The mood on Twitter after Cory Bernardi announced he was splitting from the Liberal Party was cocky. Bernardi's departure was seen as bad for the Liberals, which clearly it is. There was an idea that this was the end of Bernardi. He wouldn't have got in at the last election without Liberal endorsement – without the Liberals, the logic ran, he's gone.
Not so. It all depends upon who funds him and how much they're prepared to spend. If he were to be backed by someone with a lot of money, such as Gina Rinehart, who was prepared to go for it, they could flood the media, using Trump-style arguments to deride the perceived impotence of the political status quo. Toss in a strong anti-Muslim pitch and we'll be catapulted into a new political reality.
It would not surprise me to see the LNP smashed at the next election, the Labor Party reduced to its core support and the rest of the vote going to the new political players among whom Bernardi will be one. I've always thought he had the potential to be a much more consequential figure than Pauline Hanson.
Ultimately, as is shown by her choice of advisers, Hanson doesn't quite cut it as a big-time political player. She belongs in a '60s TV comedy like On the Buses, along with Tony Abbott. Prime Minister Trumble belongs with the Colonel in the bar of Fawlty Towers. In terms of public image, Bernardi has a more forceful product to sell than each of them.
His grimace may look like he's got a wind problem, but his image is less blurred, more certain, than those of his major rivals. He's got a more even political intelligence than Abbott although that, it could be said, is a function of his narrowness. He simply doesn't make the mistakes Hanson does and, in that sense, is a better political player. And he is altogether more cinematic in appearance than George Christensen.
So, yes, I think Cory Bernardi's departure from the Liberal Party is like a road sign pointing to the future. We could soon look back and see Malcolm Turnbull as having occupied the centre of our political map. But it's not the only road sign pointing to the future. The women's football is another.
Women, in every sense, are on the march. After the Women's Marches around the world that greeted Trump's inauguration, I read an article that said the movement represented by the women's marches would dissipate like the Occupy Movement of the late 2000s, that it was too divided within itself, too diffuse in its goals.
The Occupy Movement was a global sea of protest that simply evaporated. The protesters were so democratic they couldn't agree on what they were protesting about. Certainly, they couldn't agree on the next step. The difference is that there are women in this society that have already taken a lot of steps – in sport, business, politics, the law. And while you cannot generalise about voters, male or female, there's a significant number of women of achievement who aren't going to be bullied by a man like Donald Trump, having met his type before.
There is a flow of history here going back at least to the suffragettes of the 1890s and I am sure, in some people's minds, it is a lot further. I'm not a man who calls himself a feminist, I avoid gender politics, but I just don't believe that historical flow is about to stop here. And if you doubt there is such a thing as brave women in the world, take a look at the women's footy.
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