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His views on Islam and gay marriage are derided as hateful, but he softens in the flesh, especially amid an afternoon glow of laughter and wine - served today over a bowl of Twisties. He is self-styled, careful not to swear, and bathed in the messianic glow of one who welcomes disciples. He oozes the irrepressible air of a motivational speaker, and in fact looks a little bit like the self-help guru Tony Robbins, right down to the blindingly white teeth. But in person, he sheds a lot of the priestly starchiness that polarises so many.Īs all politicians do when they spot a tape recorder, he prattles on about his conviction and commitment. The title of Bernardi’s eight-year-old blog - “Weekly Dose of Common Sense” - lends the senator a self-appointed grandiosity. “I will be left with a cranky old man always wondering ‘what if’. “If you leave politics you’ll be frustrated with yourself for the rest of your life,” she told him. Besides, she needed him to stay on, too.īernardi turned to his family for advice when he considered leaving politics late last year. “Real people”, she assured him, invested their hopes and frustrations in him. Sinead reminded her husband of the people who relied on him to demolish the left’s agenda. “I do wish he’d find someone younger,” she admits.Īs Bernardi was considering his big exit, he called his wife from the US. He often compares Sinead to Margaret Thatcher. “He leaves his socks and jocks on the floor,” Sinead told the woman. A recent caller to his office was praising Bernardi, unaware that she was speaking with the man’s wife. Not unlike many wives, she also tells him what to do. She tells him what to wear, or at least she did for their Stellar photo shoot. Sinead is the feistier of the duo and, her husband says, the “pretty” member of Team Bernardi. “He leaves his socks and jocks on the floor.” Oscar texts political advice when he acts like a “doofus”.īernardi’s greatest faith lies in his family, and he turns to them in crisis because they put “steel in my spine”. Sinead answers phones in her husband’s electoral office. He says their sons Oscar, 17, and Harvey, 15, have the same gift. I spend five minutes explaining something and she will sum it up in one sentence.” Bernardi calls her “my greatest sounding board. It was his wife Sinead, 48, who convinced him to stay on. Some Australians, who remember Bernardi comparing gay marriage to bestiality, would have applauded such a decision. What Bernardi now describes as a kind of epiphany could have become his political end - in fact, he tells Stellar, he almost quit politics altogether at the end of last year. It was not, “It’s not you, it’s me,” he says.
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He now admits the choice was hard, but his “George Costanza denial” could no longer mask the dysfunction.īernardi describes his wife as his “greatest sounding board”. They dismissed Bernardi, unconcerned that the persistence of their put-downs seemed to betray their message. His Liberal critics called his exit a “dog act” and advised him to “pray hard”. His spats with fellow South Australian Liberal Christopher Pyne, which trace back to their growing up in the same Burnside street in Adelaide, played like neighbours tossing dog turds over the fence. His disdain for leader Malcolm Turnbull was plain. He had privately railed against the Liberal Party’s “heartbreaking” lack of principles. It to me that if we do not highlight mainstream conservative views and the issues that people are concerned about, we will be replaced by someone who will.”
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All the same characters responsible for the poor result were still in the same spots crowing that they were winning machines. “The election campaign was terrible,” he says of the Coalition’s efforts last year. In looking to the past to inform the future, he would find “a better way a conservative way”. He quickly launched the Australian Conservatives.