21 Jan 2020

Breaking at Eight: Resignation and replacement of Cory Bernardi | FIVEaa

David Penberthy and Will Goodings | Breakfast on FIVEaa

David Penberthy: The Premier of South Australia, Steven Marshall turns 51 today. Happy Birthday to you Premier. The last thing you would want though for your birthday is an early unpleasant gift in the form of a party factional war. We’re certainly not billing it as such yet but given the propensity of the South Australian Liberal Party for making a stink out of anything, it’s going to be
interesting to see how they navigate the vacancy that has been created by the now formal resignation of Cory Bernardi from politics … Cory Bernardi … was elected as a Liberal Senator for
South Australia and he quit … he argues … that he could no longer work with the organisation while it was being headed up by the then Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull … we said before
the former President of the Law Council of South Australia, Morry Bailes was the likely successor … there’s other people who’ve expressed an interest … the President of the Legislative
Council … Andrew McLachlan. There’s also a business consultant by the name of Michael Van Dissel … a whole bunch of other candidates … on February 1st the SA Liberals are
going to get together. There’s about 300 members who will vote in this preselection ballot … and a few days after that when State Parliament is sitting, the Parliament will formally endorse
the preselection candidate who will then be tapped on the shoulder and become anointed as the next Liberal Senator for South Australia but it’s hard to get a beat on exactly what’s going
to happen because there’s a bit of a power vacuum really on both sides of the political divide within the SA Liberals now because when Cory Bernardi was the leader of the right … it did
create a bit of a vacuum on the conservative side … Christopher Pyne is no longer a formal Parliamentary member of the party … so how this is going to play out is anyone’s guess.