Cory Bernardi’s Background and Beliefs, by Charis Chang.
Mr Bernardi is known for being a conservative and for having strict Roman Catholic views, but the former stockbroker and financial adviser, has also been a critic of big government and high taxes. …
Background:
Mr Bernardi’s father Leon Bernardi was an Italian immigration who arrived in Australia at age 16 and worked his way from the David Jones food counter to running his own hotels and restaurants. …
While at university, he was selected for a rowing scholarship and went on to represent Australia at the world championships in the former Yugoslavia in 1989.
Later he worked as a labourer with a German construction company that put up marquees for international events, including a political conference held by then Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi. …
He started working as a stockbroker and financial adviser, and with the backing of right-wing faction leader and South Australian senator Nick Minchin, Mr Bernardi became the Liberal Party’s youngest South Australian state president in 1998, and the youngest federal vice-president in 2005. He entered the Senate in 2006.
According to The Monthly, Mr Bernardi’s grandfather was a trade unionist and Labor man …
Some distinguishing beliefs:
He has called asylum-seekers “welfare squatters” and criticised the government for flying refugees (whose relatives were killed in 2010 when their asylum seeker boat crashed on to Christmas Island) to Sydney to attend the funerals.
After being elevated to shadow parliamentary secretary assisting the opposition leader by Mr Abbott, Mr Bernardi resigned in 2012 after suggesting that legalising same-sex marriage could lead to demands to legalise bestiality and polygamy. …
Mr Bernardi defended anti-Islam Dutch MP Geert Wilders ahead of a visit in 2015 to launch a new political party called the Australian Liberty Alliance, which advocates against the “Islamisation of Australia”. Mr Bernardi was earlier rebuked by the Liberal leadership in 2013 for his support of Mr Wilders.
In a 2011 article, Mr Bernardi wrote about why the ideology of Islam was so dangerous and the failure of multiculturalism.
“Things have changed. Across the world there have been new waves of immigrants who have decided that their greatest allegiance is to the religious and political ideology of Islam rather than to their adopted land,” he wrote.
“Their insistence of consuming halal food means that in many countries (including Australia) most of us are unknowingly eating food slaughtered in the name of Allah. I, for one, don’t want to eat meat butchered in the name of an ideology that is mired in sixth century brutality and is an anathema to my own values.” …
The senator has called for the burqa to be banned and sparked criticism in 2014 when he tweeted about the head covering being a “shroud of oppression”. …
During his 2006 maiden speech, the-father-of-two said the mainstream of Australia had clearly rejected the so-called “rights” that were at odds with the country’s laws and traditions.
“I know of childcare centres in Adelaide where management were so worried about offending non-Christian children they decided to ban Christmas celebrations,” he said.
He also spoke about “one element of the natural law: the act of marriage”.
“Marriage is not a right; it was not invented — marriage simply is,” he said. “Marriage has been reserved as a sacred bond between a man and a woman across times, across cultures and across very different religious beliefs.”
hat-tip Stephen Neil
