Australian Family Party

Family Matters

Australian Character

The Blame Game

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blame-gameOn 1 July 2014, my first day as a Senator, Adelaide’s Advertiser newspaper published an opinion piece I had submitted titled, Shedding the ‘Bludger State’ tag, in which I implored the SA State Government to stop bludging on the other states and start standing on its own two feet.

Then Premier Jay Weatherill responded by calling me ‘an enemy of the state’.

Many South Australians can probably remember the time when more than a dozen of Australia’s top 100 listed companies had their head offices in Adelaide – News Ltd, Fauldings, Southcorp, Elders, Normandy Mining, Adelaide Bank, Adelaide Brighton, Standard Chartered Finance to name just a few. Today there’s just one – Santos (and even Santos is only headquartered in Adelaide because of some vague arrangement).

At the time of Federation, South Australia led the constitutional debates and had an influential hand in shaping the new Commonwealth of Australia. For decades after, Adelaide was Australia’s Number 3 city – bigger and more prosperous than either Brisbane or Perth.

Led by Tom Playford, South Australia prospered under the principle of ‘cheap land, cheap power, cheap water, and cheap labour’. Wages were lower than in Sydney and Melbourne, but despite the lower pay packets, South Australians’ quality of life and standard of living were higher than their interstate counterparts.

It was an example of genuine competitive federalism – not the pseudo competitive federalism of today in which state governments try to outdo each other enticing companies to set up in their states.

Since those halcyon days, South Australia has lost each of the competitive edges that made it prosperous.

First to go was cheap land – thanks to urban planning controls – then water, then centralised wage fixing (waiters, nurses, and factory workers across Australia all had to get the same pay).

As for power prices, they are now not just the highest in Australia, but some of the highest in the world.

Last year, the South Australian premier folded like pack of cards over nuclear power. The idea that he and his Labor colleagues would take on the urban planners, water barons and unions to make SA competitive again is laughable.

SA is destined to be a mendicant State for a long time to come.

Former Prime Minister Bob Hawke once said, “We’re all Australians, whether we’re from Melbourne or Sydney”.

Where those from the ‘outlying States’ (as Paul Keating called them) belonged, was anyone’s guess.

When Australia came together as a nation in 1901, Sir Samuel Griffith, 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.”

Those who spend the money should raise the money

The powers given to the Federal Government by the states in 1901 included trade and commerce, corporations, currency, banking, pensions, taxation, foreign affairs, communications, copyright, marriage and family law, quarantine, and defence.

There was no mention of hospitals, schools, disability services, pink batts, carbon dioxide emissions or many of the other things that federal governments these days decide they want to spend our money on.

Not surprisingly, the first area where the boundaries between state and Federal governments were tested related to tax.

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 (not that the states wanted to resume income tax collection, but that is not the point).

Since then, the tax revenue balance has continued to move away from the states and towards the Feds. The imbalance which 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.

Duplication of health and education bureaucracies alone costs taxpayers billions of dollars, yet the Feds do not run a single hospital or a single school.

This cannot go on. State and Federal governments 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.

This confusing power structure between the states and the Federal government – and between individual states – was emphatically exposed during Covid with many calling for the abolition of state governments and the formation of one national government.

But as Covid revealed, the Federal government doesn’t have the power it thought it had. The Feds may have the money, but it’s the states that have the power.

Never Again?

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never-againIt’s been said that whatever is done to the Jews, is done for the Jews.

In other words, when they come out of this current crisis, they will be stronger than before.

Or to paraphrase an old Randy Pike quote, ‘Throughout history, many have tried to bury the Jewish people, but after every episode they keep surviving, outliving all the pallbearers’.

History is repeating itself before our eyes.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-born, Dutch-American activist and former politician spoke recently about how, “a story is also a moment when you are forced to make choices.

“I think we find ourselves today, right now, in a moment where we have to make a moral choice”.

“I sit here today and say I support Israel. No ifs. No buts. Unequivocal.”

What Ali is invoking here is ‘The exception that proves the rule’.

And that rule is, ‘There are two sides to every story’.

The rightness of Israel’s position in this conflict is the exception that proves the rule.

There is only one side to take.

No ifs. No buts.

As we know, the easiest position in any conflict is to ‘both sides’ the problem – the moral equivalence game.

Australia’s Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, plays this game.

He is unable to condemn the horrific violence perpetrated by Hamas without in the same breath criticising Israel.

“I make no apologies for standing up against anti-Semitism”, he told parliament.

But then quickly added, “But I also have a track record of standing up for the rights of and justice for Palestinian people.”

There’s no doubt which side he is on.

As commentator Chris Kenny stated, “That might have been an acceptable line if Israel had sent its soldiers into Gaza to slaughter children, rape and murder the women, torture and murder the men and take a few hundred hostages.

“That might have been an acceptable equivalence if Israel had spent years firing rockets indiscriminately into Gaza trying to kill civilians.”

Which of course, they haven’t.

As US commentator Kayleigh McEnany has said, “This is a spiritual and moral catastrophe that has to be addressed”.

This is a clash of civilisations, a clash of cultures. A war between the civilised and the uncivilised, and only one can be allowed to win.

In Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus, the Palestinian Authority has cancelled this year’s Nativity Scene, ‘In honour of Hamas martyrs’.

On October 9 – two days after the slaughter of over a thousand Jews, and before there was any response from the Israelis, hundreds of ‘Free Palestiners’ gathered in front of the Sydney Opera House and chanted “gas the Jews, gas the Jews”.

This is clearly not about Gaza.

No, what we are seeing on our TV screens around the world is plain-old Jew-hatred masquerading as ‘Free Palestine’.

And while it may be true that a number of young people in these crowds might be equally at home at a Black Lives Matter march or Just Stop Oil action, that is not the point.

In their case, as Mark Twain once said, ‘No amount of evidence will ever persuade an idiot.’

It was former Labor Prime Minister Bob Hawke who once declared that Israel was ‘an inspiration, a small lone democracy in the Middle East’.

“If the bell tolls for Israel, it won’t just toll for Israel, it will toll for all mankind”, he said.

There is no doubt the overwhelming majority of Australians are on the side of Israel in this conflict, but it is also a reality that Jewish Australians are very fearful at present.

And for good reason.

In a chilling commentary, author Ramesh Thakur writes, “The solemn pledge of ‘Never Again’ (referring to the murder of six million Jews during the Holocaust) has now given way to ‘Here we go again’.

“78 years after the Holocaust, the threat of Jewish extermination is back.

“Calls go out for Jews to be gassed, and taunts that the army of Mohammed that massacred them in the seventh century will return.

“The terrorists have been valorised, Israel vilified, Jews attacked and threatened, and posters of the missing hostages torn down.”

I’m with Kayleigh McEnany, “This is a spiritual and moral catastrophe that has to be addressed”.

No ifs. No buts.

No Laffing Matter

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LaffingAn Australian was on holidays in the south of France.

Strolling along outside his hotel, the Aussie was suddenly attracted by the screams of a young woman kneeling in front of a small child.

The Aussie knew enough French to determine that the child had swallowed a coin.

Seizing the little boy by the heels, the Aussie held him up and gave him a few good shakes and out popped the coin.

“Oh, thank you sir, thank you,” cried the woman.

“You seemed to know just how to get that coin out of him, are you a doctor?”

“No madam,” replied the man, “I’m with the Australian Tax Office.”

In a previous post, Prison Break, I spoke of rights and responsibilities.

Regulations that prevent people from working under terms and conditions which suited them was, I said, an infringement of liberty, freedom and dignity. It violated a person’s right to get a job and their responsibility to provide for their families.

I will now add a further hazard – it prevents them from paying tax to cover the many services the state provides to them.

Rights … responsibilities … and tax. They are all linked.

Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Finance Minister to King Louis XIV of France, famously declared that “The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing.”

A modern finance minister might rephrase this as, “The largest possible amount of revenue with the smallest possible amount of economic and political damage.”

Which brings me to a man called Arthur Laffer.

I had the privilege of meeting the famous US economist in Parliament House in 2015. Dr Laffer was in Australia on a speaking tour.

Arthur Laffer is of course most famous for his Laffer Curve.

Laffer

It is self-evident that tax revenue would be zero if tax rates are set at 0 per cent (bottom left corner of the graph).

Revenue would also, of course, be zero if rates were set at 100 per cent, as there would be no incentive to work! (bottom right corner).

Starting at 0 per cent, as tax rates rise, revenue rises until, at some point on the graph, revenue starts decreasing as it heads towards that 100 per cent point.

Eminent Australian and UK economist Colin Clark once said economic growth declines if taxation is more than 25 per cent of GDP.

It’s also been said, “When the taxes of a nation exceed 20% of the people’s income, there is a lack of respect of government. When it exceeds 25%, lawlessness.”

In Australia it is close to 30 per cent.

Take one example of this lawlessness – the black economy – currently estimated at 15 per cent of GDP, one of the largest in the developed world. An underground economy of that magnitude requires the involvement not only of a lot of businesses, but also of millions of consumers.

As we know, laws only work when people believe in them and, clearly, they have no respect for our tax laws.

Despite what many advocating tax increases would have us believe, the total tax take in Australia is quite high. They say that compared with other developed economies, Australia is a low tax country, and that workers and companies could comfortably pay more. Not so.

When it comes to taxing incomes, Australia is up there with the Europeans and is way ahead of most of our neighbours in the Asia­­­–Pacific region.

A paper published by the Adam Smith Institute stated, “If you look at the experience of those who have introduced a single-rate flat tax, and also the tax reforms of the 1980s which took place in Britain and America, reducing tax rates causes revenues to rise.”

As Arthur Laffer has found, and as has been demonstrated many times, when taxation rates are reduced, revenues do not fall. When the Australian company tax rate was cut from 39 to 30 per cent, revenues went up, not down. The famous Reagan tax cuts from 70 per cent to 30 per cent in the 1980s produced a $9 billion increase in revenue when a $1 billion shortfall had been forecast.

When Sweden halved its company tax rate from 60 per cent to 30 per cent, company tax revenue tripled.

Nobody enjoys paying taxes, but in the 1950s and 1960s, relatively low taxation and a comparatively simple set of tax rules meant that most people paid what was due without too much hissing, to quote Colbert.

Today, however, the Government and the ATO find themselves locked into a destructive relationship of repression and resistance with ordinary taxpayers.

Where people can avoid tax by exploiting loopholes, they will do so; where they can’t (eg, PAYG taxpayers), they become resentful at the unfairness of it all.

Memory Mountain

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Memory-MountainOne hundred years ago this year, four young Indigenous evangelists first preached the gospel at Ikuntji (Haasts Bluff) 200 km west of Alice Springs.

Ikuntji is the home of the Western Arrernte, Pintupi and Pitjantjatjara people.

The evangelists’ aim was to bring the message of forgiveness to a culture that had little understanding of it.

Local tradition dictated that if you committed an offence, you would have to suffer with payback and retribution which often included spearing and the spilling of blood – ‘Makarrata’.

When the evangelists explained the gospel story, however – in particular the account of the Roman Centurion who thrust his spear into Jesus’ side bringing forth water and blood – for Aboriginal people, this was significant. To them, spearing was about punishment. But here Jesus was being speared and saying, “Father, forgive them. There is no need for payback. You are forgiven.”

To commemorate that encounter, a huge 20-metre-tall cross has been constructed on Memory Mountain at Ikuntji.

Named The Forgiveness Cross, the cross was formally dedicated this year on the 100th anniversary of that memorable first visit.

“This cross will remain a symbol of forgiveness until the end of time”, said Ikuntji Elder Kieran Multa.

“People from every nation can now come together – every nation whether black or white, Chinese or Indian. The cross is the way to meaning, it is the way to forgiveness.”

In a report by Vision Media, years of fighting bureaucratic red tape, fundraising, engineering challenges and searing heat were all overcome to enable this beacon of hope to be realised in the heart of the nation.

This was a very different ‘statement from the heart’.

The Bible says, “The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to those who are being saved it is the power of God.”

Which brings me to the Referendum.

As we said at the start of the year in Remembering the Galatians Group, ‘closing the gap’ (between indigenous and non-indigenous people) and improving the lives of Aboriginal people is a no-brainer.

So why did so many people who support reconciliation, recognition and closing the gap not support the Voice?

Good question.

Well, as we warned back in March, the Voice turned out to be something very different to those things.

First and foremost was the fact that the debate presented not one, but two very different questions – do you support closing the gap, and do you support the Voice?

The problem was, only one of those questions was on the ballot paper.

Greatly admired individuals such as footballer Michael Long and wonderful organisations such as the Salvation Army believed the Voice would be a modest and safe proposal that would ensure Indigenous people ‘could be heard by government on matters related to them’. The Voice, they said, ‘offered hope and possibility for the future’. It would help close the gap.

But how accurate was their assessment?

First, the proposed Voice was to have been a stand-alone new chapter in our Constitution, sitting next to the three other great constitutional institutions: the Parliament (Chapter I), the Executive Government (Chapter II), the Judicature (Chapter III).

According to constitutional law professor Nicholas Aroney and constitutional lawyer Peter Congdon, the proposed new Section 129 establishing the Voice in the Constitution, “would accord the Voice a structural prominence and constitutional status comparable to those other three institutions”.

They argued that the proposed new chapter could fundamentally alter the division of powers between the commonwealth and the states.

“What if Voice representations concern health and education that are currently the domain of the states?

“What if the Voice wants a higher age of criminal responsibility for Indigenous people?

“Will this new head of commonwealth power give the commonwealth power to encroach in areas currently the responsibility of the states?”

No-one knows what the outer limits of this new power would have been. It would have been up to the High Court – not the parliament – to determine those parameters.

Key ‘Yes’ campaigner and architect of the Uluru Statement from the Heart, Professor Megan Davis, said the Voice ‘will have a lot of power’.

Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney said, “The Voice will be the vehicle to negotiate a national treaty with. There has to be a body to negotiate a treaty with, which is why the Voice is so important”.

And listen to this: Peter Jennings, Senior Fellow of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) said, “If the Yes case wins, then Beijing will want to establish relations with the Voice. Just as China courts the leaders of Pacific Island nations, state premiers, and even local councils, the Voice too will be the target of a PRC charm offensive.

“This is Beijing’s playbook.

“If the Voice is enacted, the Chinese will reach out to it within weeks. Then look out for that first funded trip to Beijing for Voice representatives.

“And more broadly, the diplomatic community will want to know how to engage with the Voice. Will that be done through DFAT’s First Nations ambassador who heads the Office of First Nations Engagement? Who will be responsible for shaping that policy agenda?”

The High Court would have to become heavily involved in all of these matters.

Yet we were told persistently that the Voice was merely ‘an advisory body’; a ‘modest and humble request’.

“The almost desperate insistence by the Yes case that the Voice was just an ‘advisory body’ was a claim designed to deceive”, said The Australian newspaper’s Editor-at-Large, Paul Kelly.

On Saturday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, together with Voice elites Noel Pearson, Ray Martin and others, and Voice radicals such as Marcia Langton and Thomas Mayo were totally vanquished.

To quote Shakespeare’s Hamlet, “They have been hoist by their own petard”.

Now most people think that a petard is some kind of flagpole or pikestaff, and you get hoisted up on it. But that’s not what a petard is at all. Petard is French for ‘bomb’, and you get ‘hoisted’, or ‘thrown in the air’, by your own bomb. The bomb blows up in your face. It sure did.

Despite huge political, social and financial resources aligned against it, the No campaign triumphed. As a result, Australia dodged a massive bullet.

In summary, ‘Vote No’ leader Jacinta Nampijinpa Price stated many times throughout the campaign that 80 per cent of Aboriginals enjoy the same standard of living as everyone else.

Think about that for a moment – 80 per cent of Indigenous people are no worse off than anyone else.

The challenge therefore is, how do we now join with people such as Michael Long and the Salvation Army and help the other 20 per cent?

Maybe we could start by visiting Memory Mountain.

Prison Break

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libertyIn 1946, Viktor Frankl, Holocaust survivor and renowned author of the book Man’s Search for Meaning, proposed that the Statue of Liberty on the east coast of America be complemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the country’s west coast. He was later joined in this endeavour by Stephen Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. The dream was to ‘bookend’ the nation with two equally inspiring statues – one representing rights, the other responsibilities.

Both men have since passed on, but their dream is being kept alive by an organisation called Statue of Responsibility.

The dichotomy of rights and responsibilities is often raised during public policy debates.

Indigenous leader Noel Pearson, a key advocate for the Yes campaign, in discussing his work on rights and responsibilities in Cape York has said, “Until we take responsibility, there’ll be no turnaround in closing the gap.

“Do you think my mob like it when I talk about responsibilities?

“They love it when I talk about rights and how they’ve been victimised. They don’t like it, however, when I say take responsibility for your children – nobody’s going to save you until you get your family together.”

Can’t argue with that.

A core tenet of the Christian faith is that one day we all will stand before our Creator and give an account of our lives – and be judged accordingly.

It must follow, therefore, that if a person is going to be held responsible for their actions, that person should have the right to decide how they live their life. Rights – responsibilities.

The first question I asked as a newly elected Senator in 2014 went something like this:

My question is to the Minister for Employment and Leader of the Government in the Senate, Senator Eric Abetz.

I refer to the Prime Minister’s statement on 28 May this year when he said, “People are more than capable of making decisions based on what is best for them”, and also to the statement by the Minister for Social Services when he said, “The best form of welfare is a job”.

If both those statements are true, why then can an 18-year-old in my home State of South Australia

    • get married
    • have children
    • drive a motor vehicle
    • fly an aeroplane
    • buy a house
    • take out a mortgage
    • enter into a mobile phone contract
    • travel to some of the most dangerous places on earth
    • smoke cigarettes
    • drink alcohol
    • enlist in the armed forces and shoot enemy combatants
    • and, of course, vote

but NOT enter into an employment arrangement which, and I again quote the Prime Minister, “is best for them”?

It is customary for crossbenchers to send Ministers advance notice of questions they propose to ask during Question Time. I did so on this occasion. I also took the liberty of sending the Minister the preferred answer I would like to receive.

The Minister duly acknowledged my courtesy in sending him the question in advance and also informed the Senate that this was actually the first time he’d also received a suggested answer.

Humour aside, the answer I was looking for was, “Senator Day is quite right, this government is committed to putting in place employment arrangements which, as the Prime Minister has said, ‘is best for the people making those decisions’. Accordingly, this government will, forthwith, be tabling a simple, one sentence Act of Parliament to be called the ‘Free to Work Bill’. The Free to Work Bill will state the following:

‘Notwithstanding the provisions of the Fair Work Act 2009, any contract of employment between a corporation and a natural person shall be lawful’.

Needless to say, that’s not the answer I got.

But that is all that would be needed.

I have argued that a person could be unemployed, living at home rent-free, with no (or very low) cost of living and would be willing to work at a starting pay rate of say $20 an hour (which is a lot higher than they would be getting on Centrelink), but because penalty rates on weekends or public holidays are around $40 an hour, they are not allowed to take these jobs. They stay unemployed, the business stays shut, and customers don’t get what they want to buy.

prisonIt’s been said that any place you can’t leave is a prison. Australia’s present workplace regulation system is a prison, trapping a person in thousands of pages of regulations.  When I ask why we lock people up like this, I am told “Oh it’s for their own good – we don’t want them to be exploited.”

But where’s the outrage when these same young people end up on drugs or get involved in crime or suffer poor health or become pregnant or become recruits for bikie gangs or even commit suicide?

If those claiming to protect the unemployed from exploitation really cared as much as they say, then why do they do not stop them from doing 101 other things that have a far bigger and more permanent impact on their lives than getting a job – like smoking or drinking alcohol or getting covered in tattoos or getting married or having children or backpacking through South America. At least with a job you can quit at any time.

This is unquestionably an infringement on liberty, freedom and dignity. It violates a person’s right to earn a living and it violates their responsibility to provide for their families.

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As mentioned in our previous post, this month marks the three-year anniversary of the launch of the Party and the challenge ahead is as great now as it was when we launched.

Thank you to all those who have supported us thus far. It has been greatly appreciated. Every bit has helped. To enable us to continue this vital work, please continue to support us here.

Oppenheimer

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oppenheimerOn the 14th of August, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was interviewed by Neil Mitchell on Melbourne’s 3AW. Part of the interview went like this:

“Mr Albanese, if you were dictator, what’s the first thing you would do?”

“Ban social media”, he replied.

How telling.

That the Prime Minister would ban social media – our most popular means of communication – is brutally authoritarian.

It reminded me of a scene in the movie Oppenheimer in which nuclear scientist Robert Oppenheimer meets with President Harry Truman shortly after the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War 2.

Following his successful testing of the bomb, Oppenheimer was known to have uttered the words, “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds”, a quote from the Bhagavad Gita, a holy scripture from Hinduism.

After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Oppenheimer told Truman he felt he had “blood on his hands”.

Truman angrily responded with the words, “The blood is on my hands, not yours. It was me who dropped the bomb, not you”.

With that the meeting was over and Truman said he “never wanted to see that man again”.

There’s more than a little Oppenheimer in Albanese’s view of himself and the world around him. Here’s why I think that.

There’s an old Greek proverb, “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows only one thing.”

Albanese knows only one thing – politics. It’s all he’s ever done.

But as we know, the world isn’t made up of just one thing, it is made up of a whole range of competing factors and trade-offs that differ for different people of different ages who live in different places and have different priorities.

Like the ‘crystallised intelligence’ vs ‘fluid intelligence’ paradigm. Crystallised intelligence employs experience and wisdom and knows how the world works. Fluid intelligence knows how to study, learn facts and pass exams. Foxes vs hedgehogs. We’ve all met them.

Harry Truman, a Democrat (a bit like the Labor Party here in Australia), was a very good President. Before entering politics, Truman was a soldier and then a shopkeeper. A better understanding of how the world works you wouldn’t get than by owning a shop! Harry was quite the fox.

But the story is told of when Truman was elected President, his former army buddy and shopkeeper partner, Eddie Jacobson, said to him, “O Harry, now that you’re President, everyone’s going to start telling you what a great man you are, when you and I both know you ain’t”.

Anyone who gets to the top needs an Eddie Jacobson in their lives.

Being knowledgeable on one subject can narrow one’s focus, lead to over-confidence and dismiss dissenting views. This can lead to self-deception, even delusions of grandeur. The Voice perhaps?

The world is a very dangerous place, and it is impossible to predict what will happen next. There are countless variables and factors. Foxes understand this innately, hedgehogs not so much.

For this reason, we have to stop letting the hedgehogs run the show. Let them be advisers, by all means, but do not put them in charge.

They may be fine leading other hedgehogs in a particular field, but the world is not parliament house or a laboratory or a hospital or a courtroom or a classroom or a police station. We can’t let scientists or police commissioners or judges who do not have to answer to the people run the place. Being answerable to the people forces you to understand how the world really works and how to assess the many trade-offs – as the Prime Minister will soon find out.

On a more celebratory note, next month marks the three-year anniversary of the launch of the Australian Family Party – and almost one hundred Newsletters!

Inaugural letterbox flyer from 2020

Our membership is strong and the response to the Newsletters, all of which are listed on our website, has been phenomenal – especially The New Gulag, The MATS Plan Re-visited, Black Hawk Down, Two Stories, One Lesson and of course Remembering Andrew Evans.

But, like the story of ‘the turtle on the fence post’ (if you ever see a turtle sitting on top of a fence post, what is the one thing you know? – It didn’t get there by itself!), if anyone wants to get to the top of the fence post in any field – sport, the arts, business, and yes, politics – you’re not going to get there by yourself. You’re going to need a lot of help from a lot of people.

In our case, that includes other minor parties.

As I outlined in The Shrinking Forest earlier this year, alliances with like-minded parties are essential for success.

More news about that in coming months.

Beam Me Up, Scotty

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beam-me-upIt is two years since we launched our ‘Family, Faith & Freedom’ campaign invoking that iconic TV series Star Trek.

Since that time, each of these three foundational principles of Western Civilisation has been relentlessly attacked by three destructive and sinister campaigns – Climate, Race & Gender.

Let’s start with Family.

Have you noticed how many childcare centres have sprung up lately?

As former US President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) used to say, “In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.”

If one wanted to indoctrinate the next generation, then getting to the children as early as possible is the key.

Applying the FDR principle, the more children into childcare – or ‘early learning centres’ – the better.

But why so many?

Could it be due to the entirely manufactured housing affordability crisis – or to be more accurate, the entirely manufactured ‘land affordability’ crisis – forcing both parents out to work?

As we have pointed out here before, Australia does not have a ‘housing’ affordability problem, it has a ‘land’ affordability problem. As most people know, over the past 20 years, the cost of building a new house in Australia has roughly kept pace with inflation. Land prices, however, have skyrocketed. By deliberately restricting the amount of land available on the urban fringes of our cities, governments have sent the price of land and thus housing through the roof. It is now virtually impossible to buy a house and service a mortgage on one wage. Hence, both parents out to work and young children into childcare.

And what, dare we ask, are the children being taught in these ‘early learning centres’?

First, there is the international ‘Climate Action Childhood Network’ which states on its website, “We believe a paradigm shift in early childhood education can provide a path to deeper societal changes that are required”.

Then there are the ‘Acknowledgement of Country’ mantras which are taught to children.

And of course, the ‘Rainbow Agenda’.

‘Climate, Race and Gender’, the leitmotifs of the Left sweeping the Western world. The long march through all our state institutions indeed.

Again, an entirely manufactured ‘climate emergency’ is set to destroy our economy. The collapse of the energy grid as a result of the manic shift to so-called ‘renewables’ is all but inevitable.

And ‘Race’ will divide society. For over a hundred years, Australia has fought to remove race from civic considerations. Yet now we are on track to permanently divide the nation by entrenching an Indigenous Voice into our Constitution.

As former Labor Minister and Commissioner for Charities and Not-For-Profits, Gary Johns said recently, “Are Aboriginal people really that different that we need a treaty to talk to each other? Do people who are neighbours and workmates need a treaty to get on? The very thought of heading down such a road would divide Australians and destroy reconciliation”.

And ‘Gender’ will undermine the family, society’s most fundamental building block.

One of the world’s most prestigious universities, Johns Hopkins, has just redefined lesbianism as ‘a non-man being attracted to a non-man’, and Sydney’s Royal Hospital for Women is countenancing the transplanting of wombs into ‘women assigned male at birth’.

LGBTIQA+ literature, an anti-Christian mindset and events such as ‘Gay Pride Month’ also brook no dissent, inflicting immense pressure to participate. There is no ‘opting out’. “Why are you not celebrating with us? Are you homophobic? Or a bigot?” Intimidation is the weapon of choice.

Our ‘Family, Faith & Freedom’ post has stood the test of time. I encourage you to re-visit it.

I would also encourage you to watch this magnificent clip about freedom by Scottish commentator Neil Oliver. It is breathtaking in its truthfulness: Neil Oliver ­– the pursuit of happiness.

Thank you for your support, it is greatly appreciated. Without it we cannot continue our fight for Family, Faith & Freedom. Please support us here.

Remembering Andrew Evans

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Andrew-EvansAndrew Evans was elected to the South Australian Parliament’s Upper House (Legislative Council) in February 2002 with a primary vote of 4.0%. Not bad for a first-time candidate and a new party.

Before going into politics, Andrew had been the senior pastor at SA’s largest Pentecostal Church – Paradise Assemblies of God (AOG).

Andrew formed the Family First Party in 2001, and the party immediately became known for its Christian-based, social conservatism – particularly on issues such as abortion, euthanasia and the LGBT agenda.

At the 2006 State election, Family First added a second Upper House member (Dennis Hood).

In July 2008, shortly after his 73rd birthday, Andrew resigned his seat and former Liberal Party MP Robert Brokenshire was nominated by the party to replace him.

As it happened, also in July 2008, the Liberal Party was holding its controversial Mayo preselection contest following Alexander Downer’s sudden resignation from Federal parliament. I was a candidate in that preselection contest and resigned my 20+ years of Liberal Party membership as a result of that controversy.

The following day, Andrew rang me and invited me to join Family First and head up the party’s federal aspirations. I accepted and ran as the Family First candidate in the subsequent Mayo by-election gaining 11.4% of the primary vote. I was not elected as the Member for Mayo, which went to the Liberals’ Jamie Briggs.

Following the by-election, I became the party’s lead Senate candidate and was elected to the Federal Parliament in 2013 and again in 2016.

Andrew and I were able to unite the religious social conservatives and the free-market libertarians, an essential element in developing preference arrangements. As Andrew often said, ‘there’s no point having all these great ideas, if you can’t get yourself elected!’

On the social side, one of Andrew’s great political achievements was the removal of the statute of limitations for child sex abuse.

Before Andrew’s election in 2002, no person in South Australia could be prosecuted for a sexual offence if the offence had been committed before December 1982.

Andrew had this ban overturned.

The new laws operated retrospectively so that people who had committed certain sexual offences before December 1982 could be prosecuted.

As was said on the floor of the House at the time, ‘… in relation to the tolerance of such incidents, and the subsequent chain of events put in place by the Hon Andrew Evans, this will indeed be a significant lasting legacy of his contribution to this parliament’.

But the party wasn’t called ‘Family First’ for nothing. Andrew and I set about highlighting things that were important to establishing and maintaining healthy families. Our motto became ‘every family, a job and a house’. If every family had a job and owned a house, the benefits to the nation would be incalculable. Australia would be transformed. So why didn’t every family have a job and own their own home? In short, barriers to entry.

When it came to jobs and houses, Australia was not a free country.

For the low-skilled, or poorly educated, or socially disadvantaged, or for those who lack connections or self-confidence, the barriers to entry to getting a job are serious indeed.

As for barriers to home ownership, for more than a hundred years the average Australian family was able to buy its first home on one wage. The median house price was just three times the median income allowing young home buyers easy entry into the housing market.

As we know all too well, the median house price is now more than nine times annual income and home ownership is out of reach for most young families. Increasing supply through more broadacre land release became our mantra.

Then there’s the way the family is taxed. Family First strongly advocated income-splitting for single-income households and putting an end to price-gouging by state governments of water and power costs.

Andrew and I maintained our friendship right up to the end. We last spoke last year when he knew his time was limited. He was a friend and mentor. When it came to minor party politics and how to deal with a church-based membership, Andrew knew everyone and was able to get people to stand as candidates like no-one else before him.

Andrew passed away last Friday.

We have lost a great man.

It’s Time

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its-timeIn 1911, French physician and psychologist Édouard Claparède published his observations of a female amnesiac patient. The woman was suffering from a debilitating form of amnesia which left her incapable of forming new memories. She had suffered localized brain damage that preserved her basic mechanical and reasoning skills, along with most of her older memories, but beyond the duration of a few minutes, the recent past was lost to her.

Claparède’s patient would have seemed straight out of a slapstick farce had her condition not been so tragic. Each day the doctor would greet her and run through a series of introductions. If he then left for 15 minutes, she would forget who he was, and the same introductions would happen all over again.

One day, Claparède decided to vary the routine. He introduced himself to the woman as usual, but when he reached out to shake her hand for the first time, he concealed a pin in his palm.

It wasn’t friendly, but Claparède was on to something. When he arrived the next day, his patient greeted him with the usual blank welcome and with no memory of the previous day’s activities – until Claparède extended his hand. Without being able to explain why, the woman refused to shake his hand. She was incapable of forming new memories, yet she had nevertheless remembered something – a subconscious sense of danger, a remembrance of past trauma. She failed to recognize the face and the voice she’d encountered every day for months, but somehow, buried in her mind, she remembered a threat.

I’m indebted to Gerry from Rants, Raves, Reviews & Reflections for his excellent summary of Claparède’s famous experiment.

It’s been said that ‘Those who ignore history, are destined to repeat it.’

How then do we help people to remember?

Last week, we repeated the phrase, ‘Lest we forget’.

What pins can we plant into public discourse to ensure that we do not repeat the disasters of the past?

For example, in 1972, Labor leader Gough Whitlam was elected on the back of a great campaign song called It’s Time. Some of the lyrics went like this:

It’s time for freedom,
It’s time for moving, It’s time to begin,
Yes It’s time.

It’s time for children,
It’s time to show them, Time to look ahead,
Yes It’s time.

Time for better,
Come together, Time, Time, Time,
Yes It’s time.

It’s Time became the most memorable song and slogan in Australia’s political history. It did more than sell a political message, it captured a mood, a vibe.

As a 20-year-old public servant at the time, naturally I voted for it!

It didn’t take long however, for Whitlam’s real agenda to leap out of the song’s Trojan Horse.

Once elected, Whitlam made the not-so-modest statement, “There are moments in history when the whole fate and future of nations can be decided by a single decision. This is such a time.”

What followed was massive social and economic policy upheaval.

Unemployment, inflation and a total failure to manage the economy led to Labor suffering a massive defeat in 1975.

We voted Whitlam in on the ‘vibe’. When we realised what we’d done, however, we quickly voted him out again.

But imagine for a moment that Whitlam’s policies had been inserted into our Constitution and not just into legislation.

Whitlam was temporary. The Voice will be permanent.

The Whitlam disaster is our Claparède pin.

It’s Time …

…. to Vote No.

Keystone Kops

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Keystone-KopsA local police force was chasing a criminal who had fled into a large disused building. Their first thought was to surround the building, but they then realized that the building was so large and had so many doors and windows, they didn’t have enough police on the scene to cover all the exits. So instead, they surrounded the building next door which was smaller and had fewer exits.

Our nation is facing some serious economic problems – inflation, rising interest rates, high mortgages (forcing both parents out to work), high cost of living (educating and raising children, power prices, water prices) – and social ills caused by the rupturing of family relationships, addiction to alcohol, gambling, drugs and pornography, and suicide. Yet what does our government do? Like Keystone Kops, they surround other buildings – such as climate change, an indigenous voice, and distorting words and language. Denying one’s gender is now ‘gender-affirming’, free speech is now ‘hate speech’, abortion has become ‘reproductive health’, euthanasia or assisted suicide is now ‘dying with dignity’, and so on.

In the UK, they say everything is policed except crime. People are arrested for silently praying near an abortion clinic, while assaults and robberies go un-investigated.

How did it come to this?

In short, what we have now is a society and a culture that has banished God and the Bible and replaced it with a society which says, “We are now in charge. We will decide what is right and wrong. We will say what is good and bad.”

It goes right back to the beginning – “Eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and you will be like God.”

That is where Western culture is today.

Over the centuries, we’ve seen numerous tyrants, revolutionaries and despots take over whole societies. None more effective than Engels and Marx in the nineteenth century and Mao and Gramsci in the twentieth century with their ‘long march through all of society’s institutions’ – first and foremost being education and the indoctrination of the young. Then came the law, business, politics, health, the media, the military and finally, the church. Yes, the church.

It was once the case that the church sent its members into the world to convert the world to the church’s ways. What we’ve seen in recent times, however, is a reverse of that with the world sending its members into the church to convert the church to the world’s ways!

These corrupted institutions have shaped the culture. The culture then shapes politics, and politics shapes our laws.

It is world-wide and it is co-ordinated. It is a spiritual battle, and spiritual battles are fought with spiritual weapons.

In the famous story of David and Goliath, when David volunteered to fight Goliath, King Saul tried to put his armour on him, but David rejected it. You don’t fight spiritual battles with secular armour.

Like David compared to Goliath, we are also massively out-sized and out-numbered by our enemies.

But we are not to despair. God will choose who He wants to fight in this battle, and it will be those who put up their hand and say, “Here am I Lord, send me”.