Australian Family Party

Covid and Climate seem to be trying to outdo each other at the moment. This week, the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) turned up the dial a few notches with a ‘code red for humanity’:

‘Sea levels rising at twice the expected rate; drought and catastrophic bushfires with drastic consequences for health, agriculture and biodiversity; more frequent and intense heatwaves that will kill more people; more intense winter storms that will lead to localised flooding, damage and deaths’. The projections make for some pretty scary reading.

CSIRO’s Climate Science Centre has told us to think of it ‘like the planet hurtling down a slippery slope at great speed with no end in sight’ and ‘there’s no end to how much damage we can create’. Words and phrases like extinction, tipping point, existential threat and emergency are sprinkled liberally throughout media reports.

Over the past few years, no sooner do we have to deal with one threat than another appears – only more deadly this time. Judgement Day is always just around the corner. The Doomsday Clock has been set at one minute to midnight for as long as I can remember.

Then there’s the ubiquitous ‘time bomb’. Population time bombs, climate time bombs, fertility time bombs, cultural time bombs, racial time bombs, health time bombs. All designed to instil fear in people. The time bomb explosion is never far away. Like the movies’ race-against-time narrative designed to create a heightened sense of anxiety.

Remember Y2K? The Year 2000 computer bug that threatened global chaos with planes falling out of the sky, power grids shutting down and a complete meltdown of computer programs? None of it happened.

Factory-like, the media churns out these apocalyptic stories one after another. And it’s never ‘if this or that will happen’ but ‘when it will happen’.

And of course we are encouraged not only to fear what might happen, but ‘fear the worst’. The worst-case scenario is the only scenario. The latest IPCC Report, for example, lists a number of scenarios for the next 100 years from mild to worst case. So which does everyone focus on? The worst case scenario of course (RCP8.5). The ‘precautionary principle’ must rule. Always ‘err on the side of caution’.

Fear is a powerful political motivator. Fear makes people do things they wouldn’t otherwise do. Whereas the Enlightenment encouraged public debate and reason, Machiavelli saw the political advantages in using fear to control the masses.

My late father used to say, “Don’t meet trouble before it comes”. The two-fold reasoning behind this pearl of wisdom is 1) most impending dangers never eventuate and 2) when they do, they are either not as bad as you thought they’d be or if they are you are more than capable of handling them.

‘Confidence is the opposite of fear’, quipped Aristotle. We need to start replacing fear with reason, with judgment, with courage, with meaning and with hope. And we need to teach children not to be fragile. The Swedes have a saying, ‘There’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing’.

The world will never be totally safe. Nothing is ever risk-free. But through family, in particular, we have the capacity to deal with adversity.

As for current events? These too will pass.

In his brilliant book ‘How Fear Works’, Frank Furedi advises: “The most effective way to counter the perspective of fear is through acquainting society with values that offer people the meaning and hope they need to effectively engage with uncertainty. The problem is not fear as such but society’s difficulty in cultivating values that can guide it to manage uncertainty and the threats it faces.”

Irish poet Seamus Heaney’s last words were Noli timere – “Be not afraid”.

UK Bishop N.T. (Tom) Wright commented on these same words: “Do you know what the most frequent command in the Bible is? What instruction is given, again and again, by God, by angels, by Jesus, by prophets and by the apostles? Is it ‘be good’? ‘Is it be holy’? Is it ‘don’t sin’? No, the most frequent command in the Bible is, ‘Don’t be afraid’.”

We are not passive or helpless observers in a world beyond our control. We are not vulnerable. We do not have to live on Fear Street.

Former Prime Minister Bob Hawke once said, “We’re all Australians, whether we’re from Melbourne or Sydney”. Those from the ‘outlying States’ (as Paul Keating called them), naturally felt a bit left out.

The confusing power structures between the States and the Federal Government – and between individual States – has been exposed during Covid with many calling for the abolition of State Governments and the formation of one national government.

As Covid has revealed, the Federal Government doesn’t have the power it thought it had. The States have the power. The Feds have the money.

When Australia came together as a nation in 1901 – as a federation of six individual British colonies – it did so after much debate. During the first of the convention debates in 1891, Sir Samuel Griffith, who would later become the first Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia, nailed it by saying:

“We must not lose sight of the essential condition that this is to be a federation of states and not a single government of Australia. The separate states are to continue as autonomous bodies, surrendering only so much of their power as is necessary for the establishment of a general government to do for them collectively what they cannot do individually for themselves.”

The powers given to the Federal Government by the States in 1901 included trade and commerce, corporations, currency, banking, pensions, taxation, foreign affairs, quarantine, and defence.

Not surprisingly, the first area where the boundaries between State and Federal Governments were tested related to tax. The fight over money began.

In 1942, all income taxing power was handed to the Federal Government for the duration of World War II under the ‘defence’ power of the Constitution. This was intended to be temporary and was to last until the end of the war. But as predictable as the sunrise, when the war ended the Feds did not relinquish their income tax collector role.

Since then, the tax revenue balance has continued to move away from the States and towards the Feds. The imbalance that now exists is known as ‘vertical fiscal imbalance’.

Australia has the highest level of vertical fiscal imbalance of any federal country in the world. The Federal government raises over 70% of all government revenues – much more than is required to fund its own operations – while the States don’t raise anywhere near enough to fund theirs. The Feds then make up the States’ shortfall through Commonwealth grants.

This creates a perpetual blame game. Failures at the State level are blamed on the Feds’ lack of funding, and failures at the Federal level are blamed on the States’ poor service delivery.

We cannot go on like this. The States and the Feds should only collect taxes for their own purposes, and taxpayers and consumers should be fully informed as to what is a State tax and what is a Federal tax. Those who spend the money should bear the responsibility of raising it.

Former Premier of Western Australia, Richard Court once said, “All the things that the States do best are under attack from the empire builders in Canberra. The bureaucracy running the Federal education system is large but it doesn’t teach any students. There is an equally large health bureaucracy which doesn’t treat any patients.”

Many of the most stable and productive nations on earth are federations of individual States. This is because as a principle not only of government, but also of life, the best decisions are made when the parties involved in the decision-making know and understand the issues intimately. Allowing States to make decisions on local matters is infinitely better than centralised decision-making thousands of kilometres away. It is by far the best way to govern a large and diverse country like Australia. Western Australia is very different to Tasmania. Who best then to make decisions affecting Broome or Burnie? Locals or Canberra-based bureaucrats?

Different States take different approaches to solving problems and achieving goals. This is far better than one big, central government making decisions for everyone.

Those who framed our Constitution certainly understood this.

---

Special note:

‘Family First’. You may have heard this week of the formation of a new political party called Family First. It is being set up by former Labor Party MPs Jack Snelling and Tom Kenyon. So you are aware, neither of them approached or informed anyone at the Australian Family Party before the news broke. As the former Chairman of what was once Family First, I always welcomed the opportunity to work constructively with like-minded Parties in the political arena – the DLP (I sat with the late John Madigan in the Senate from 2014 – 2016), Australian Christians, Rise Up Australia, Fred Nile’s Christian Democratic Party and others. The Australian Family Party trusts it can come to similar arrangements with this new party.

It’s been said running a business is really quite simple, you just have to sell something for more than you pay for it. Plus a few million details.

Politics is the same – you just have to register a political party and get your candidates elected – plus a few million details.

Like any industry or profession, politics is not for everyone. But political parties are essential to a properly functioning democratic society. Accordingly, the Australian Family Party is seeking expressions of interest from people interested in learning more about how the world of politics operates.

From the essential understanding of how the ‘political wing’ and ‘organisational wing’ of a political party collaborate to get candidates elected, through to the various levels of government – Federal, State & Local – the Australian Family Party is exploring the development of a ‘Basic Training Course’ for those who either feel called to run as a candidate or have a particular interest in how the world of politics works – or in some cases doesn’t work.

The online Course will cover subjects like voter behaviour, policy development, marginal seat campaigning, preferencing, data base management, fundraising, messaging, media relations, major/minor/micro parties and independents, party governance and compliance, speech writing, lobbyists and lobby groups, opinion piece writing and more.

A strong emphasis on the proper functioning of a political party will run through the Course. Like any successful sporting club or theatre company, there are the ‘on-field players and performers’ and the ‘off-field, behind the scenes, personnel’ who ensure the club or organisation runs smoothly. And whereas it often seems like the ‘on-field players get all the credit and the off-field personnel do all the work’, each needs the other for the organisation to succeed. This will be a key aspect of developing a collaborative culture within a political party.

If you know what you believe, and want help in being able to defend it and communicate it in the political world and are interested in the philosophical underpinnings of a political movement, please register your interest now. You can contact us here.

Update (30 July 2021)

Thank you to all those who expressed an interest in the Australian Family Party’s proposed ‘Basic Training Course’ in politics. We are currently assessing the responses and will advise of further developments in due course. Our post on Federal/State relations will be one of the topics covered in the Course. Please note however, at this stage the Course is for members only

In his excellent book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell presents ‘the 10,000 hours rule’.

For a person to master a particular profession or skill, he says, they need to spend at least 10,000 hours in that skill set.

More about that shortly.

Whilst many Australians are rightly concerned at the shift towards leftist social policies – euthanasia, abortion, gender fluidity, distorting Australia’s history, the undermining of faith-based organisations – and just this week more liberalisation of prostitution laws – they feel powerless to do anything about it. And with both major parties heading in the same direction, waiting until election day to mark a ballot paper doesn’t offer much hope.

Some have suggested ‘getting involved in politics’ and joining one of the major political parties to influence them from within in areas like policy formulation and candidate pre-selection as the solution. This is naïve.

The professionals who run Australia’s major political parties have a lot more than 10,000 hours under their belts and would have no trouble thwarting any attempts by even large numbers of enthusiastic amateurs joining their parties in the forlorn hope they can change them. These outsiders, who have other interests – politics not being one of them – quickly find the tedium of branch meetings and voting procedures are definitely not for them and even the most tenacious eventually give up. The professional power brokers know how to win those battles.

In the minds of reasonable people, being ‘inside the tent’ always seems like a reasonable strategy. Sadly it doesn’t work. Being ‘outside the tent’ throwing rocks however, does.

Politics can be a brutal business at times. But like our police and defence forces we acknowledge the need for them because as George Orwell observed, “People sleep peacefully in their beds at night because rough men stand ready to protect them.”

Regrettably, there is only one language of politics these days – numbers. Numbers of seats in particular. By getting Upper House Members of Parliament elected and influencing key Lower House seats through preferencing, the Australian Family Party does the rough work necessary to keep the major parties ‘honest’. It stands on the middle of the see-saw – if one side of politics gets too radical, it can shift its weight to the other side and vice versa.

Joining an organisation controlled by people who do not share your values? Or supporting like-minded people who will do the rough work on your behalf? That is the choice.

With elections looming, time is of the essence. Regrettably, we don’t have 10,000 hours to decide.

In ‘Star Trek V: The Final Frontier’, a self-styled guru hijacks the Starship Enterprise and starts brainwashing the crew by ‘taking away their (emotional) pain’. He then approaches Captain Kirk and says, “Captain, let me take away your pain”. “I don’t want you to take away my pain,” Kirk replies, “My pain is part of who I am.”

Those who seek power seduce people with claims they can solve society’s problems and relieve people of responsibility for either their (poor) decisions or the random events and vicissitudes of life. People want to believe them. They want to believe the authoritarians who say – with very appealing rhetoric – that they will ‘take away your pain’ – if you would just give them the power. It’s what was at the heart of three of history’s great revolutions – the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution and the American War of Independence.

The French and the Russians said the state must override all; the more powerful the state, the more control it has over people, the better things will become – liberté, égalité, fraternité (‘liberty, equality, fraternity’) and the Marxist ‘from each according to his ability, to each according to his need’. What the people disregarded was the inability of human beings to prevent the abuse of power and position once it was attained.

The American founding fathers on the other hand, in establishing their republic acknowledged the inherent malevolence in man and therefore adopted the devolution and separation of powers doctrine – power devolved into hundreds, thousands of checks and balances, the most important of these being family and faith. Keeping a check on human nature through family and faith provided the best environment for freedom.

One of those founding fathers, John Adams, America’s 2^nd President said at the time, “Our Constitution is made for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to govern any other.”

Australia’s Constitution was similarly based, “ …. humbly relying on the blessing of Almighty God ….”. Take away family and faith and the structure collapses. As does freedom.

Proverbs and axioms like ‘Actions speak louder than words’ and ‘I can’t believe what you say, because I see what you do’ reinforced the bond between personal and public morality. You simply couldn’t get away with saying one thing and doing another. Sadly, that rule no longer applies.

It was also the case that truth was established through facts, figures, logic and reason. Again, not anymore. It’s now all about the narrative – ‘What is the overall message we want to promote’ is all that is important. And the current narrative is one that is moving away from personal responsibility and personal freedom and towards collective, state-based control. But as the French and Russians found out after their revolutions, the dictators soon take over (Napoleon, Stalin) and instead of taking away the pain, the pain just gets a whole lot worse.

Euthanasia legislation – Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill 2020, passed the SA Parliament this week. Whilst it was introduced by a Labor Member of Parliament, it was essentially a Liberal Government Bill.

On 5AA radio on Thursday morning, Matthew Abraham, who has been covering SA politics for what seems like a hundred years, said he could see no ideological differences between Liberal and Labor. “Steven Marshall is now essentially a Labor premier”, he said. In 2017, Christopher Pyne, leader of the Liberal Party’s left-leaning progressive faction and mentor to Steven Marshall said the Liberal progressives were winning the internal battle against the Party’s conservatives. “We’re in the winning circle”, he said. There’s no doubt about that.

Over the past 25 years, euthanasia legislation has been introduced into the SA parliament 16 times – the last occasion was in 2016. All failed. This week, on the 17^th attempt, it got through. It’s what happens when there isn’t a Christian/Conservative Party in the Parliament to take seats in the Upper House and direct preferences in the Lower House.

At the Federal level, in 2016 the Liberals joined forces with the Greens to amend the Commonwealth Electoral Act and abolish Senate Group Voting Tickets. Group Voting Tickets allowed voters to simply put a 1 above-the-line and delegate to their party of choice the distribution of preferences. Whilst minor parties differed widely on policy matters, the one thing they had in common was their dislike of the Greens. Using Group Voting Tickets, minor parties came to arrangements with each other to combine their votes to get ahead of them. The Liberal-Greens deal ended that. Former Liberal Prime Minister John Howard warned the Liberals at the time that the Coalition’s deal with the Greens could backfire on them. “The principal beneficiary of these changes will be the Australian Greens,” he said.

He was right. The Greens won six senate seats at the 2019 election (one from each state) and will almost certainly repeat this result at the next election giving them a total of 12 senators and the balance of power, enough to join forces with Labor to pass or block legislation.

‘The Long March of the Left’

“As Abraham Lincoln said: “The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of the government in the next”. Arguably, there is nothing so significant to the future of a nation as the formation of its children. How we teach children about our history, our national identity, and the principles of western liberal democracy by which we live is therefore the concern of all Australians.”

The above quotation is from a new booklet titled, ‘Activism via Education: 7 ways the new Australian Curriculum will impact your kids’. In the booklet, the authors highlight how hostile to Christianity Australia’s new national curriculum is. It is also highly critical of Western civilisation.

Western democracy was founded in Christianity and in the family. It’s why Marx and Engels, the co-authors of the Communist Manifesto, were determined to undermine both. Marx and Engels knew faith and family were the enemy. They did not like what families and people of faith people talked about around the dinner table. Sound familiar?

If you want to help stop the long march of the left, please join us here.

This week I received a very unsettling email from the National Director of Family Voice, Peter Downie. I was so troubled by this email that I have decided, with Peter’s permission, to share it with members and supporters of the Australian Family Party verbatim. The contents are not pleasant but demand our attention. Rest assured, the Australian Family Party is committed to addressing this most distressing situation.

Dear Bob

Last week, Brisbane’s Courier Mail published a disturbing article by Melinda Tankard Reist of Collective Shout.

“Barely a day goes by,” she said, “that a parent doesn’t contact me to tell me of the devastation and trauma caused as a result of their child being exposed to porn:
‘My 6-year-old was shown porn by an older boy at school.’
‘My daughter was on a kids’ games site and a porn pop-up appeared.’
‘My child googled an innocent term, and it took him straight to a porn site.’
‘My son was shown porn on the school bus on the way home.’
‘My 7-year-old saw porn at the school camp.’”
My own Downie children were largely home-schooled – protected to some degree from pornography thrust under their nose by other kids.
But these days, internet-connected devices are required for all types of school subjects. Some of the horror stories Melinda mentions can happen to any child or grandchild – yours or mine.
“Some of these children now suffer insomnia, nightmares, anxiety,” Melinda went on. “In the worst cases, they are medicated due to the level of disturbance caused by exposure to violent porn.

“It surprises many parents to learn there is nothing to prevent their child being exposed to porn. No barriers – such as proof-of-age requirements – to stop them entering rape, sadism, torture porn and incest websites. All before their first kiss.
“We have allowed a never-before-seen experiment on the sexual development of our kids,” Melinda says. “And we’re now seeing the results.”
And what are those results?

Melinda relays reports from deeply worried parents and grandparents:
“My 10-year-old granddaughter was approached by a boy while waiting for the school bus and asked, ‘Do you do arse?’
“My 8-year-old found a note in her school bag which read, ‘Ready for sex?”
“An 8-year-old old boy told my 8-year-old girl he wanted to ‘f**k you hard’.”
Melinda points out that no boy is born this way – it is learned behaviour. Pornography has become the world’s biggest department of education. It’s a sex ed handbook that links sex with aggression, and the word “consent” is never mentioned.

It is child abuse on a massive scale.

So what can we do about it?

Peter Stevens, Director of FamilyVoice Victoria, is also our Coordinator for Child Internet Safety.
In 2019 he sent a detailed submission to a federal parliamentary inquiry into online gambling and pornography, urging compulsory age verification for these websites in order to protect children.
The inquiry report, Protecting the Age of Innocence, was released in February 2020. It agreed with Peter Stevens and many others, recommending mandated age verification for pornographic and other harmful websites. This would not be a “silver bullet” – but would be a big step forward.
Now more than a year has gone by. The federal government has not responded.
Peter Stevens has met with an adviser to the federal communications minister Paul Fletcher to ask what is going on.
The adviser assured him that the government’s response is complete, but the Covid pandemic has delayed its tabling in parliament.

That was weeks ago. Still nothing has happened.

That is why we are ramping up our Protect Children campaign.

For family, faith and freedom,

Peter Downie
National Director

Last week (15 -21 May) was National Families Week. National Families Week is organised by Families Australia, a wonderful organisation, and its aim is to celebrate the vital role that families play in Australian society.

This year’s theme, ‘Stronger Families, Stronger Communities’ highlighted the importance of families to communities and that community wellbeing is enhanced by family wellbeing.

Families Australia CEO Dr Brian Babington, said ‘National Families Week is a great time to reflect on and take action to further strengthen our families.’

Hear! Hear!

Which brings us to the 2021 Budget delivered last week by Treasurer Josh Frydenberg where the theme of ‘supporting families’ ran from start to finish.

First and foremost, as members and supporters will have noticed, the Australian Family Party makes an important distinction between ‘support for families’ and ‘support for the family’. The first focuses on government spending and handouts, the second on family resilience and self-reliance.

Take childcare for example. In the 2021 Budget, the Treasurer announced a $1.7bn increase in childcare taking the total childcare expenditure to approximately $9.0bn per annum. And while this might be great news for childcare centre owners and two-income families who benefit from two tax-free thresholds, single-income families who provide childcare at home at no cost to the taxpayer are severely disadvantaged. Mothers who want to look after their own children miss out. The way the family is taxed, particularly the single-income family, is outrageously inequitable. The Australian Family Party strongly advocates income-splitting for single-income households.

The level of spending in this year’s Budget is breathtaking.

Family First’s successful 2016 campaign slogan was ‘Every family, a job and a house’. If every family had a job and owned their own home, the campaign went, the benefits to the nation would be enormous.

That is family resilience and self-reliance. Full employment, home ownership.

Here again, while a $25,000 home buyers grant might seem nice, when you consider government fees and charges make up nearly 40 per cent of the purchase price of a home, the government is quietly taking $250,000 with one hand and loudly giving back $25,000 with the other. Where’s the sense or integrity in that? A huge brick wall in the form of taxes, charges, levies and planning restrictions has been built across the road to home ownership and all a $25,000 grant does is add another rung to the ladder that struggling home buyers use trying to get over the wall.

Australia’s total debt and deficit is set to hit one trillion dollars in four years’ time. A billion is a thousand million. A trillion is a million million. The mind boggles.

One of nature’s cast iron laws is, ‘What goes up, must come down’. Somehow we’re going to have to repay this trillion dollars. Hmm …

The list of spending items in this year’s Budget was endless. Former West Australian MP John Hyde used to say, “Any lightweight can lead kids into a lolly shop, but it takes real leadership to lead them out.” That is Australia’s problem.

“Australia’s child-protection system keeps applying the same, flawed strategies which basically means children are harmed by the very system that’s meant to protect them. It puts an over-emphasis on family preservation prolonging the time children are kept with highly dysfunctional families. When, as a last resort, they are finally removed they are churned through unstable foster care and returned to their families where the reunification is likely to break down. For many children, they spend almost all of their childhood and adolescence in care and never get a permanent and safe family for life. Many of these children could have, should have, been adopted.”  — Dr Jeremy Sammut*

Over 40,000 Australian children are currently in government-sponsored care. Approximately 30,000 have been there for more than 2 years. Less than 200 were adopted.

The first question that must be asked is, ‘Why are so many children cycled in and out of government care?’ And second, ‘Why are there so few adoptions in Australia?’

Compared with similar countries Australia has very low rates of adoption.

It seems the chief barrier to increasing the rate of adoptions in Australia are state and territory government child protection authorities. In South Australia for example, the inquest into the death of toddler Chloe Valentine revealed the abject squalor of the environment the child was forced to endure, an environment authorities were well aware of. An anti-adoption culture appears to be ingrained in state and territory child protection authorities.

19^th Century English philosopher and parliamentarian John Stuart Mill was one of the first to declare that “Children have independent rights as future citizens. If parents fail in their obligations to fulfil those rights then the State should step in”.

Regrettably, the rights of abusive parents seem to outweigh the rights of abused children.

It has been nearly 50 years since the introduction of the single mother’s pension by the Whitlam Government. This policy helped end the practice of forced adoption as the provision of taxpayer-funded income support gave women who became pregnant out of wedlock the option of keeping their children. The unintended consequence however, has been that welfare for single mothers has led to the very social problems forced adoptions were designed to prevent – the inability of many single mothers to properly care for their children. The right to welfare became a pathway to welfare dependency which has contributed significantly to the scale of the child protection crisis confronting Australia today.

In 2019, the Federal Government’s House of Representatives Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs Report ‘Breaking barriers: a national adoption framework for Australian children’, stated that the best interests of children should be at the centre of child protection systems.

For children who are unable to live with their biological parents, adoption has been internationally proven as the best way to provide a safe, stable and loving family life.

While it has been argued that adoption robs children of their identity, modern, ‘open adoption’ models which are specifically designed to maintain children’s connections to their cultural heritages and birth families disprove such claims.

It has also been claimed that adoption will steal children all over again. Again, NSW adoption reforms disavow such claims.

That adoption is a socially unacceptable and illegitimate practice based on past practices such as forced adoptions and indigenous experiences is a taboo which must end. There can be no meaningful change or end to the cycle of intergenerational dysfunction until that taboo is broken.

---

*Dr Jeremy Sammut is the author of several research papers and the book, ‘The Madness of Australian Child Protection: Why Adoption will Rescue Australia’s Underclass Children’. Dr Sammut’s ground-breaking research on Australia’s child protection crisis has led the national debate about adoption over the past 10 years. His research influenced reforms which were passed in 2018 by the NSW Parliament.

For generations, grandparents have provided practical help, unwavering support, a wise listening ear and of course childcare, all at no cost. How good are grandparents.

Relationship Psychologist Megan Tuohey says children who have access to grandparents who love them will experience a broader and deeper sense of belonging.

“These children are more likely to experience those same feelings of security and belonging in the world as they move through to adulthood. It provides a sense of security and trust in their lives.”

A close relationship between a grandparent and grandchild can have a positive impact on the happiness and wellbeing of the entire family. Simply put, having grandparents around is good for everyone. Having two levels of love and support in a family is particularly beneficial for children in their formative years. Children will often find it easier to listen to a grandparent than a parent!

Through a grandparent’s beliefs and values a child’s perspective of what constitutes a healthy, normal relationship is often shaped by the relationship the child has with a grandparent.

One study (Boston College) found “An emotionally close relationship between grandparent and grandchild is associated with fewer symptoms of depression for both generations. For children, having grandparents around means having the perfect companions to play with and have fun. Grandparents are some of the best partners when it comes to using creativity and imagination to discover the wonders of life.

In turn, most grandparents truly love their role. The benefits to grandparents of having grandchildren in their lives cannot be overstated. Grandparents who are active in their grandchildren’s lives experience better health and a greater sense of purpose. In fact, many grandparents believe being a grandparent is the single most important role in their lives. Grandparents also offer a link to a child’s cultural heritage and family history.

Millions of grandparents look after grandchildren on a regular basis. Leaving children in the capable hands of grandparents gives parents an irreplaceable sense of comfort and security.

Of course not every child has a grandparent. This need not be cause for despair. The best foundation a child can have is to be raised in an intact, loving family.

Likewise, not every older person either has grandchildren or in more tragic cases, access to their grandchildren. For those denied access, the excellent work of organisations like Grandparents For Grandchildren is acknowledged. Here again, removing the obstacles and burdens which lead to such scenarios should be a priority for legislators – including introducing subsidies for grandparents who look after grandchildren, especially considering the amount spent looking after children in government care.

Australia’s aged care system costs billions and the horrific tales out of the Aged Care Royal Commission show it is a system that isn’t working. From grandparents to great grandparents, relocating elders away from living with their families and into nursing homes to be looked after by strangers has not been good for society as a whole. Much more needs to be done to support families caring for aged parents and grandparents at home with the family.

The family should always be Plan A.