Senator Cory Bernardi, the Liberal Party defector who founded the Australian Conservatives, has told a Trump-tinged political conference in Sydney that conservatives and libertarians are united in an ongoing moral battle against the federal government, which he said was the most pressing danger to the freedom of Australians.

Addressing the Friedman Liberty Conference, hosted by the Australian Libertarian Society, Senator Bernardi said Australians had a moral obligation to fight against the growth of government, taxation and regulation. This view was held by several former colleagues in the Liberal Party but party discipline prevented them from saying so.

Cory Bernardi and other climate sceptic politicians are being outpaced by economics when it comes to the growth of renewables. Credit:Andrew Meares

He said he believed the Australian Conservatives would become the umbrella party for a growing range of small right-wing political organisations, and grow to threaten the Liberal Party in a similar fashion to the Greens' impact on Labor. So far Kirralie Smith of the Australian Liberty Alliance as well as Family First, have joined the Australian Conservatives.

The keynote speaker at the conference is the American anti-tax campaigner Grover Norquist, famous for his argument that government should be shrunk until it was small enough to drown in a bath.