One Nation’s South Australia leader Cory Bernardi has hit back at a journalist who accused his party of racism in the wake of its massive state election surge.
Mr Bernardi, who picked up an upper house seat as One Nation won more than 20% of the vote on Saturday, was asked about comments made by One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce on Sunday morning where he made an agricultural analogy and compared immigration policy to buying cattle.
A female reporter asked if Mr Bernardi was aware of Mr Joyce’s remarks, and said: “How can you keep pushing away accusations that One Nation still has inflammatory and racist rhetoric?”
South Australian One Nation leader Cory Bernardi calls a journalist a “bleeding heart lefty” after she accused his party of racism.
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Mr Bernardi said he had not heard the comments but he assumed Mr Joyce was “just using a simile or a metaphor to say this is what we should be doing, and he has put it in an agricultural parlance”.
He went on to say that One Nation wanted only the “best and brightest to come here, not the teeming hordes who only come here for welfare”, and said it was “nonsensical” to characterise a selective immigration policy as racist.
“Talking about immigration is talking about immigration and the interests of Australia, and the people of South Australia, the people of Australia are waking up to the fact that mass immigration has not worked to our economic, our social or our cultural advantage,” Mr Bernardi said.
“That’s crystal clear to people, and if you want proof positive of that you look at simply the fact we’re told we need more migrants to come here to solve the problems that we’ve got. Well, we’ve still got problems and we’ve brought millions of people in, and the problems now are bigger.
“I mean, it’s only the lefties, the bleeding-heart lefties who don’t want any talk about immigration that refer to this sort of stuff as racist. I’m really sorry that you’ve done that. But I presume you’re a bleeding-heart lefty?”
The journalist then claimed that she was not.
Mr Joyce earlier told Sky News immigration policy was “a bit like buying cattle”.
She was referring to this clip of Barnaby Joyce using a cattle-buying analogy while discussing immigration policy, which the far-left is melting down about.
“If there’s an unreasonable number of ones that don’t work when they get off the truck you don’t buy them anymore” pic.twitter.com/kZAp5lFgd0
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“If you’re getting cattle off a certain seller and there’s an unreasonable number of ones that just don’t want to work when they get off the truck, well you don’t buy them anymore,” he said.
“And that’s not saying we just avoid people of Islamic faith, but you have to be very mindful of what parts of the world they’re coming from, and the predominant worldview or an excessive worldview that’s held there, that probably doesn’t mix with what we need in Australia.
“And if you can’t be brutal like that, as brutal in that statement, well you’re not going to help. You’re a nice person, and you’re well meaning, but it all goes to mud, just like it has with the electricity grid – nice person, well-meaning, going to cool the planet.”
ABC News has projected One Nation to win Ngadjuri, its first-ever lower house seat at an election outside of Queensland in the South Australian election, and the right-wing party could also win Hammond, MacKillop and Narungga. Mr Bernardi he expected Carlos Quaremba and Rebecca Hewitt to join him in the upper house.
Labor has so far one 32 out of 47 lower house seats, with the Liberal Party on four and nine in doubt.
Federal South Australian Liberal Party senator Alex Antic told Sky News on Sunday One Nation was growing in popularity because voters were furious about never being asked about record-high levels of mass immigration, and referred to video of the Prime Minister Anthony Albanese being heckled by Muslims.
“This is the reality of the Australia we have created. It is a very, very different place … we now are seeing an Australia which is divided on a range of grounds, some of them religious, some of them demographics of economics,” he said.
“I don’t think Australians ever asked for what they saw in the footage [at the Lakemba mosque].”
Header image: Left, Cory Bernardi responding to the reporter (Sky News). Right, Mr Bernardi and Pauline Hanson (ON).
The post South Australia One Nation leader hits back at ‘bleeding heart lefty’ journalist first appeared on The Noticer.
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