Former Liberal senator says Ross Cameron’s description of Liberal party as ‘gay club’ and Larry Pickering’s anti-Islamic comments are ‘own-goal’ for society

Cory Bernardi has distanced himself from homophobic and anti-Islamic comments made at a Q Society event in Sydney last week, describing remarks from former Liberal MP and Sky News commentator Ross Cameron and cartoonist Larry Pickering as “totally inappropriate.”



The outspoken former Liberal senator, who last week split from the Turnbull government to form a new conservative political movement, spoke at a separate Q Society event in Melbourne on Friday.

LGBTI groups condemn homophobic comments at far-right Q Society meeting Read more

Bernardi said on Sunday after reading accounts of the interventions at the Sydney event, he spoke to the function organisers to make it clear he thought the remarks were “totally inappropriate.”

The Q Society is a rightwing advocacy group that describes itself as a not-for-profit civil rights organisation with the goal of informing Australians about Islam. The events last week were part of the group’s “Halal Choices” campaign.

During the Sydney event, Cameron said, among other things, that the Liberal party was “basically a gay club” – adding: “I don’t mind that they are gay, I just wish, like Hadrian, they would build a wall.”

According to reports of the event, Pickering said not all Muslims were bad because some “do chuck pillow-biters off buildings.”

“Let’s be honest, I can’t stand Muslims,” Pickering was quoted as saying. “If they are in the same street as me, I start shaking.”

Bernardi distanced himself from the remarks during an interview on Sky News on Sunday, describing the behaviour as “an own goal from some of [the Q Society’s] supporters.”

“I said it was totally inappropriate,” Bernardi said on Sunday.

He said the anti-halal certification campaigners at the Q Society were already “marginalised, and I think unfairly”, and they didn’t need more obstacles put in their path through ill-disciplined or inappropriate outbursts.

He said Pickering’s intervention was indefensible because what’s going on in some corners of the world is “no joking matter.”

Bernardi said he spoke to Ross Cameron in order to understand the context of his intervention “and he explained the historical nature of his comments, but in reading them, I don’t think there’s anything funny about them.”

“They did some damage.”

Bernardi said he remained a strong supporter of free speech, and would call out examples of “bad speech.”

He said free speech advocates invested their confidence in people to do the right thing. “When bad speech comes forward, it’s up to good people to drive that out and denounce bad speech and bad ideas.”

On Sunday, appearing on Sky News, Cameron said he had apologised for his intervention, and he acknowledged he’d “contributed to a loss of narrative” at the Q Society event.

Bernardi’s public interventions on same sex issues have also landed him in hot water over the years.

He was labelled a homophobe by the opposition leader Bill Shorten last year after he led the charge by conservative MPs opposed to the safe schools program, an anti-bullying initiative established by the then Labor government and launched by the Coalition in 2014.

He said the program was linked to gender-fluid advocacy for children.

In 2012, Bernardi lost a front bench position in the Abbott government because of remarks he made about legalising same sex marriage, characterising marriage equality as the thin edge of the wedge.

“The next step, quite frankly, is having three people or four people that love each other being able to enter into a permanent union endorsed by society – or any other type of relationship,” Bernardi said during parliamentary debate in 2012.

“There are even some creepy people out there... [who] say it is OK to have consensual sexual relations between humans and animals.”

Bernardi has consistently denied he holds homophobic views and responded to Shorten’s intervention by dismissing it as name-calling. “It was Bill Shorten’s Latham handshake moment – unhinged and character illuminating.”