He was a Senator for South Australia from 2006 to 2020, and was the leader of the Australian Conservatives, a minor political party he founded in 2017 but disbanded in 2019.
[3] Bernardi entered politics in 2006 when he was selected by the Liberal Party to fill a Senate seat vacancy for South Australia left by the resignation of Robert Hill.
[14] In 1988, as part of a Mercantile Rowing Club eight, he won the Ladies' Challenge Plate—open to 2nd grade/varsity/college crews below the heavyweight international standard—at the Henley Royal Regatta in England.
[16] That same year Bernardi became an Australian national representative when he was selected in the three seat of the coxless four which competed at the 1989 World Rowing Championships in Bled—formerly of Yugoslavia but what is now the Republic of Slovenia—and placed tenth.
[18] On 17 February 2007, Bernardi was pre-selected ahead of Simon Birmingham and Senator Grant Chapman by the State Council of the South Australian Liberal Party to be the number one candidate on the South Australian Liberal Senate ticket for the federal election [citation needed] to be held in late 2007.
On 19 March 2008, Bernardi was named in a story published in The Australian newspaper as having been linked to a scheme that sold financial advice on how divorcees could hide money from their former spouses.
Bernardi claimed that he had been "made aware that a colleague [had] been approaching numerous journalists in an attempt to 'push' this matter as a means of personally attacking me."
In a statement he went on to say, "I find it disappointing that there are people who clearly pine to background journalists with half-truths and mischievous suggestions in an attempt to smear others.
In August 2008, the Herald Sun newspaper reported that the Federal Parliamentary Library had, following a request from Bernardi, identified a loophole in government legislation that allowed some women who aborted their pregnancies to claim a $5,000 "baby bonus".
[24] In September 2008, new Federal Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull appointed Bernardi the Coalition Spokesman for Disabilities, Carers and the Voluntary Sector.
[25] In October, Bernardi caused a stir with a speech to the Senate against the Same-Sex Relationships (Equal Treatment in Commonwealth Laws-Superannuation) Bill 2008[26] supported by the Liberal Party.
[27] In Bernardi's speech, he complained that society should not "throw open the doors and welcome into the fold those whose relationships are uncharacteristic of the most basic elements of a marital union.
Bernardi was removed from the Shadow Ministry by Turnbull in February 2009 after reportedly making unsubstantiated claims regarding a fellow Liberal MP in his weekly blog.
[30][31][32] Following the election of Tony Abbott as the leader of the federal Liberal Party in late 2009, Bernardi was appointed Shadow Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Leader of the Opposition and Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Infrastructure and Population Policy, and in August 2012 was appointed Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate.
In September 2012, Bernardi resigned from his position as parliamentary secretary as a result of statements he had made the day before, when he argued that permitting same-sex marriages would lead to legalised polygamy and bestiality.
[33] In January 2014, Prime Minister Tony Abbott again distanced himself from Bernardi after the latter called for a new debate on abortion, called for more flexible industrial relations laws, stated his belief in the primacy of the traditional family and claimed that non-traditional families may cause negative social outcomes,[34] linked a secular polity with Australia having lost its way, and claimed that Christianity was under siege from both the political Greens and Islam.
[36] In September 2016, Bernardi spoke in favour of the repeal of section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, which prohibits speech that is reasonably likely to "offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate on the basis of race, colour or national or ethnic origin".
He cited a poor result in the 2019 Australian federal election, and that the removal of Malcolm Turnbull as prime minister meant that his supporters would return to the Liberal Party.
Wilders stated in an interview that Bernardi's decision not to meet him was a "sad but true" reflection on politics, particularly in an election year.
His view was that the ABC had grown beyond its initial charter and its size was unjustifiably encroaching into the online news sphere at the expense of commercial operators and media diversity.
[62] Several of his colleagues from the Liberal Party at the time distanced themselves from Bernardi's comments, including Tony Abbott, who also opposes same-sex marriage.
ABC later stated that the words were intended only as shorthand for a new conservative party and not to suggest that Bernardi shared the views of Golden Dawn.