Tony Abbott needs to purge his front bench, says Barry Everingham, starting with Cory Bernardi.
The first thing Tony Abbott did when he got his party’s leadership by just one vote was to elevate several right wing reactionaries to his front bench.
It’s time he purged them, starting with the egregious of them all — South Australia’s Cory Bernardi.
He is a racist non-event and a disgrace to Australia and Australians.
Not content with denigrating all Muslims, Bernardi is now hitching his star to the wagon of the dreadful Dutch racist Geert Wilders who says he’s coming to Australia.
Wilders is so hated he needs a huge security entourage when he ventures outside Holland and on that count alone he should be banned from entering Australia.
The ABC on Wednesday reported that Bernardi had made a statement to ABC’s Foreign Correspondent program that he had offered to help “arrange meetings” here for Wilders and assist with his itinerary, which was confirmed by the Dutch racist.
Geert Wilders on Foreign Correspondent:
“I hope to be able, within the next.... this year, or maybe the beginning of next year to visit Australia. I met one of your senators, Senator Cory Bernadi not so long ago. He invited me to help him at least when I would visit Australia and I will certainly do that as soon as I can”.
After the predictable uproar, this inconvenient truth is now being busily erased by Tony Abbott with Bernardi coming out with a statement yesterday backtracking on his original statement to the ABC.
Wilders goes along with Bernardi in his denigration of Islam and Muslims and says Islam is akin to communism or fascism.
This of course sits easily with Tony Abbott’s parliamentary secretary who has denounced Islam as a totalitarian, political and religious ideology. Bernardi is known to confront Muslim letter writers who complain about his anti-Islamic rhetoric by accusing them of being Muslim extremists.
(I need to make a declaration here. I do not tar all Dutch people with the Wilders brush, although I can imagine our own Dutch Australian Andrew Bolt might not be too worried about his countryman’s views. I have been visiting Holland for many years professionally and as a tourist and my daughters’ partner, and father of my two beautiful grandsons, is Dutch.)
Bernardi also slammed the Government’s decision to foot the funeral bills for asylum seekers.
Bernardi, who is a close associate of Professor David Flint, has so far survived calls from a wide section of the community to be sacked.
But his latest outrage in dealing personally with Geert Wilders will test Abbott’s patience.
The Opposition Leader’s front bench is littered with right wing reactionaries and racists.
Kevin Andrews, of Dr Haneef fame, and Phil Ruddock, who was the architect of Howard’s cruel and inhumane solution to asylum seekers, are just two.
The foul mouthed Sophie Mirabella, who has screamed “not sorry!” to Aboriginals in her electorate, is another.
It hasn’t been Abbott’s day.
The decision by the NSW Police not to proceed with the investigation into allegations of fraud by ALP backbencher Craig Thomson can hardly have pleased him and his plans to reopen Nauru detention centre seem to have floundered.
If Abbott is gain the respect of the wider decent Australian community he should move quickly on Bernardi and those others who disgrace the once great political party founded by Sir Robert Menzies.
