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Cory Bernardi

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Cory Bernardi
Senator for South Australia
Incumbent
Assumed office
2006
Preceded byRobert Hill
ConstituencySouth Australia
Personal details
Born (1969-11-06) 6 November 1969 (age 54)
Adelaide
NationalityAustralian
Political partyLiberal Party of Australia
Spouse(s)Sinead Bernardi; 2 children
Residence(s)Adelaide, South Australia
Alma materPrince Alfred College
OccupationSenator for South Australia
Websitehttp://www.senatorbernardi.com

Cory Bernardi (born 6 November 1969, Adelaide) is an Conservative Christian Australian politician. He has been a Liberal Party member of the Australian Senate since 2006, representing the state of South Australia.

Early life

Bernardi was born and raised in Adelaide and was educated at Prince Alfred College in Kent Town, South Australia. He then went on to further his rowing career at the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS).

Bernardi represented Australia in the sport of rowing in 1988 and 1989. In doing so at the age of 18, he is the youngest person to have represented Australia in the open heavyweight men's division of rowing. Bernardi, rowing in a Mercantile Rowing Club eight, won the Ladies' Challenge Plate at the Henley Royal Regatta in England. He also competed at the World Rowing Championships in Bled (then in Yugoslavia, now in Slovenia), as part of the coxless four and came tenth.

Bernardi suffered a back injury in 1989 which effectively ended his rowing career. He married wife Sinead in 1996; the couple has two sons.

Career

During the early 1990s, Bernardi owned and operated several hotels around Adelaide. In 1996, he left his small business interests to pursue a career in investment portfolio management and venture capital. [citation needed]

Bernardi was President of the South Australian Division of the Liberal Party of Australia from 1998 to 2000 and was the Party's Federal Vice-President from 2005 until late 2006 when he voluntarily resigned to avoid any potential conflict of interest as a Senator. He is the youngest person to ever hold these positions within the Liberal Party (South Australia and National). Throughout his involvement in the Party, he has held various other executive positions, including on the finance and campaign committees. [citation needed]

Political career

Following the resignation of Robert Hill from the Senate in March 2006 to become Ambassador to the United Nations, Bernardi was chosen by the Parliament of South Australia to fill the vacancy. His senate term officially commenced on 4 May 2006.[1] He was elected to a full six year term at the 2007 federal election.

In December 2007, Bernardi was appointed the Federal Coalition's Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Families and Community Services. In September 2008, new Federal Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull appointed Bernardi the Coalition Spokesman for Disabilities, Carers and the Voluntary Sector.[2] Bernardi is a member of the conservative faction or right-wing of the Liberal Party.[3]

On 17 February 2007, Bernardi was pre-selected by the State Council of the South Australian Liberal Party to be the number one candidate on the South Australian Liberal Senate ticket for the federal election to be held in late 2007. He was pre-selected ahead of Simon Birmingham, while Senator Grant Chapman came in third.

On 21 April 2007 Bernardi published an essay questioning whether global warming was caused by human activities.[4] Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull and other Liberal parliamentarians promptly distanced themselves from his views.[5]

In January 2008, the Adelaide Advertiser reported that Bernardi had written to South Australian politicians encouraging them to oppose a bill allowing the therapeutic cloning of human embryos. His letter and a later opinion piece argued that advances in medical technology had made human cloning for stem cell research redundant. He further suggested that the federal legislation allowing this research should be reviewed. [citation needed]

On 19 March 2008, Senator Bernardi, the Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Families, was named in a story published in The Australian newspaper[6] as having being linked to a scheme that sold financial advice on how divorcees could hide money from their former spouses. In a media statement released shortly after the article was released, Bernardi described the story as "a rehash of a factually incorrect story that first appeared in 2006 before my appointment to the Senate". He further claimed that he had been "made aware that a colleague has been approaching numerous journalists in an attempt to 'push' this matter as a means of personally attacking me".[citation needed] The statement went on to say; "I find it disappointing that there are people who clearly pine to background journalists with half-truths and mischievous suggestions in an attempt to smear others. The people who creep out of their darkened closets to resurrect previously discredited accusations do no service to themselves or the community. Politics is a battle of ideas, not a battle of smears."[7]

On 20 March 2008, Bernardi introduced a motion calling for a Senate inquiry into swearing on television and the effectiveness of the Code of Practice after a television show was broadcast at 8.30pm containing the word 'fuck' eighty times in 40 minutes.[citation needed] The Senate supported the motion. In June 2008, Senator Bernardi stated his personal view on onlineopinion.com.au regarding proposed gay reform. He states that "Same-sex relationships are not the same as marital relationships and to treat them the same is to suspend common sense".[8] Writing on the ABC 'unleashed' website in July 2008, Bernardi questioned the ethics of granting human rights to great apes while ignoring the rights of the unborn child.[9]

In August 2008, it was reported in the Herald Sun newspaper that the Federal Parliamentary Library had, following a request from Bernardi, identified a loophole in government legislation that allowed some women who aborted their pregnancies to claim the $5000 'baby bonus'." The Government stated that the bonus was not available for aborted pregnancies and committed to following up any occurrences of this.[10]

Senator Bernardi caused a stir in October 2008 with a speech to the Senate protesting against the Same-Sex Relationships (Equal Treatment in Commonwealth Laws-Superannuation) Bill 2008. The bill, which was supported by the Liberal Party under Malcolm Turnbull's leadership, led to upset within the Party's conservative faction, of which Bernardi is a leader. Turnbull was "unhappy that Party authority was being challenged"[11] by Bernardi. In his speech, he complained that we should not "throw open the doors and welcome into the fold those whose relationships are uncharacteristic of the most basic elements of a marital union".[12] Then Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull rang Bernardi the next morning to "chip him", having felt that the speech was intemperate in tone, went against the party line, and against Turnbull's leadership.[13]

Bernardi was removed from the Shadow Ministry by Turnbull after reportedly making unsubstantiated claims regarding a fellow Liberal MP in his weekly blog. He recalled an encounter with the Liberal MP at the Royal Adelaide Golf Club about 14 years ago:

In response to my question of why he joined the Liberal Party, the MP blithely responded "I live in a Liberal seat so I had to be a member of the Liberal Party to get into Parliament. If I lived in a Labor seat I would have joined the Labor Party". Frankly I was aghast at this response. Where was the conviction, the beliefs, the values that I believe should motivate our political leaders? Several follow up questions disclosed that the only motivation for his own political involvement was for him to become Prime Minister.

The MP involved was thought to be Christopher Pyne, who denied the allegations as "preposterous".[14][15][16][17]

In 2010 Bernardi wrote an opinion piece calling for a ban on wearing the burqa in public.[18]

Publications

The Money Tree

Senator Bernardi wrote a book entitled The Money Tree during his time as a financial planner, of which he has since reproduced a second edition in his capacity as a senator. The newer version of the book is called The Money Tree: Securing Your Child's Financial Future. The second version has been simplified, shortened and illustrated to appeal to younger children. There have been in excess of 15,000 copies of The Money Tree printed and distributed free to Australian families and more than 100,000 downloads from the MoneyTreeBook.com website.

References

  1. ^ Parliament of Australia (12 May 2006). "Biography for BERNARDI, Cory". Parlinfo Web. Retrieved 14 May 2006.
  2. ^ "Media Release". Retrieved 22 August 2008.
  3. ^ [http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/national/senior-liberal-sacked-for-disloyalty/story-e6freuzr-1111118903929 Cory Bernardi sacked from Coalition's junior shadow ministry: Telegraph 19 February 2009]
  4. ^ "Cool Heads Needed on Global Warming" (PDF). Retrieved 23 April 2007.
  5. ^ "Libs snub Bernardi climate call". The Advertiser. 23 April 2007. Retrieved 23 April 2007.
  6. ^ "Cash-hiding plan linked to Lib MP". Retrieved 18 March 2008.
  7. ^ "Statement Relating to Article In 'The Australian'". Retrieved 22 August 2008.
  8. ^ "Don’t confuse marriage with discrimination"
  9. ^ Monkeying Around with Human Rights
  10. ^ "Loophole allows baby bonus for late abortions"
  11. ^ "Turnbull calls for unity on gay laws"
  12. ^ Senate Hansard
  13. ^ "Social values prove to be Turnbull's first test", Sydney Morning Herald, 20 October 2008
  14. ^ "Turnbull sacks SA Senator Bernardi", ABC, 19 February 2009
  15. ^ "Turnbull sacks frontbencher for turning on Pyne", Sydney Morning Herald 19 February 2009
  16. ^ "Turnbull sacks frontbencher over blog", Canberra Times, 20 February 2009
  17. ^ "Bernardi sacked for revealing on his blog that Pyne is not a conviction politician", Vexnews, 19 February 2009
  18. ^ Bernardi, Cory (6 May 2010). "For Australia's sake, we need to ban the burqa". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 6 May 2010.

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