False conservatives mask right-wing misfits

January 10, 2014

Cory Bernardi is inspired more by America’s Tea Party than Britain’s Tories.

‘Sacked from the frontbench twice but still wielding power within the Liberal Party, Bernardi’s attention-seeking ways were rewarded in predictable spades.’ Photo: Glen McCurtayne

On October 18, 1906, The Age reported comments by prime minister Alfred Deakin mocking his rival, opposition leader George Reid, then in the midst of an obsessive anti-socialist scare campaign. ”Mr Reid has got this panic so badly,” Deakin joked, ”that if a cow chased him out of a paddock he would accuse it of socialism.”

I was reminded of Deakin’s put-down by this week’s coverage of South Australian Liberal senator Cory Bernardi’s provocative new book, The Conservative Revolution.

In Cory Bernardi’s fantasy world a Green-left-feminist-homosexual-Muslim spectre stalks the suburbs of Australia.

According to Bernardi, abortion is a ”death industry”. ”Non-traditional families” produce higher levels of ”criminality amongst boys and promiscuity among girls”. Workplace laws need to be liberalised. The only thing missing was a denunciation of the moral turpitude of certain breeds of red-ragging, single-parent-child cattle.

Perhaps channelling Deakin, Bernardi’s colleague, Warren Entsch, queried his ”obsession” with gay people. He echoed fellow step-father, Opposition Leader Bill Shorten, in denouncing the senator’s incendiary observations of single mothers and same-sex couples. If a member of Bernardi’s family turned out to be gay, Entsch mischievously wondered, would the good senator ”advocate sterilisation?”

Bernardi is a master in the art of what has come to be known as ”trolling”. The senator appears to be more interested in getting a rise out of his ideological opponents than formulating public policy or meaningfully contributing to public debate.

As a reminder, this is a man who believes homosexuality is but a mere hop, skip and a jump away from bestiality. Islam – not merely radical Islam – is a ”totalitarian political and religious ideology”. Climate science is bunkum too – an invention of pesky left-wing elites. In Bernardi’s fantasy world a Green-left-feminist-homosexual-Muslim spectre stalks the suburbs of Australia, hell-bent on destroying everything in its reach, from the institution of the family, to the church and Western civilisation itself.

Sacked from the frontbench twice but still wielding power within the Liberal Party, Bernardi’s attention-seeking ways were rewarded in predictable spades.

The Twitterverse and Facebook erupted in righteous denunciation. The online bookseller Amazon was flooded with scathing, if humorous ”reviews”. Some charged that Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s muted response indicated tacit support or signalled a machiavellian plan to distract the electorate from the government’s political woes. Journalist Lenore Taylor spoke for many when she described him as a ”conviction conservative” and standard-bearer of the Coalition’s conservative wing seeking to shift the political centre.

But here’s the rub. Bernardi is no conservative. Rather, he is the ringleader of a set of political misfits inspired by a discredited American-style, muscular Christian, radical right-wing politics ill at ease with the mainstream sensibilities of Australian politics. For example, the Australian sense of the ”fair go”, enshrined in our workplace laws, would seem to embody Bernardi’s plea not to ”tamper with tradition”.

The title of Bernardi’s screed gives the game away. And since when did constitution-worshipping, incremental-change-loving conservatives openly talk of revolution? The short answer is since they took their cues less from the British Tories and more from the increasingly Tea Party-influenced US Republicans.

A similar lesson applies to his fellow-travellers in the ”conservative” commentariat. Whether it is Andrew Bolt, Tim Blair or Piers Akerman (who lies awake at night worrying about the left-wing bias of the ABC TV children’s program Peppa Pig), or think tanks such as the Institute of Public Affairs, few qualify as genuine conservatives. Many are better described as libertarians.

Tellingly, like their US compadres quite a few boast left-wing backgrounds. Bolt was once a moderate social democrat. In Akerman’s (and the late Christopher Pearson’s – a one-time Maoist) case, he traversed the left’s radical fringes. Despite having crossed the political divide, some remain wedded to a Manichean politics of good and evil.

No doubt some irredentist elements of the Coalition and their media cheerleaders think Bernardi’s interventions are smart politics. On the contrary, it can only alienate voters. Take the Islamic vote. We should be careful not to stereotype a diverse ethno-religious grouping. Nonetheless, many Muslims whom Bernardi identifies with totalitarianism are instinctive social conservatives.

Yet why would they vote for a party that tolerates such bigotry? Here history repeats. It was a very similar form of Protestant sectarianism which made the Roman Catholic forefathers of Bernardi and Abbott baulk at voting for, let alone join, the incarnations of the Liberal Party across much of the 20th century.

Another counter-intuitive reading is that Bernardi’s antics provide Labor, a party seeking to re-engage with mainstream Australia, a new way forward.

As I argued in The Age a few weeks ago, an opportunity exists for Labor to covet not only socially progressive voters but also dominate the terrain of small ”c” conservatism – to become the party of meaningful family life in all its ”gold standard” (to quote Bernardi) manifestations, the champion of tight-knit, multicultural communities and advocate for a renewed sense of mutualism and voluntary organisation including faith-based forms.

The environment, specifically climate change, is an issue that is calling out for a canny strategic approach stressing its progressive and conservative dimensions. After all, a genuine conservative cares deeply about the world they pass onto their children. That person is not Cory Bernardi.

Nick Dyrenfurth is the author of several books on Australian politics and history, and recently worked as a Labor adviser and speechwriter.