Cory (the Tory) Bernardi: A conservative deception?

The Australian Protectionist Party has been asked recently by a number of sources what we think of Cory Bernardi and his new “Australian Conservatives” party, and whether we would hypothetically look at joining forces with them, as a number of other micro-parties have been considering doing.

Our response is an emphatic NO — and, for the benefit of readers and supporters, this article explains why.

A careful reading over of the listed policies on the Australian Conservatives website reveals very much what we expected from Bernardi: A commitment to free trade, “market forces”, lower taxes and regulations, opposition to tariffs, an “ethic of reciprocity” in our “foreign investment and free trade agreements”, and recognising our “Judeo-Christian” heritage. There is also unequivocal support for the nuclear power industry in Australia, whilst universities “must be made financially accountable for the educational outcomes they provide”, whilst providing “increased choice and competition in the higher education market”. There is no mention of Australian universities giving priority to actually training Australians.

Bernardi has a few powerful friends in the Australian media. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp-owned Sky News channel seems to be full of them. Sky was recently described by a critic as having been “Foxified” — a reference to the obvious neo-conservative bias on Murdoch’s US Fox News channel. One of Bernardi’s Sky News supporters is the highly-influential neo-conservative journalist Andrew Bolt (who’s apparently a good friend to his own employer Murdoch). Bolt plays a pretty useful role in the Culture War, infuriating Lefties with his anthropogenic global warming skepticism, his highlighting of Sudanese crime in Melbourne, exposing radical feminism and Aboriginal favouritism, and his exposure of the looney Left’s many hypocrisies and increasing desperation to shut down conservative dissent.

But Bolt, like so many other media figures, is very selective about what he highlights, and is remarkably silent on some issues. And of late, Bolt, with his newspaper columns and TV show “The Bolt Report”, has been milking concern about Islamic terrorism for every bit he can get out of it, to the point that, after a while, an astute observer might become suspicious.

Besides giving a frequent voice to his mate Bernardi (and a few other regular News Corp-approved commentators), Bolt has also many times interviewed Pauline Hanson, who is seemingly always very keen to get her face on television, no matter the quality of her content.

And with all this mutual concern about Islamic-inspired terrorism, some people may be asking questions like “Why didn’t Bernardi seek to join with Pauline Hanson?” Why start his own party?

To answer this question, one must begin to understand the subtle but important differences in the broader Australian Right. Bernardi may be against the Left, but he is still part of the Right Wing Establishment, and he is being promoted for a reason.

In some ways, Bernardi has a lot going for him. He’s slick, articulate, socially conservative, and, unlike so many of Australia’s opportunistic sell-out politicians (who simply swing with whichever way the wind blows), Bernardi is a man with genuine political convictions. This may be to his credit, but therein lies the trap for patriotic-minded Australians. For all the things Bernardi gets right, there’s plenty he gets wrong.

Be in no doubt, Cory Bernardi did not start his “Australian Conservatives” merely to siphon votes away from the Liberal Party to his political Left. He also had every intention of siphoning votes away from Pauline Hanson and other patriotic voices on his Right, bringing them back under the broader Tory umbrella. Bernardi is therefore potentially a seductive deception to many Right-leaning, conservative, or traditionalist Australian voters, and it warrants exposing his agenda.

Bernardi has a substantial history and voting record in the parliament, and has outlined his political views in his book “The Conservative Revolution”.

Bernardi is a declared Christian, but besides this, his politics are basically that of an economic “dry”, free-trader, neo-conservative, and of the “New Right” (not to be confused with the increasingly-used American term “Alternative Right”). Bernardi would appear to represent little more than the Right End of the Liberal Party, rebranded as “Australian Conservatives”.

Reflecting these economic rationalist views, Bernardi voted in the Senate in favour of Australia’s Free Trade deal with China (ChAFTA), and he raised no public objection to Australia’s involvement in the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). Bernardi has also been notably quiet about mass Asian immigration to Australia, as he has been about the Chinese buying up vast amounts of Australian assets.

The creed of the economic rationalist/New Right basically puts Australia’s short-term profits and economic growth before long-term security and sovereignty considerations. It’s a creed that puts an irrational blind faith in “the hidden hand” of “free markets” to always deliver the best outcomes for humanity. “The market” is perceived to the best regulator of a society.

But the New Right believe new jobs will always magically appear, and if they don’t, it’s too bad for society’s “losers” anyway.

Of course, these “economic rationalists” offer no real alternatives to the orthodox debt-finance system that has enshackled the entire world to a form of debt-slavery. But most of them would rather not upset the world’s banking and corporate powers. Instead, to them, debt is caused by too much government spending, and the solutions are to slash government spending (and services) and manically privatise state-owned assets, to pay off the debt to the bankers who created that debt-money in the first place, and then charged bank interest on top.

Bernardi has had a long association with fellow South Australian Bob Day, who was also once a candidate for the Liberal Party in SA. Day, like Bernardi, is a committed free trader, and was the long-time secretary of the anti-trade union H. R. Nicholls Society, as well as being a board member of the Centre for Independent Studies — a libertarian Australian think tank — also committed to free markets and free trade.

Day also became the head honcho of Family First, a Christian-based Liberal Party satellite, in its South Australian base. Day was the FFP’s lead senate candidate in 2013, and was elected to the federal senate as a SA senator, on the back of a complex set of preference deals, after himself polling 3.8% of the SA vote.

The Family First Party benefited not just from the Liberal Party, but also from preference deals that were arranged by “the preference whisperer” Glenn Druery. Media reports later said that Druery was actually being paid by the FFP and other groups to arrange preference deals to favour them. And apparently it was legal.

Day held on to his SA senate seat by the skin of his teeth at the 2016 federal election, despite FFP’s vote dropping to 2.9%. But Liberal Party preferences saw him get across the line. However, doubts emerged about Day’s personal financial situation, and in November 2016 Day handed in his resignation as a Senator, as he could have been deemed bankrupt or insolvent.

Family First’s automatic replacement for Day (unelected by SA voters) was Kenyan-born and raised Lucy Gichuhi, a lawyer who had recently gotten through her maiden speech to the Senate in stuttered English. Following her speech, Andrew Bolt effectively cheered on Australia’s first black African senator on his TV show. But when Bernardi’s Australian Conservatives moved in and merged with Family First, Gichuhi refused to be part of Cory’s team. This probably disappointed Bernardi, as he had one less senator than he was hoping for, and it might have been a good way to show the masses that his new “Australian Conservatives” weren’t “racist” — if they had a high-profile Kenyan on board.

What a shame. In recent times, we’ve seen the development in Australia of a new narrative favoured by the Andrew Bolts, Cory Bernardis, the Murdoch press, and numerous voices on the Christian Right. By going really hard against Islam, they could perhaps strengthen a declining Christianity, whilst also shoring up support for New Right economics, and other Neo-Conservative agendas. Of course, they knew the general Australian public was becoming more protectionist-inclined, especially in light of the rapidly-growing Chinese presence in Australia’s corporate, mining, agricultural and real estate markets. But Andrew Bolt has never talked much about Chinese economic imperialism. That would expose who would eventually become Australia’s masters, if we leave everything up to the economic rationalists’ precious “free markets”.

In the last few decades, the West has seen the rise of secularism, whilst Cultural Marxist-inspired “political correctness” has effectively replaced a declining Christianity as the dominant new dogmatism setting much of the moral agenda in the West. And organised Christianity has adapted to these changes in various ways. Often it’s meant that PC values have profoundly influenced the Churches.

With Christianity substantially in decline amongst Westerners in Australia, bringing in Christians from the Middle East, Africa, or Asia is often seen as a good way to fill up the churches again, whilst providing organised Christianity with a stronger economic and political base. Hence many church leaders have now happily embraced “ethnic diversity”, and the notion of “racism” as being a new form of “sin”.

The rise of Islamic-inspired terrorism in the West has also changed Christian politics — especially for the more traditionalist viewpoint in the Churches. Portraying Islam as a great threat to Christianity, is a good way to galvanise Christians politically, whilst effectively embracing “Diversity-minus-Islam”.

The Jewish-controlled and funded Q Society and its political arm, The Australian Liberty Alliance, has a somewhat similar agenda — ferociously and relentlessly attacking Islam, in the hope that they can galvanise support for their own agendas amongst an unsuspecting and otherwise indifferent Australian public. And at the same time, imply they’re not “racist” either (again “diversity-minus-Islam”).

Bernardi, the Q Society, and the Christian-based Rise Up Australia Party (with their Sri-Lankan-born leader Danny Nalliah) all talk about defending “Judeo-Christian values”. Despite its common usage, something being truly “Judeo-Christian” is about as credible as “tall dwarfsim” — the two are in reality something quite different to each other. It’s an oxymoron.

But defending “Judeo-Christian values” reflects a new narrative of The-Rest-Of-The-World vs Islam, and that often seeks a solidarity with Christians worldwide, no matter what the ethno-cultural background of those Christians. This new “Counter-Jihad” may also seek a solidarity with anyone around the world perceived to be in conflict with Islam — the new bogeyman, remember? Again, regardless of ethno-cultural (or political) background. This has even seen (in some situations) Australian patriot groups effectively “cheer on” the Chinese Communist Party as it brutally cracks down on Muslim Uyghur separatists in China’s western provinces.

The “Counter-Jihad” seems to insist on some kind of new “global crusade against radical Islam”, but ignores the vast complexities and histories of localised conflicts and politics throughout the world. Australia is not responsible for what happens in Nigeria, the Philippines, South Sudan, Palestine, or Western China, and what happens there shouldn’t really be seen as our problem. And the vast majority of the highly diverse radical Islamist groups around the world are primarily concerned with their own backyards, and getting their fellow heathen Muslims to follow the one true Muslim path. It should be well understood that the vast majority of the victims of Islamic terrorism throughout the world are fellow Muslims, and certainly not Westerners, Christians or Jews.

This is not to downplay the seemingly perpetual Islamic terrorism threat now present in the West. Nowadays, it doesn’t really take much courage or common sense to be concerned about Islam and its impact upon Western society. Perhaps more accurately, Islam-wariness could nowadays be described as a pretty easy bandwagon, with many voices from Australia’s Right joining what’s effectively become a Right Wing pile-on.

Of course it was the forward-thinking Australian Protectionist Party that first championed an end to all Muslim immigration and Australia withdrawing from the outdated UN Refugee Convention ever since we first began in 2007. And these remain our policies today. We also champion expanding voluntary resettlement packages currently offered to asylum seekers, to include Muslims and other culturally incompatible immigrant types.

But being concerned about Islam is frequently a populist distraction, and Bernardi knows it. Whilst he focuses on easy targets like “burkhas”, the terrorism threat, and Halal certification, Australia is being rapidly Asianised (not so much Islamised), as the latest 2016 Census figures starkly reveal.

The Australian Protectionist Party has always regarded Asianisation and the Asian demographic threat as the primary concern in the long run to the very survival of traditional Australia. And being too focused on Islam might be seen as a good way to keep the masses distracted from our growing Asianisation, as our short-sighted politicians create for Australia an increased economic dependence on China, and Chinese interests continue to buy up vast amounts of assets in Australia.

Bernardi’s proposal to “cut immigration in half” simply doesn’t go anywhere near far enough in addressing the demographic crisis that white European-based Australia faces. But the ascent of Bernardi’s new party and its merging with Family First under a new Tory umbrella, may well produce something of a “sorting out” process in Australia’s broader patriotic movement — to determine just who is inclined to nationalism, and who are basically Tories?

It is all very well to champion familiar conservative sentiments, but, in a rapidly changing socio-economic and technological environment Australian politics requires politicians to think outside the square on finance and economics. Otherwise we merely remain trapped and beholden to outdated values, ideas and failed systems, like orthodox debt-finance and believing that the “hidden hand” of “the market” will always deliver the best social outcomes.

It’s also all very well to champion Tory-style “free enterprise”, and the old Protestant values of “hard work” (whilst bemoaning perceived spongers); however, we are living in an age of rapid robotisation and automation that requires an openness to “Third Way” economics, and new and different ways of thinking. For example, Jeremy Thorpe, an economist from Price Waterhouse Coopers, recently suggested that “over the next 20 years approximately 44 per cent of Australia’s jobs, that’s more than 5 million jobs, are at risk of being disrupted by technology, whether that’s digitisation or automation.” From what we’ve seen of Bernardi and his Australian Conservatives, it may be very doubtful that they fully comprehend or offer much in this regard! Instead, it seems to be a familiar economic-growth-above-all-else mentality so typical of the mainstream Tory mindset.

However, many Australians today do not understand the history of the Liberal Party, and the once bitter internal divide that existed between economic “wets” and “dries”. The sad truth is that the economic “dries” won that internal battle, and a slavish adherence to “economic rationalism” and “free trade” have now become the norm within the Liberal Party.

This mindset has seen vast social and economic changes to Australia. We have seen vast public assets privatised, and we have now virtually lost our once mighty car industry, and many other manufacturing jobs have disappeared offshore due to the both the Liberal and Labor parties’ dogmatic belief in the value of “free trade”.

The Goods and Services Tax (GST) has also become an accepted part of the norm in Australian politics, despite apparently once fierce opposition from the Labor Party to it being introduced. Yet with the powerful International Monetary Fund making it very clear that they wanted a GST for Australia, it seems that for now, we are stuck with one, and the mainstream media have made very sure any voices of dissent are not heard. Of course, former Liberal Party Prime Minister John Howard once said we would “never ever” have a GST.

Bernardi’s Australian Conservatives and other voices on Australia’s Right may understand that Western civilisation has a unique and special value, but do they fully understand that Western civilisation is not merely a product of ideas, values, technology, environment, history, and the influence of Christianity, but is also critically, very much a product of the collective gene pools of the people who created and sustained Western civilisation?

And do they understand that the plethora of unique European or European-based cultures are not merely recent products of a consumerist and materialistic age, but are instead thoroughly rooted in many, many hundreds, if not thousands, of years of European struggle? And do they understand the fundamental reality that race is central to the identity, and the social and national cohesion of a people?

And does Bernardi understand Australia’s own experience; that, as part of the Anglosphere, our true roots as a people didn’t really begin in 1788 or 1901, but are really a profound extension of the much deeper and historically rooted Anglo-Celtic-European experience?

It’s important for patriotic-minded Australians to see through the Bernardi deception. His politics are Tory, not Nationalist. The racially conscious Nationalist path may not be the easiest or most marketable road, but from an ideological perspective, it is absolutely the path that’s based on truth! The Australian Protectionist Party will continue to offer a secular (not Christian-based) Nationalist voice, and policies, ideas, and values that will hopefully build a political force that can sway and influence public opinion, and act as a pivot to help to swing the political spectrum in Australia in a Nationalist/Protectionist (not Tory) direction.

References:
“‘Let us choose wisely’: Australia’s newest senator Lucy Gichuhi wants change”, Sydney Morning Herald, 22 June 2017 (Amy Remeikis)
“Family First takeover: Cory Bernardi looks for more mergers after ‘great day for conservatives’”, Sydney Morning Herald, 27 April 2017 (Matthew Knott)
“Minor parties pay consultant to engineer preference swap deals”, The Australian, 4 September 2013
“Police called in as votes deal turns sour”, The Australian, 24 August 2013
“Senate voting inquiry prompted by Glenn Druery’s election tactics could put end to preference trading”, ABC News, 1 April 2014, (Dylan Welch)
“Bob Day”, Wikipedia
“Australian Conservatives MPs Backed by Liberals in Bid to Block Bank Tax”, Australian Conservatives, 3 July 2017
“Rise of the machines: How artificial intelligence will reshape our lives”, ABC News, 3 July 2017 (Carrington Clarke)
“Goods and services tax (Australia)”, Wikipedia
“Cory Bernardi voted moderately for a Free Trade Agreement with China”, They Vote For You
“Australia’s News Channel And What It Learned From Fox News”, BuzzFeed News, 10 July 2017
“Yassmin, have you met Lucy?”, Herald Sun, 22 June 2017 (Andrew Bolt)
“Australian Conservatives will cut immigration in half and ensure that immigration serves in Australia’s best interests”,
“Racism declared sin”, United Church of Christ
“Cory Bernardi”, Wikipedia