Former Liberal senator Cory Bernardi has become the latest political figure to join Pauline Hanson’s One Nation as it surges ahead of the fractured Coalition in the polls.
Hanson announced Bernardi would run as the party’s lead upper house candidate in the South Australian election in March.
“Cory has strong, sound conservative values that are an excellent fit with One Nation and he’s a prominent South Australian keen to make the positive differences in his home state the Liberals just can’t bring themselves to make,” she said.
Bernardi served as a senator until 2020. His own party, Australian Conservatives, failed to gain any traction in 2019 after he quit the Liberals.
He said the major parties were failing voters.
“There’s no effective opposition to government; they’re effectively one party – a ‘uniparty’ – and that’s a bad thing for South Australians because they’re being left behind,” he said.
South Australian polls are predicting political oblivion for the state Liberals, with some projecting they could retain as few as three lower house seats.
There is unconfirmed speculation that serving Liberal senator Alex Antic will join Bernardi. Both sit well to the right of the Liberal Party in the hard-right and Christian right.
Former Victorian Liberal MP Bernie Finn, who fell out with the Liberals over his opposition to abortion, has already joined One Nation ahead of the Victorian state election in November as the minor party hoovers up disaffected right-wingers who have previously courted controversy
When asked about the prospect of defecting to One Nation by this masthead on Friday, Antic said: “I haven’t always got on well with the media but there’s nothing worse than spoiling a surprise. I think it’s for your own good to wait and see.”
Antic has built up a big online following, particularly after the pandemic, by harnessing scepticism of vaccine mandates, anti-government grievance and hostility to woke culture.
The senator has dominated the South Australian division of the Liberal Party for several years. But more recently, Moderates, led by figures such as Senator Anne Ruston and former Coalition defence minister Christopher Pyne, have worked with Antic’s more mainstream opponents within the Right, such as Nicolle Flint, to diminish his influence as the South Australian Liberals face a state election wipeout in March.
Hanson’s statement on Bernardi, released late on Monday ahead of a press conference in Adelaide on Tuesday, contained no reference to Antic.
Antic has told colleagues for months that he is disillusioned with coming to Canberra and has become distanced from his Liberal colleagues. Over summer, he removed the Liberal logo from his electorate office.
“There is lots of speculation and it will bring a smile to many if true,” one of Antic’s senate colleagues said off the record to speak candidly about the prospect.
Hanson’s chief of staff, party strategist James Ashby, has been teasing major defections. Last week he told Sky News that “it will shock people just how significant” the announcements, expected on Tuesday, would be.
“We need to be the unofficial opposition as One Nation, and we are on that recruitment drive that so many people have said we don’t have,” Ashby said, promising “familiar faces and big names”.
One Nation is rattling the Coalition and starting to take some votes off Labor as its primary vote shoots ahead of the Liberals and Nationals despite outlining few detailed policies and a history of stoking racial anxieties.
Hanson’s uncompromising rhetoric on immigration has seen her stocks rise as voter concern on migration has risen. The defection of former Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce has also served to make the right-wing party more mainstream.
A Redbridge Group/Accent Research poll published on Sunday by The Australian Financial Review showed One Nation entrenched as the second most popular party, ahead of the Liberal or National parties. Labor was down 1 point from December to 34 per cent; the combined Liberal and National party vote was 19 per cent, down from 26 per cent; and One Nation was up to 26 from 17.
This masthead’s Resolve Political Monitor from January showed the Coalition at 28 per cent and Hanson’s party at 18 per cent.
Joyce told this masthead’s Inside Politics podcast last week that the polling numbers were soft and could fade by the election, but argued they represented a huge opportunity to create permanent support as the Coalition was mired in a crisis of policy and personnel.
Hanson’s office has declined to comment on Antic’s move several times over the past week.
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Paul Sakkal is chief political correspondent. He previously covered Victorian politics and has won Walkley and Quill awards. Reach him securely on Signal @paulsakkal.14Connect via X or email.