Is Cory Bernardi About to Start His Own Political Party?

Cory Bernardi: South Australian Senator, proud conservative, prolific podcaster. Once compared gay marriage to bestiality. Vocally denies climate change at any and every opportunity. Would love for Australia to ban the burqa. Basically someone who makes Malcolm Turnbull look like a Marxist—which is why it would make so much sense for him to split with the government and form his own party.

Seems like the Senator might be finally doing just that. Various outlets are reporting that Bernardi is set to abandon the Coalition within the next 48 hours, and form a new far right political party. It will probably be called Australian Majority, if this website, which has been online since July has anything to do with it. The site first gained national attention back in December, when The Australian reported the name "Australian Majority" was registered to a company controlled by Bernardi's wife.

If you, like me, are masochistic enough to have subscribed to Cory Bernardi's various social media channels, you would have seen all this coming. In recent months, he's hinted several times at a desire to go rogue. In Common Sense, his routinely alarming weekly email newsletter, the Senator's displeasure with the government is only very thinly veiled. He ended his most recent newsletter on February 1 with an ominous warning that "there are too few in our body politic willing to take the path less travelled—a trustworthy track that has fallen out of use. For the sake of our nation, we must get back on track."

Nothing says "trust" like Cory's smile/grimace. Image via

In recent weeks Bernardi has also suspiciously deleted all of his tweets, as though creating a blank slate for expressing a set of new, non-Liberal-aligned viewpoints. It's a shame, because some of those tweets were really something special—populist and indignant in a way that rivals even Pauline Hanson's feed.

On that note, it seems worth considering that "Australian Majority" is essentially a rewording of One Nation, and that's a savvy move. According to the first Newspoll of the year, support for Pauline Hanson's party has just climbed again, garnering eight percent of the national vote as she continues to express her support for Trump-style immigration policies.

Minor parties like One Nation and the Greens have risen by 19 percent overall, while popular support for both the Government and Opposition is critically, dismally low. In other words, Bernardi is running from trouble.

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