I’m the President of One Nation South Australia, and I was genuinely pleased when Cory Bernardi agreed to join our Legislative Council ticket.

Cory brings real experience from his time as a federal Senator, and that matters as One Nation works to build a serious presence in the South Australian Parliament. But just as importantly, he’s shown time and again that he’s prepared to stand up for what he believes in, even when it costs him personally. That kind of backbone is rare in politics these days but is part of One Nation DNA.

As One Nation continues to grow, we have to be careful about who comes through the door. Any party on the rise attracts people looking for a shortcut or a platform for themselves. Cory isn’t one of them. He’s a true believer, he fits naturally with One Nation, and he shares the instincts and values of our members and supporters. The reaction to his announcement last week made that clear.

Compare that with the state of the Liberal Party, both nationally and here in South Australia. They’re in real trouble. In SA they’re widely expected to be smashed at the next state election, and under Ashton Hurn’s leadership most voters couldn’t honestly tell you what the Liberals now stand for.

I speak to South Australians every day who’ve voted Liberal their whole lives and have finally had enough. Their values haven’t changed. The Liberal Party has. People feel the party has walked away from them, not the other way around, and they’re looking for someone who actually represents them.

The SA Liberals still like to call themselves the ‘party of government’, but their record doesn’t stack up. At both state and federal level, Liberal governments have delivered years of leadership chaos, infighting and dysfunction. That’s not competent government. It’s a mess.

On immigration, the Liberals and Labor have worked hand in glove to preside over levels of mass migration Australia has never seen before. The consequences are obvious: housing shortages, stretched infrastructure and growing pressure on local communities. These polices have led to the problems people live with every day. Yet senior Liberal figures still look down at anyone who dares to ask whether the scale of this makes sense.

On Net Zero, the Liberals have flat-out betrayed many of their own supporters. Their leaders now try to sit on the fence, talking about winding back targets at home while staying locked into international commitments like the Paris Agreement. That approach achieves nothing. It doesn’t protect jobs, it doesn’t lower power prices, and it doesn’t give Australians any straight answers. There can be no fence sitting on this one

For years, many lifelong Liberal voters gave the party the benefit of the doubt. But for a growing number, that patience has run out. What we’re seeing with the decline of the Liberal Party isn’t unique to Australia. Around the world, people are turning away from established parties that no longer listen and looking for alternatives. Reform UK is just one example.

In South Australia, One Nation is providing that alternative. We’re clear about what we stand for, we’re grounded in the concerns of everyday people, and we’re offering voters a real choice again.

I expected Cory’s decision to join our upper house ticket to ruffle feathers inside the SA Liberal Party. What interested me was how they’d respond. At first, there was silence. I wondered whether they might finally reflect on why so many of their voters are leaving. Maybe they’d come up with policies to reconnect with people. Maybe even an apology for years of failure. Perhaps a sign they’d finally worked out why they’re staring down electoral oblivion.

Instead, on the evening of February 4, we got their answer. They wheeled out former prime minister John Howard to take a swing at Cory and at One Nation, dismissing us as a ‘grievance vehicle’.

To an extent, he’s right. We are attracting people with grievances. People who are sick of being ignored, talked down to, and let down by the political class. People who have every right to be fed up with the uniparty he was a central part of for decades. The difference is that we’re not just listening to those frustrations. We’re backing them up with practical, common-sense policies aimed at improving the lives of everyday Australians.

The days when these old tactics worked are long gone. Voters don’t fall back into line just because a party wheels out a big name from the past. That ship has sailed. If anything, it only highlights how out of touch the Liberals have become.

John Howard spoke about the benefits of the Liberal Party being a ‘broad church’. My response is simple: there’s no point having a broad church if the people inside it don’t share a common religion. From where I’m standing, the Liberals don’t have that anymore. They don’t share common values, common beliefs, or even a clear sense of direction. Instead, they spend their time divided, arguing amongst themselves, literally changing the deck chairs on the Titanic.

A broad church only works if everyone believes in something shared. The reality is the Liberal Party no longer does. One side pulls one way, another side pulls the opposite, and nothing ever gets built. No leadership. No clarity. No purpose.

Why put your faith in a party that doesn’t even agree on what it believes, when you can support One Nation, a party with united leadership, a common set of values, and a clear sense of purpose?

Many people still respect John Howard, and I understand that. But on this, he’s wrong. The world has changed. The Liberal Party he remains attached to is at the heart of many of the most serious problems facing Australia today.

Pauline Hanson has spent more than 30 years standing by what she believes in and bending for no one. She was right when she was thrown out of the Liberals under John Howard’s leadership, and she’s right now. The difference today is that a growing slice of the electorate has come to see that she was right all along.