{"id":453600,"date":"2026-02-02T12:58:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-02T12:58:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/453600\/"},"modified":"2026-02-02T12:58:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-02T12:58:10","slug":"cory-bernardi-to-contest-sa-state-election-for-one-nation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/453600\/","title":{"rendered":"Cory Bernardi to contest SA state election for One Nation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former Liberal senator Cory Bernardi has become the second high-profile ex-Coalition MP to join One Nation in a matter of months.<\/p>\n

One Nation leader senator Pauline Hanson said Mr Bernardi \u2014 who previously resigned from Federal Parliament after 13 years in 2020<\/a> \u2014 would lead One Nation’s Legislative Council ticket at the state election.<\/p>\n

Senator Hanson’s media release announcing the decision made no reference to conservative Liberal MP Alex Antic, amid speculation he could also join One Nation.<\/p>\n

Mr Bernardi’s decision comes less than two months after former deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce also joined One Nation.<\/p>\n

Senator Hanson has been targeting current and ex-Liberal and National MPs to jump ship, amid dire polling for the former Coalition parties putting them behind One Nation.<\/p>\n

Under South Australia’s upper house system, One Nation will need to attract slightly more than 8 per cent of the vote \u2014 through either first preference ballots or preferences \u2014 to get Mr Bernardi elected.<\/p>\n

\"One<\/p>\n

Pauline Hanson says she has been in discussions with Cory Bernardi for some time. (AAP: Mick Tsikas)<\/p>\n

Mr Bernardi quit the Liberals in 2017 to start his own Australian Conservatives party.<\/p>\n

The party dissolved just two years later, after attracting less than 1 per cent of the Senate vote at the 2019 federal election.<\/p>\n

“I’ve been in positive discussions with Cory for some time. He has a clear vision for South Australia’s future, and it’s one that we both share,” Senator Hanson said.<\/p>\n

The move follows the defection of Mr Joyce to One Nation late last year<\/a>, while a surge in support for the minor party<\/a> has placed it ahead of the Coalition in a number of recently published opinion polls.<\/p>\n

Mr Bernardi said he felt there was “very little difference” between the Labor and Liberal parties in SA, and said he was “proud” to join Ms Hanson’s party.<\/p>\n

“There’s no effective opposition to government; they’re effectively one party \u2014 a uni-party \u2014 and that’s a bad thing for South Australians because they’re being left behind,” he said.<\/p>\n

One Nation does not currently have any seats in South Australia’s parliament, after its only MP, Sarah Game, quit the party last year.<\/p>\n

But One Nation has said it is planning to run candidates in all lower house seats at the March election.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Liberal senator Cory Bernardi has become the second high-profile ex-Coalition MP to join One Nation in a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":453601,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,234195,22054,234194,4268,34404,23235,4273,10940,234196,44,60504,14754,33075,71551,1124],"class_list":["post-453600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bernardi","tag-conservative","tag-cory-bernardi","tag-election","tag-leader","tag-legislative-council","tag-liberal","tag-liberal-party","tag-march-21","tag-news","tag-one-nation","tag-pauline-hanson","tag-polls","tag-senator","tag-south-australia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=453600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453600\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/453601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=453600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=453600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=453600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}