Australian federal senator Cory Bernardi has resigned from the Australian Liberal Party, citing differences with the party leadership, including climate policy (Bernardi is a skeptic). This resignation will increase the discomfort of the beleaguered Turnbull government.
Cory Bernardi quits the Liberal Party to establish Australian Conservatives
South Australian senator Cory Bernardi has officially quit the Liberal Party to establish his own party, using a scathing speech to criticise colleagues for “failing the people of Australia”.
Key points:
Senator Bernardi says he was reluctant and relieved to the leave the party
He says it’s time for a “better way, for a conservative way”
The senator informed Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull of his decision to defect shortly before a church service this morning, which marked the start of the parliamentary year.
In a speech to colleagues, Senator Bernardi said he was reluctant and relieved to leave the party, saying the decision had “weighed heavily on his heart”.
“The level of public disenchantment with the major parties, the lack of confidence in our political process, and the concern about the direction of our nation is very, very strong,” he said.
…
Senator Bernardi said his calls to restore faith in the political system had been ignored by some of his Liberal Party colleagues.
“It really is time for a better way — for a conservative way,” he said.
Senator Bernardi said his new party, the Australian Conservatives, would focus on limiting the size of government and provide hope to “those who despair at the current state of Australian politics”.
The 47-year-old senator has been a controversial figure in the Liberal Party and is known for his inflammatory remarks on gay rights, Islam and climate change.
He said the Government’s position on energy and climate change was one reason behind his decision to leave the party.
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Read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-02-07/cory-bernardi-formally-quits-liberal-party/8247402
Bernardi’s resignation is the latest rumble of discontent over Aussie Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s efforts to soften the Australian Liberal Party’s opposition to carbon pricing, immigration, and other conservative party policies.
Malcolm Turnbull toppled popular conservative Tony Abbott in a party room putsch in 2015, over Abbott’s poor poll numbers, but Turnbull himself is now facing discontent from colleagues who are worried about Turnbull’s poor poll numbers, and the gushing haemorrhage of Liberal Party voter defections to the staunchly climate skeptic One Nation party.
Update (EW): Removed quote marks from the word “influenced” in the title.
My comment is quite off topic , but I don’t really know where to post it .
I enjoy reading articles and comments on this website , I too came to the conclusion that CAGW equates to scientific fraud , but …
There’s always a but . I consider myself a “leftist” , a “liberal” . All for same sex marriage and “pro choice” . To each his own , true to my european atheïst upbringing .
Soit – as we say in french – what I wanted to say is that I sometimes feel science is only second to (extreme) right wing ideology here , or at least that is how I percieve it and it seems to me to be often one sided .
Where are the skeptic lefty liberal atheïst cheese eating surrender monkey liberals in this debate ?
Regards ,
Some guy from Belgium
Couldn’t agree more. With many of Eric’s posts just being right wing political polemic, and inaccurate to boot, this blog is quickly becoming science free. Anthony, send warning, get rid of Eric, or I will get rid of this blog.
There are plenty of websites and blogs with a decidedly left-leaning point of view where you can point out the fatal flaws in the ManMade Climate Change Paradigm.
Feel free to help in reaching those other blogs, news and websites by commenting.
Let us know how it goes for you.
“or I will get rid of this blog.”
Who promoted you to blog Reichsfuhrer, trollboy?
The Guardian is way over there to the Left:
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Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.
And as an aside those that yearn for Abott must realise he quashed the inquiry into BOM’s homogenisation and also went along with alternative ways to reduce carbon .
Far North Queensland journalist Julian Tomlinson has written an excellent op-ed on Bernadi here –
http://www.cairnspost.com.au/news/opinion/cory-bernardi-is-someone-conservatives-can-finally-rally-around/news-story/7519d888e86ab360edc9cc0076f796d0
– and managed to get a mention of the NOAA whistleblower scandal into the Murdoch-owned Cairns Post! Its paywalled so google – ‘General Bernadi’ Goes to War Cairns Post – to see the full article.
Here’s part of the article –
“Bernardi also represents the growing wave of man-made global warming scepticism, if not complete rejection.
“Just this week, the Climate Council has repeated the lie that we are going to get more and worse cyclones if we don’t curb emissions.
“But Bureau of Meteorology graphs show a clear downward trend in the number and severity of cyclones since the 1970s.
“In recent days, a US climate scientists broke ranks to say his colleagues at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had doctored climate data to ensure it fit with Barack Obama’s political climate policy.
“Bernardi, like Donald Trump and a growing number of the general public, are listening less and less to claims of global disaster due to carbon dioxide because previous predictions just haven’t come true.
“This growing discontent, plus concerns with immigration of people with vastly different values to our own, have combined with anger at an established political class that treats conservative voters like mugs.”
Cory has written books on Conservatism and espouses careful examination of facts. One fact that appears totally ignored is the stability of the atmosphere. Apart from Ozone concentrations discovered and observable in the southern skies, and now much diminished since the ozone has decreased, there is little observable in the clouds or in the skies under CO2 increases, because it does not create obvious light changes. The science of CO2 stability through feedback mechanisms in nature has evidently not been publicised – surely someone must have researched it apart from cursory examination of the % of CO2 in the atmosphere? At 0.04% of the atmosphere (up from a low measured about 100 years ago of 0.02%) the basic concentration at such low levels shows that there has not actually been any degree of modelling of the actual reactions in nature by plants and physical chemistry. The high emissions of CO2 in under ocean volcanoes points to absorption in sea water as well as conversion there by algae to produce oxygen. The satellite pictures have clearly shown noticeable increases in plant cover. I have noticed in the recent decade the rate of growth of trees has increased, especially where there is ample water, that would show in the tree rings too. Algae blooms in rivers has increased too and that I had always attributed to the increased levels of phosphate based fertilisers in the land building up over decades, but that may be totally wrong. Either way, both may be attributable to the minute increased level of CO2 in the atmosphere. Surely there is someone examining growth of plants with increased CO2 and noticing that the manmade CO2 is a small percentage of total CO2 and that the feedback mechanism is fully capable of handling even a doubling of manmade CO2 without any difficulty. Getting back to the article on Cory and the reaction to climate change garbage that the Australian Turnbull Govt recently promoted by signing the Paris Agreement recently, it is a foregone conclusion that the climate change agreements that create extra costs on consumers of electricity, will be strongly rejected by people who can see that man-made climate change is nonsense, and that climate change is a myth, then those people will vote for the party that espouses a conservative way of producing power cheaply. The next debate we will have in Australia will be on the cost of producing nuclear power, because we have abundant uranium and plenty of safe places to store the waste.