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Cory Bernardi’s maiden speech to the South Australian parliament drew both walkouts and praise, as the One Nation senator took aim at what he calls the “woke political machine.”

Finally, some straight talk from a straight shooter:

Cory Bernardi must be doing something right: he got some snowflake Greens to walk out of his maiden speech that he delivered in the South Australian parliament. Now that he is a member of One Nation, he is ruffling even more feathers than he did when he was with the Liberal Party.

From 2006 to 2020, Bernardi served as a Federal Senator for South Australia, mostly as a Liberal. He left the Libs in 2017 to found the Australian Conservatives, which was disbanded several years later. Earlier this year, he joined Pauline Hanson’s party and was elected to the State Legislative Council two months ago.

His maiden speech showed that he is still unafraid to speak truth and challenge the reigning narratives. And it aligned with the long-standing views of Hanson. Speaking with Chris Kenny, she said this: “Good on him … I’ve said exactly the same on the floor of parliament. We’re all on the same page … that’s what I love about One Nation, we don’t hold back, we say what the majority of the public are actually thinking.”

“People Want Their Country Back”

The 24-minute speech contained plenty of fiery takedowns of the woke political machine, and the politically correct establishment narrative. He began the speech this way:

Let me begin by welcoming you all to the land of my ancestors and by recognising the leaders past, present, and emerging that have all played a role in building our great state and nation. Their stories are all very different, but without them, none of this would be possible for me. They all had different journeys, but were equal in embracing this great nation and our way of life.

They worked hard. They built roads. They taught school. They made cars. And I’m pretty sure they all voted Labor. Their children created businesses. They served in the military. They worked in healthcare. And they built families of their own. And I’m optimistic that on more than one occasion, maybe some of them actually voted for the Liberal Party.

He went on to say:

An easy-going, a prosperous, and a united nation has become fractured. It’s become debt-ridden. And I think we’re over governed. The middle class has been hollowed out as the creeping hand of socialism divides us into tribes, fostering envy, fueling resentment, and social decay. Our political class have squandered our God-given opportunities with false ideology and empty promises. And in doing so, they’ve taken away a lot of the hope and aspiration for so many in this country.

Various short quotes can be offered here:

“People are sick of being fed a steady diet of tasteless vegan political tofu and being told that it’s tasty eye fillet, and really good for them. They want their country back, and I want to give it back to them, starting right here in South Australia.”

“The media are silent, while the government allows doctors to mutilate children in the name of gender-affirming care. To me, it’s sheer madness.”

“I don’t need to be welcomed to my own country, and neither do the overwhelming majority of Australians.”

Reactions From Allies

Posting on social media, another One Nation recruit, Bernie Finn, said this about his speech:

My good mate Cory Bernardi has caused quite a stir with his Maiden Speech in SA. Reminds me of mine in the State Senate when the Leader of the Government took a point of order against me (the first in the 150 year history of the Upper House), and Labor MPs were so infuriated by my comments they stormed out en masse. With the exception of their leader who had to stay to keep the House sitting, the Government benches were completely deserted – the public galleries were full tho. It was a good day’s work!

Bernardi chatted with Paul Murray afterwards and said this in part:

It’s a second maiden speech. And so the first one I felt you have to categorise your influences on your life. But now I feel so comfortable in my own skin. You know I’m a known quantity to many. I just wanted to bell the cat on what I call the midwits that are running the country. And I call them midwits because the halfwits know they’re dumb. The midwits, you know, they’re average intelligence, but they think they’re geniuses and they’ve got some special insight and they’re destroying the joint for us.

And again:

I just want to put a layer of common sense over what is being put forward because you know the mushy diet that’s been fed by politicians today is delivering worse outcomes for people, and it doesn’t matter what the economic figures say or however they want to spin the stats. Ordinary Australians know their lives are going backwards as a result of government policy.

And what we’ve got is governments that are choosing people on the basis of their skin colour or their race or their creed or their sex or any other sort of status. And this is just as bad as any sort of segregation policy or policies back in South Africa or in Martin Luther King Jr’s time when he gave that great speech.

And that’s the point I want to make. If people embrace this country, if they live by our values, our social mores, they can live according to their own culture if they want to as long as they obey the law. And this used to be so tolerant and accepting until the tolerant and those who demanded acceptance started using all these weapons against other people.

And that’s the guts of it for me, Paul. I don’t care about your skin colour, but please don’t blame my skin colour for your problems. I don’t care about your history, but do not blame my ancestors for your problems today. I don’t care about your creed, but do not go after mine just because you don’t like it. This is the big problem. We are dividing the country and it’s socialism, it’s communism, it’s, you know, whatever, equality, it’s just whatever it is. What I said was an anathema to the Greens, which tells you everything that’s right about that speech.

He finished the interview this way:

I’m entirely unaffected by what the media want to write about me. I’ve been down that path. I’m just a big ball of scar tissue, right? So, no more blood can be drawn, right? But I do want to make sure we can get past the gatekeepers. And you see the headlines, you know, there was a headline today where Pauline Hansen’s representative said, a matter of policy in South Australia. That’s up to Cory and the state team.

And the headline read, basically Hansen abandons, South Australia or washes her hands of it, right? And I contacted the journalist and said, “What sort of BS is this?” Oh, you know, let other people make their judgment. I realise I’m clickbait, right, for the media.

I’m just clickbait. They can put anything up there and they go, “Oh, God.” And then they’ll get all the hateful comments or the positive comments. But more people are seeing through it. They know it’s fake news. They just want to get to the source.

And that’s why our socials are growing enormously. It was very effective during the campaign, and we can use it to negate the BS that’s out there. I want to have an honest conversation. I want to tell truth to the lies and I want to make people feel uncomfortable in the nonsense that they’re telling the Australian people. So I’ll keep doing it, mate.

Like so many others, I am so very happy to see some politicians with a bit of backbone calling out the lies and the nonsense that we find all around us. No more tippy-toeing around, trying to be nice and not offend anyone. The time for that is over, with the nation going down the gurgler real fast.

We need more politicians like Cory Bernardi telling it like it is. I hope many more will join him in this. And if you are a person of prayer, then please keep Cory, Bernie, Pauline and the team in your prayers. They sure need it with all the haters and leftist loons out there.

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Republished with thanks to CultureWatch. Image courtesy of SA One Nation.