Career
Edwards was an auctioneer, land and estate agent from 1980 to 1996. From 1996 he was a vigneron and winemaker in the Clare Valley wine region of South Australia. He and his direct family have significant private vineyard holdings in Clare and the Adelaide Hills, and he is a director of Kirribilly Wines.
From 1985 to 1988 Edwards was president of the Blackwood and Districts Young Liberals.
He was the vice president of the Clare branch of the Liberal Party from 2002 to 2004, and president from 2004 to 2008. Edwards was president of the Wakefield Federal Electoral Commission from 2006 to 2008.
Edwards was elected to the Senate from second position on the South Australian Liberal Party ticket, which garnered 37.3 percent of the statewide vote at the 2010 election. Edwards took his seat on 1 July 2011.
Since joining the senate, Edwards has voted consistently with his party.
The Liberal Party conservative faction leader Nick Minchin had openly opposed Edwards" nomination for Liberal preselection on the party"s Senate ticket. Edwards is backed by the moderate faction. Edwards had defeated conservative faction candidate Bob Jackson for the state party presidency two years earlier.
In August 2011 it was reported in News Limited media that the Department of Finance had sought reimbursement from Edwards over the misuse of three government-funded cars.
Edwards" wife later apologised for the event and confirmed that they would reimburse the cost. Media outlets also reported that Edwards was being investigated by the Department of Finance over the employment, in his parliamentary office, of an executive of a company he chaired before entering parliament.
Edwards is an advocate for nuclear power in Australia. He believes that economic opportunities exist for his home-state of South Australia in spent nuclear fuel reprocessing and the use of Integral Fast Reactors to generate electricity.
During a speech delivered to The Sydney Institute on April 7, 2015, Edwards said that he had worked on a business case for the expansion of nuclear industries in Société Anonyme for around two years.
He told the audience that he had commenced discussions with an unnamed foreign state which expressed in-principal support for covering the capital costs of deploying new nuclear technology. Edwards said that discussions on the matter had advanced to "a ministerial level". He has also attacked the Australian Greens for maintaining their opposition to nuclear power.
In the Australian Parliament, Edwards has voted very strongly in support of uranium export.