woman and I would vote for him....
Extreme left wing cultural Marxist latte drinking group thinking thoughts. That is what is sinister. The question is going to the other extreme of conservatism.
Lots of women voted for Trump!
I hope you are right.