Liberal senator says the Coalition needs to ‘take a deep breath’ after the Australian election

Marriage equality: Cory Bernardi says no need to hurry on plebiscite

Liberal senator Cory Bernardi has warned the Coalition needs to “take a deep breath” after Saturday’s election, and hasten slowly with a proposed marriage equality plebiscite.



As the Liberal party’s conservative wing rallies in response to the electoral rebuff delivered to Malcolm Turnbull, Bernardi told Guardian Australia a period of settling was required to determine what the immediate policy priorities were.

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During the election, Turnbull declared he would press on with delivering a marriage equality plebiscite by year’s end, and he has signalled repeatedly that the parliament, including conservative colleagues, would accept the verdict of the Australian people if they voted yes.

But Bernardi said when it came to the marriage equality plebiscite, “the election result would give everybody cause to take a deep breath and determine what our real priorities are”.

He said he did not believe the plebiscite should be dumped, because the Coalition party room had resolved on the plebiscite as the mechanism for dealing with same-sex marriage.

But he said the Coalition needed to regroup from the voter backlash delivered at the weekend by sending a clear signal the party was interested in mainstream values and preoccupations and not captured by “fringe issues”.

He said the party needed to stand up on core issues such as lower taxation and expenditure, culture and sovereignty and “not get sidetracked by trendy issues”.

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Bernardi said a conservative revolution was required within the Liberal party to reset the broad policy direction “and if we don’t do that we’ve got a taste of the revolution waiting for us outside”.

“I’m saddened it’s come to this but I’ve tried to make clear the consequences of abandoning our core philosophy in favour of self interest,” he said. “You can only kick people in the face so many times.”

He also said it was “folly” for the Liberal party to approach the election thinking there were no consequences for deposing a first term prime minister.

Bernardi’s comments are a clear challenge to the authority of the prime minister who yesterday repeated his election mantra that his predecessor Tony Abbott would not return to the cabinet.

Abbott told reporters on Sunday morning “today is not a day for speculation. Rather than pontificate on a difficult subject, we need to calmly consider what’s best.”

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He said he did not intend to dwell on “events of nine months back”.

The opening bout of positioning by conservatives underscores the acute difficulty Malcolm Turnbull now faces in asserting internal authority to resolve contentious internal debates if he manages to return to government, either in majority or in minority.

Some MPs are pointing to the prime minister’s loss of support in the party room after the election, with several key supporters during last year’s leadership battle with Abbott losing their seats in the anti-government swing.

In addition to the marriage equality plebiscite, which has roiled unresolved for months, MPs on election night also signalled their intention to take on the superannuation policies detailed in the budget, which have triggered a fierce backlash in the Coalition base.