Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi is set to resign from the Australian Liberal Party this week to start his own political party aimed at championing what he calls “conservative” values.
You might have heard of Cory Bernardi before. Senator Bernardi resigned as Tony Abbott’s Parliamentary Secretary in 2012 under a wave of outrage about comments he made suggesting a link between same sex marriage and bestiality.
Senator Bernardi inferred that legalising marriage equality may lead to polygamous marriages and “consensual sexual relations between humans and animals”, a disgusting inference in the writer’s view, and at a hazardous guess, the view of most ordinary Australians.
That said, what does Bernardi’s defection mean for the government’s ability to make new laws?
In a nutshell, the role of the Senate and its Senators is to act as a system of checks and balances to make sure the government is not abusing its power. One of the main functions of the Senate is to review legislation proposed and passed by the House of Representatives, usually the house in which a sitting government holds a majority, and decide whether the legislation should be passed into law.
This means that when a sitting government wishes to propose a law (for example the recently failed bid to enact a plebiscite on the issue of marriage equality), a majority of the members of the House of Representatives must first vote for it to proceed to the Senate for a final stamp pf approval. Once in the Senate, a majority of Senators must then vote for the law to pass and become a law.
While some might argue that Senator Bernardi’s defection is a positive because his extreme views are not representative of the average Australian, it means that the Liberal Party now have one less vote in the Senate they could have otherwise relied on to pass laws and push their political agenda.
Senator Bernardi will still hold a vote, however instead of voting with the Liberal Party by default as has typically been his modus operandi, the Government will now have to woo him to get his vote to assist them to pass legislation in an already contentious and unpredictable Senate.
Ultimately, his defection makes it harder for a government who is already battling against the slimmest of majorities in the House of Representatives to pass law and govern effectively. The natural result of this is potentially less law reform and an arguably hamstrung government that can’t govern on its own terms.
