Australian Conservative Senator Cory Bernardi to field Upper House candidate in 2018 state election

ROGUE Senator Cory Bernardi is preparing an assault on State Parliament, saying he hopes to run one or two candidates in the Upper House.

• Polls: Liberals will narrowly win 2018 state election
• Nick Xenophon launches new South Australian party
• One Nation aiming to win seats in 2018 state election

ROGUE Senator Cory Bernardi is preparing an assault on State Parliament, saying he hopes to run one or two candidates in the Upper House.

Senator Bernardi, who dramatically quit the federal Liberal Party earlier this year to form the Australian Conservatives, has confirmed the party will release preselection criteria in the next couple of weeks.

He told The Advertiser much of the detail was “still to be determined” but that the party was gaining popularity.

Australian Conservatives Senator Cory Bernardi will be fielding Upper House candidates in the 2018 state election.

“Given the state of politics in South Australia, there’s a lot of pressure for the Australian Conservatives to put forward candidates. That’s something we’ll have to come to terms with,” he said.

“You go into these things with a degree of optimism about everything but equally, I’m mindful that if you’re going to do it, you make a good fist of it.”

He said he was working towards registering the party by September.

Senator Bernardi’s split from the Liberals had been speculated about for years. He runs various institutions and websites that are separate from the party, and had started a mailing list to bring conservatives together.

In Adelaide earlier this month, he said the party already had half the number of members as the Liberal Party.

“We are building from a very strong position,” he said.

“There are tens of thousands of people who have registered their interest,” he said, adding that many of them were also members of other parties.

He has said that there is a “healthy transition” from sign up to paid up membership.

Senator Bernardi foreshadowed his “massive” plans for 2017 in January, after spending time observing Donald Trump’s campaign for the US presidency, something that he says inspired him.

Senator Bernardi seemed buoyed yesterday by the Government’s proposed racial discrimination changes; changes he pushed for while he was still a Liberal Senator. He says it was one of the “bellwether” issues that prompted him to leave the party, which he says has abandoned its core conservative values.

He also apparently predicted their change of heart; last year he said: “Next year at some point, they’ll probably say ‘this is a good idea’ and true to form they’ll say ‘we always supported it but the timing wasn’t right”.

He also had a small victory making life uncomfortable for senators by mobbing a motion to freeze senators’ pay until the Government can deliver a surplus.

Just six out of the 75 senators voted in favour, delivering him the moral high ground.