Cory Bernardi says Malcolm Turnbull 'went in too heavy' against Andrew Bolt
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Version 0 of 1. Cory Bernardi says Malcolm Turnbull "went in a bit too heavy" on Monday when he labelled a column by Andrew Bolt "demented" for suggesting the communications minister was positioning himself to challenge Tony Abbott for the leadership. The outspoken South Australian senator told ABC's Q&A program on Monday that he thought Turnbull's comments were "too strident". "I thought it was inappropriate, it was unwise to do, and I think it's just kicked the whole thing along," he said. "Media commentators will always have opinions about members of parliament, goodness knows I'm on the receiving end of a lot of them. But the simple fact is you can't always just go out and attack the person who's having a go at you." He added: "Andrew is entitled to his opinions, I think he's a very principled man. Malcolm, I just think went a bit too heavy today." The former lord mayor of Sydney, Lucy Turnbull, who is married to Malcolm, was also on the panel. She said her husband's dinner last Wednesday with the mining magnate Clive Palmer, whose support will be needed to pass key Coalition budget measures, and the Treasury secretary, Martin Parkinson, had been "blown out of all proportion". The minister was suffering "a desperate dose of the flu", Turnbull said, and had skipped a parliamentary dinner for an early night. Palmer happened to just "come along" as her husband was eating, she said. "It was a completely random spontaneous group of people ... It was completely miscast," she said. "I think it actually shows the story very clearly, that there isn't nearly enough conviviality in parliament between people across the aisle ... Nobody talks to each other enough, and this highlights how hysterical people think it is when sometimes they do." Lucy Turnbull dismissed Bolt's column on Monday, in which the News Corp writer accused Malcolm Turnbull of lavishing "a lot of charm lately on Abbott's natural predators" and dining with Palmer to send "an unmistakable message to Liberal MPs – replace Abbott with Turnbull as prime minister and maybe Palmer will play ball". "[It was] completely wrong, completely blown out of all proportion," she said. Labor sought to capitalise on the spat in parliamentary question time, asking Abbott whether he backed his “friend” Bolt or his “frenemy” Turnbull. “In any dispute between a member of my frontbench and a member of the fourth estate I am firmly on the side of my frontbencher,” Abbott replied. Bernardi and Turnbull have a fraught relationship, occupying opposite corners of the Liberal party's broad church. In December Bernardi, a conservative Christian, called on Turnbull to step down from the frontbench if he wanted to keep advocating for same-sex marriage. Bernardi opposes marriage equality and was asked to resign as Abbott's parliamentary secretary in 2012 after suggesting it could open the door to polygamy and bestiality. "Will that be a future step? In the future will we say, 'These two creatures love each other and maybe they should be able to be joined in a union,' " Bernardi said. "I think that these things are the next step." He was one of several senators who opposed the then-opposition leader Turnbull's push for an emissions trading scheme in 2009, which culminated in a leadership spill and the election of Abbott as opposition leader by a single vote. |