Bill Shorten grows a pair, calls Corey Bernadi a homophobe

By WIll Gray

Bill Shorten has had a quick verbal stoush with Senator Corey Bernadi whilst giving a press conference in Parliament house. The encounter ended with Shorten calling out Bernadi on his long and storied history of hating on gay people.

“We’ve got this ridiculous, absurd obsession by the right wing of the Liberal Party about Safe Schools,” Shorten was saying as part of an announcement outlining his opposition to the Turnbull Government’s review of the Safe Schools Program.

Bernadi, perhaps the most conservative member of Parliament, happened to be walking a past at the time.

“That’d be me,” he said, adding: “At lead I’m honest, Bill. You’re a fraud.”

Without skipping a beat, Shorten immediately replied with “No, mate. At least I’m not a homophobe either.”

BOOM. I’m actually starting to like Bill Shorten a little now.

Corey Bernadi is at the forefront of the Liberal Party’s opposition to marriage equality, and has a long history of saying some absolutely mental shit about gay people.

In 2012, he was forced to resign as Tony Abbott’s parliamentary secretary after linking gay marriage with bestiality:

“The next step, quite frankly, is having three people or four people that love each other being able to enter into a permanent union endorsed by society – or any other type of relationship,” Senator Bernardi said.

“There are even some creepy people out there… [who] say it is OK to have consensual sexual relations between humans and animals.

“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’.

“I think that these things are the next step.”

Wow. What a douche.