Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi chats with political editor Tory Shepherd about the consitutional recognition of Aboriginal Australians.

SENATOR Cory Bernardi believes he is part-Aboriginal — and he has used the discovery to condemn people who “opt in” to Aboriginality to get special treatment or benefits.

The SA Liberal senator, who is a vocal critic of recognising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the Constitution, found his grandmother’s birth certificate and believes she may have been Aboriginal.

“I can only tell you the facts,” he told The Advertiser.

“On my grandmother’s birth certificate it describes nationality … and it says ‘native’. Does that mean she was Aboriginal or had Aboriginal ancestry herself?”

Queensland Senator Jo Lindgren, the great-niece of Australia’s first indigenous member of federal parliament, Neville Bonner, told him that it does.

Despite this, he says he’s still a white, privileged male and he won’t be seeking special treatment or benefits.

“Should that entitle me to any special rights that I have afforded to me as an Australian? I don’t think so,” he said. “There are people in genuine need.”

Senator Bernardi also said he believes the push to amend the Constitution to recognise Aboriginal people was “dead in the water” because people couldn’t agree on the wording of a referendum.

“There’s no way there’ll be an agreement,” he said.

“The former Prime Minister was totally committed but I couldn’t see any way forward. We shouldn’t be expending political capital going down this path.”

Currently, Australia’s first people are not mentioned in the Constitution, and Prime Minister Tony Abbott was a keen advocate for changing that. However, the push was stymied amid debate over how strong the wording should be; whether it should mention Aboriginal people in the preamble or the main part, how that would be worded, and whether it should go further to remove some outdated sections.

Mr Abbott had indicated the referendum could be in 2017.

Earlier this year, Aboriginal Labor Senator Nova Peris branded Senator Bernardi “ignorant” for his comments on the campaign for recognition.

Senator Bernardi has said that making changes based on race would be divisive and that recognising Aboriginal people was not a priority. He has argued that people should not be treated differently because of their race.

To access government benefits, a person must prove they are of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent. They must also identify as an ATSI and be “accepted as such by the community in which you live, or formerly lived”.

However, people can personally identify as indigenous without ticking all those boxes.