Elsie Lange
Bernie Finn has raised the prospect of joining another political party, with the Liberal MP facing a vote on his expulsion from the parliamentary Liberal party next week.
Mr Finn, a Bulla resident, said he’d been approached by “five or six” parties since the beginning of last year, including “two or three” in the last 24 hours who said he could join their ranks, but did not reveal who.
Victorian opposition leader Matthew Guy and other senior Liberals will vote on the motion to expel Mr Finn to the crossbench on Tuesday, May 24, following the outspoken conservative’s social media posts on abortion.
“A continued lack of discipline and repeated actions detrimental to the party’s ability to stand up for the interests of Victorians has left no other option but to consider Mr Finn’s eligibility to represent the Liberal party,” Mr Guy said.
Mr Finn said he had heard “nothing officially” about the expulsion from anybody within the party, including Mr Guy, and warned he would “have to work out what to do from that point on” if he is given the boot.
“I’ve been approached by five or six parties since the beginning of last year, in the last 18 months or so, to see if I’d like to join – I have declined to this point,” Mr Finn said.
“But I might have to reassess that.
“I’ll think about that over the next week or so, but I know at least two or three that are still firmly there because I’ve had phone calls in the last 24 hours,” he said.
The hard-right MP said he worried the internal party brawling could damage the federal Liberal party at the election on Saturday.
“Disunity is death, political death that is. When you have a leader coming out and attacking other Liberals, in the way that happened yesterday, that can do nothing but tell people that there is disunity,” Mr Finn said.
“A lot of people don’t differentiate between federal and state, so that may well have some impact in the lead up to Saturday, and on Saturday itself.”
Star Weekly last week reported Mr Finn’s controversial Facebook posts in which he said he was “praying” for abortion to be banned in Australia, and that abortions should be banned even in cases of rape.
“They have been my views for 45 years and I’ve been in parliament for 23 years, so if they haven’t hurt us now, I doubt if they will hurt us in the lead up to November,” Mr Finn said last week.
He said last week that he did not feel abandoned by his party, but there had been “a degree of disloyalty involved” in the response to his Facebook posts.
Mr Finn said he would continue thinking on his next steps as a politician leading up to next week’s Liberal party room vote, and that he would not back away from his stance.
“Obviously it’s a pretty important decision on my part, as to whether I just retire into the wilderness and go and find a beach house somewhere and sit on the beach for the next 40 years, or whether I continue in the fray,” Mr Finn said.
“But that’s a decision I’ll have to make over the next week or two.”
