Renegade senator Cory Bernardi has promised his new Australian Conservatives party will restore faith in politics, railing against the "out-of-touch political class" as he quit the Liberal Party, leaving his former colleagues fuming.
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His resignation has drawn withering attacks from Liberal MPs, with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull suggesting the senator should do the honourable thing and resign from the Senate, senior South Australian colleague Simon Birmingham accusing him of a "dog act" and Liberal Senate leader George Brandis declaring he had broken faith with Liberal voters who had elected him.
But the senator, who has delivered another hit to Mr Turnbull's ailing government and who was verbally carpet-bombed by furious ex-colleagues on Tuesday, has no intention of quitting.
"The body politic is failing the people of Australia. It is clear that we need to find a better way. The level of public disenchantment with the major parties, the lack of confidence in our political process and the concern about the direction of our nation is very, very strong," he told the Senate, announcing his resignation.
"I regret that too often these warnings have been ignored by those who perhaps needed to hear them most. It really is time for a better way. For a conservative way."
In a subsequent press conference, Senator Bernardi said he had not planned to quit the Liberal Party when he had been re-elected for six years just last year.
"The minor parties are growing exponentially because people have lost faith in the major parties. I want to give them a viable, a credible and a principled alternative in which they can vote," he said.
The South Australian received just 2043 first preference votes as the second candidate on the Liberal Party ticket at the 2016 election, or 0.025 per cent of a quota.
In comparison, the Liberal Party received 345,767 votes, underscoring the point made by angry Liberals that the vast majority of voters cast their preference for a party, not an individual in the Senate.
But he said he had not betrayed Liberal voters through his decision to quit as "every single Liberal Party voter . . . knew exactly what they were supporting. My principles have not changed. My advocacy has not changed."
He listed the decision to switch from Tony Abbott to Mr Turnbull, which perpetuated the revolving door of leaders in Australian politics, and a range of policy decisions, such as the decision late last year to examine a form of carbon pricing - a decision rapidly reversed - as among his reasons to quit.
The 2016 election campaign was also a factor.
"After the last election, I said there was a problem. We need to fix it. When the pollster says the base doesn't matter, when the election campaign is lacklustre and we hang on by one seat and it is trumpeted as a great victory and no one is investigating it, we have got a problem," he said, adding no one had been held to account for it.
Senator Bernardi, a small government advocate for lower taxes and champion of conservative social positions, pledged a political movement that would help create stronger families, limit the size and scope and reach of government and rebuild confidence in civil society but with little detail about how those aims would be delivered.
But Senator Brandis argued that in the seven months since the federal election, "nothing has changed" and the Liberal Party had not taken up new policy positions since the election.
"If one seeks to restore confidence in the political class, it is a poor way to begin by breaking the promise one makes to one's electors to serve for the political party on whose platform and on whose ticket one stood."
"What Senator Bernardi has done today is not a conservative thing to do . . . breaking faith with the electorate, breaking faith with the people who voted for you, breaking faith with the people who have supported you through thick and thin for years."
In future, Senator Bernardi said he hoped to stand other candidates under the Australian Conservatives banner, that he wasn't sure how he would pay for it and he had "no idea" whether billionaire Gina Rinehart would help fund his new operation.
He also guaranteed to vote for supply.
Labor Senate leader Penny Wong said the defection underlined just how divided the Coalition was under Mr Turnbull, and that the Prime Minister was "leading a government that doesn't have an agenda, that doesn't have a philosophical framework".
Senator Bernardi's defection had been in the offing for years, though he had previously indicated a desire to work for change from within the Liberal Party.
Cabinet ministers Peter Dutton, Barnaby Joyce, Steve Ciobo and Christopher Pyne were out early with criticism of Senator Bernardi, with Mr Dutton labelling it a "betrayal" and Mr Ciobo pointing out he had never laid a blow on Labor.
When he spoke to the Prime Minister on Tuesday morning, Senator Bernardi said to Mr Turnbull that he was quitting, in part, because of the removal of Mr Abbott in 2015, while also warning there were discussions under way to remove Mr Turnbull.
Mr Turnbull, in turn, is said to have asked Senator Bernardi how he could justify leaving the Liberal Party just seven months after he was elected on the party's ticket - a question he could not answer.
Mr Abbott said Senator Bernardi "has made an important contribution to our public life and I deeply regret his decision to leave the Liberal Party".
In an apparent reference to Mr Turnbull's leadership, Mr Abbott added: "While Cory and I have sometimes disagreed, I'm disappointed that more effort has not been made to keep our party united."
WA MP Andrew Hastie said Senator Bernardi was a friend but "I wish that he had attended the Liberal partyroom meeting this morning, looked us all in the eye and explained his reasons".
