There’s a huge amount of static around about Cory Bernardi’s defection from the Liberal party, so let’s do ourselves a favour and embark on some decoding.



Let’s start with the Canberra default when any major party politician leaves the nest. Dissenters are always “rats”. Exhibit A, Tuesday’s Daily Telegraph.

Is Bernardi a rodent? Of course he is.

Just six months ago he stood as a Liberal in the South Australian Senate race, with all the institutional backing of the Liberal party, and was elected for a six-year term, which gives him a good span of time to build his new political identity without having to risk anything personally.

This behaviour is a distance short of charming, and people are perfectly entitled to be angry about that.

But folks intent on running a line of defence that says how dare Bernardi offend the custom and practice of the political establishment in Canberra, and think that is somehow a resonant argument, must have missed the past two years in politics.

If somehow you missed the past two years in politics, the bit where Brexit happened and Trump got elected and One Nation returned to the political scene, then you have only to read Monday’s Newspoll to know that Australian voters are parting ways with the major parties, and are actively looking for alternatives.

If you want to put some wind under the sails of a red meat conservative, who is looking to build a new political movement on a bedrock of disaffection, and is looking (somewhat against his own history) to position himself as a political outsider – I’d start throwing around words like “rat”.

It’s very likely to help.

Now, some other things you need to know.

At times of crisis, conventional wisdom in Canberra can be relied upon to assert itself. Politicians know they can rely on the cliche-ridden forms of how these things are routinely reported to prosecute their own agenda.

The word that will be thrown around liberally after “rat”, will be “test”. The conservative faction in the government has been positioning over the past few months to make Bernardi’s defection “a test of Malcolm Turnbull’s leadership” – and have been actively stoking that narrative.

Tony Abbott started this caper just before Christmas, and found himself called out by Bernardi for his pains. Others have taken up the cudgels in recent days – Eric Abetz, who says Turnbull just has to get more conservative but declines to say how, George Christensen, who is unhappy with everything, but can’t apparently bring himself to do what Bernardi is doing.

Let’s get real. Looking at Turnbull, it really is hard to see how he could get more conservative than he currently is without also triggering a full-scale rebellion by party moderates.

So let’s call this one out. The hard right of the Liberal party just don’t like Turnbull, so it doesn’t matter what he does, it won’t be enough.

Why Cory Bernardi's vote counts Cory Bernardi can wield considerable influence outside the Liberal party on an enlarged Senate crossbench. Bernardi's resignation brings the Coalition down to 29 seats. One Nation (three) and the Nick Xenophon Team (three) are key to helping the government achieve a majority of 38 (39 when the two vacancies are filled). Bernardi's vote counts because the government can only afford to lose two or three crossbench votes. Although voters tend to vote for party groups, once senators are elected the seat is theirs, not the party's. Senators who have abandoned their parties include Mal Colston (Labor), Glenn Lazarus and Jacqui Lambie (Palmer United party) and Rodney Culleton (One Nation).

This much is true. Turnbull is facing a number of daily tests, and right now, it’s very hard to see him being still being upright in the Lodge by year’s end.

But let’s be clear, the Bernardi defection is about Bernardi wanting the freedom to do exactly as he pleases, and not make compromises.

So when you see conservatives executing a fresh pincer movement against Turnbull (and this won’t stop, the pattern of behaviour is fixed, the Turnbull haters just move from opportunity to opportunity), at least see it for what it is.

Cynical opportunism.

Now to the question of whether Bernardi’s insurgency will actually work, and whether it’s a good idea.

Some political hardheads are of the view that insurgencies work only from the inside out – a case in point being Donald Trump’s capture of the Republican party. This line of reasoning says Trump did not run for president as an independent, and if he had, it wouldn’t have worked. He embarked on a hostile takeover of the Republican party, and that’s why it worked.

I have no idea whether Bernardi’s insurgency will work or not, and given he’s likely to be prosecuting the same territory as One Nation, he’s probably a bit late off the mark.

Colleagues who know Bernardi well point out he’s not natural leadership material, he doesn’t play well with others, so his capacity to build a movement may be constrained by personality, let alone the practicalities: will he garner sufficient resources to make it work?

This analysis may well be right.

I have argued before that there are sound reasons why a split between capital C conservatives and liberal moderates would be a good thing given contemporary experience tells us that the government’s competing factions have developed a taste for zero sum rather than compromise.

But right now, the trajectory of all this is unknowable.

The only fixed point in politics right now is disruption – and Bernardi’s instinct is to swim along that rip.