Parliamentarians have walked out of One Nation leader Cory Bernardi’s inaugural speech to the South Australian parliament after he appeared to mock Welcome to Country ceremonies and criticised people who are transgender.
Bernardi, who was previously a federal Liberal Party senator, is now the leader of One Nation in South Australia. He was elected to the Legislative Council at the state election in March. The party also won four seats in the lower house.
On Tuesday, Bernardi opened his speech by appearing to mimic an indigenous Welcome to Country ceremony.
“Let me begin by welcoming you all to the land of my ancestors, and by recognising the leaders past, present and emerging that have all played a role in building our great state and nation”.
The One Nation leader reflected on his own marriage before saying that men and women had distinct and different roles in raising children.
“The middle class has been hollowed out as the creeping hand of socialism divides us into tribes, fostering envy, fueling resentment, and social decay.” Bernardi said, explaining his decision to return to the political stage.
“Our political class have squandered our God-given opportunities with false ideology and empty promises, and in doing so they have taken away a lot of the hope and aspirations for so many in this country.” he said.
The newly elected MP went onto rally against the responses to the COVID pandemic saying it had allowed the political class to trample of people’s freedom for a virus which he said in his view as being “nothing more than the flu”.
Bernardi said people needed to stop finding “virtue in victimhood”.
“It worries me that we’ve become a nation of easily offended snowflakes, that melt at the slightest challenge of obstacle, often insisting that the government do something about it, while these people are willing to do nothing for themselves.
“We’ve actually dumped the childhood maxim of ‘sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me’ to become a nation where words that may cause offense to any precious petal are actually deemed illegal.
The politician said he believed most people were accepting of people who were not heterosexual, as long as they did not “shove it in people’s faces or force them to publicly celebrate it.”
When Bernardi turned his attention to transgender youth, Greens MLCs Robert Simms and Melanie Selwood left the chamber in protest.
“The media are silent, while the government allows doctors to mutilate children in the name of gender-affirming care,” Bernardi said. “To me, it’s sheer madness that can be countered with a commonsense analogy.”
Bernardi then went on to compare the treatment of people with eating disorders to those suffering gender dysphoria, and described the gender affirmation approach used by medical professionals as “collective madness”.
The MP later posted on social media saying, “I take the Greens storming out of my maiden speech as a compliment. I must have been saying something right.”
