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Australian Family Party

Family Matters

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Australian Character

Baptists & Bootleggers

27/05/2022 by Australian Family Party

baptists-bootleggersThe most conspicuous feature of this election was the presence of the powerful ‘Baptists & Bootleggers’ phenomenon.

The term ‘Baptists & Bootleggers’ was coined during the 1920s Prohibition era in America, when the makers of illegal liquor – ‘Bootleggers’ – found ways to finance the ‘Baptists’ campaign to have alcohol banned. The Baptists were successful, alcohol was severely restricted and the Bootleggers made a fortune. These days we might call those Bootleggers ‘rent-seekers’. Rent-seekers use the political process to extract money from taxpayers and consumers.

And they are everywhere – in energy, superannuation, pharmaceuticals, higher education, land development, indigenous groups, public transport, manufacturing – you name it. They are a scourge. They tarnish the political process, distort the market and in the case of so-called ‘renewable energy’, distort the entire economy. No matter what industry you are in, that pay-rise you thought you deserved has gone into the pockets of rent-seekers lurking in the corridors of parliament house.

One day the whole renewable energy racket will collapse under the weight of its own absurdity, and someone will write a book called ‘50 Years of Madness: How the World was Conned’.

Another fascinating feature of the election has been what I call ‘voter switch’.

Huge numbers of voters switched from the major parties to minor parties and independents. Labor voters switched to the Greens, and Liberal voters switched to the ‘Teals’ – independent candidates in wealthy electorates financed by renewable energy investors. Labor voters switched to the Liberals in Tasmania and Liberal voters switched to Labor in WA.

But by far the biggest switch has been the complete reversal of the traditional socio-economic paradigm. 15 of the 20 poorest electorates in Australia are now held by the Liberals, whilst 15 of the 20 wealthiest electorates are held by Labor, Teals and the Greens! And despite Labor winning the election with 32% of the vote (Labor under Kevin Rudd won with 42%), in the SA seat of Spence, the poorest electorate in the state, Labor suffered a 6% swing against it.  Go figure.

When nearly 70% of the electorate didn’t vote for the new government, you can bet it “won’t be easy for Albanese …”.

The under-30s, too, had a big impact on this election, by and large voting Greens.

But the most significant flow-on effect of the election was the Greens’ 30% increase in its Senate numbers. As we have been saying on this website for the past year, the 2016 Liberals/Greens deal to abolish Group Voting Tickets has seen the Greens pick up an extra three Senate seats, taking their number to 12. Again, the Liberals can rail all they like about the influence of the Greens, but they have only themselves to blame.

So why did Labor win the election – or more to the point – why did the Liberals lose? The Liberals’ Coalition partner, the Nationals, haven’t lost a seat in three elections.

During the pandemic, the government provided massive stimulus packages which kept thousands of workers in their jobs and thousands of businesses’ doors open. The unemployment rate was an incredibly low 3.9% and interest rates were at all-time lows. The government seems to have received no credit for this. There was also instability on the world stage – Russia and China in particular – all of which normally bode well for the Coalition.

So what happened?

Personally, I think as well as committing the nation to ‘Net Zero by 2050’ and racking up a one thousand billion dollar debt, the ‘Family, Faith and Freedom’ factor had something to do with it.

Family – cost of living was rated the No 1 issue of concern to voters. Faith – Scott Morrison failed to carry through on his promise to legislate protection of religious freedom. As a result, exemptions for faith-based schools in their hiring choices are now under threat. And Freedom – his appalling judgement in allowing State Premiers to introduce the most draconian, police-state lockdowns which confined people to their homes, closed schools, separated the elderly from their families, and coerced people into taking an unproven vaccine – all counted against the Prime Minister and his government.

As for what the outcome in the Senate will be, at this stage we have no idea whether I’ll be elected or not. It’s certainly not out of the question we could get a significant ‘below the line’ vote given that we didn’t have a party name above the line. As members would know, last year the major parties increased the minimum number of members a party needs in order to gain federal registration from 500 to 1,500. No below-the-line votes have yet been counted, so we’re not giving up just yet …

But regardless of who wins that last Senate seat in SA – be it us, One Nation, the Liberal Democrats, or whomever – standing at the polling booths alongside six other like-minded, centre-right parties – One Nation, Lib Dems, UAP, Australian Federation Party, Great Australian Party and the Nationals – a total of seven minor parties – made me think that there has to be a better way. Whichever minor party wins that last seat, there has to be a good case for the other parties to fall in with it. A policy council comprising all seven parties under the banner of the party who wins must surely be considered.

Speaking of standing at polling booths, can I once again say ‘thank you’ to all our volunteers. Manning a polling booth – a number of members stood for ten hours straight – is no mean feat. Installing and removing all the campaign posters is also a challenge (if you see a stray campaign poster, please report it here.) Thank you.

And finally, as discussed in our ‘Sitting Ducks’ newsletter a fortnight ago, we have one last invoice to pay in the amount of $5,000 for the how-to-vote cards. So far, we have raised $2,700 towards it. We want to finish well – the campaign has gone like clockwork – we just have that final box to tick.

Filed Under: Australian Character, Australian Politics, Election '22, Family Policy, Family Resilience, Freedom, Senate Election 2022, South Australia

Dog Day Afternoon

20/05/2022 by Australian Family Party

dog-dayA number of years ago I was building a house at Magill in Adelaide’s east when one of our bricklayers arrived on site with his bull terrier dog. Bricklayers always preferred bull terriers as pets because if a brick accidently fell on the dog’s head, the dog didn’t feel it and in fact thought it was a game and waited for more bricks to be dropped.

At the Magill site, the galvanised iron fence between the building site we were working on and the property next door had about a 75mm (3 inch) hole in it through which the neighbour’s spaniel would regularly insert its nose to investigate the new building activity.

When the bull terrier arrived on the scene, however, the spaniel was far from impressed and began barking violently at the impertinent interloper. The bull terrier nonchalantly responded with a swift head-butt to the fence which so startled the spaniel that it jumped backwards and cut off the end of its nose on the rough edge of the fence.

The spaniel was taken to a vet and 12 stitches were needed to repair the damage.

Being responsible for the site at the time, I found myself on the receiving end of an account for the vet’s fees from the spaniel’s owner plus an invoice for $100 for repairs to the fence caused by the bull terrier. I agreed to pay the vet’s fee but balked at paying for the fence.

dog-day-afternoonThis incident came back to me last Saturday afternoon when I was asked to look after a voter’s bull terrier dog while its owner went in to vote at the Munno Para early voting centre in Adelaide’s north. Long-standing Family Party member and volunteer Roger Potger snapped the accompanying photo and dubbed it ‘Dog Day Afternoon’.

Tightly holding on to the dog, I was nervously on the lookout for any local spaniels. Fortunately, none appeared and I successfully handed the dog back to its owner – who I trust voted for me! You never can tell. I remember after my first election – which needless to say I didn’t win – I bumped into a voter who proclaimed excitedly, “I voted for you!” “Ah, you’re the one,” I replied, “I’ve been looking for you”. The amused voter chuckled and walked off unsure if I was joking or not.

I’m hoping this time will be different.

Still on the subject of dogs, in ‘The Adventure of Silver Blaze’, one of the Sherlock Holmes short stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Holmes is sent to investigate the disappearance – on the eve of an important race – of a champion racehorse called Silver Blaze and the murder of its trainer John Straker. In what has become a famous exchange known as ‘the curious incident of the dog in the night-time’ between Scotland Yard’s Inspector Gregory and Sherlock Holmes, Gregory asks Holmes, “Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?” “Yes”, Holmes replied, “To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time”. “But the dog did nothing in the night-time”, said Gregory. “That was the curious incident”, Holmes replied.

That the dog didn’t bark told Holmes the person who took the racehorse was known to the dog. The thief was not a stranger. It was an inside job.

This exchange has become symbolic of the need to speak up or ‘bark’ when something is amiss. Rest assured, here at the Australian Family Party we will not hesitate to bark.

For this election we have done the hard yards, put in the work, listed all our policies in great detail here, traversed the state with our campaign posters, negotiated good preference arrangements and handed out how-to-vote cards at early voting centres. These are our ‘five loaves and two fishes’. Whether God chooses to perform a miracle or not is up to Him. We have peace about it.

Across the globe, however, there is little in the way of peace. In fact, there is havoc. Shakespeare’s ‘dogs of war’ are growling and Australia will not escape at least some of this havoc.

Tomorrow – Saturday 21st May – is election day. Without wanting to labour the point, we can’t let our country go to the dogs. Click here to see how to vote to help prevent that from happening.


Authorised by Bob Day, 17 Beulah Road, Norwood SA 5067

Filed Under: Australian Character, Australian Politics, Election '22, Family Policy, Family Resilience, Freedom, Senate Election 2022, South Australia

Black Hawk Down!

13/05/2022 by Australian Family Party

black-hawk-downThere’s a scene in the movie ‘Black Hawk Down’ where the sergeant yells to one of his soldiers, ‘Get in the truck and drive!’ ‘But I’ve been shot’, the soldier replies. ‘We’ve all been shot, now get in and drive’.

I couldn’t sit by and watch both Labor and Liberal Governments introduce their anti-family, anti-Christian, anti-business policies and not try to do something about it. I couldn’t say, sorry, can’t help you, I’ve been shot. I had to get back in the truck and drive.

Bad things happen to everyone. Some have been shot by cancer, others by the loss of a child, or by a relationship breakdown, or by an addiction, or a moral failure, or being accused – or even worse convicted – of a crime they didn’t commit. I’m no different, except for me it was very public.

In my case it was a business failure. I wasn’t as smart as I thought I was. I’d bitten off more than I could chew and paid the price.

But you can’t let your past mistakes define you. You have to get back in the truck and drive.

I’ve called my election campaign, ‘Unfinished Business’.

Australia has economic and social problems that it wants to solve – 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.

And it has social and economic goals it wants to achieve – full employment, affordable housing, low crime rates. Looking to politicians, bureaucrats and regulators to solve these problems and achieve these goals is, however, a lost cause. The world is changing so profoundly – in social attitudes, world economics, and especially technology – that politicians and bureaucrats are hopelessly ill-equipped to manage it. They are simply outdated and outgunned.

The major parties and their apparatchiks live in a world that is foreign to ordinary people.  Simply put, they do not know enough to make the correct decisions. Those at the ‘top’ know less than those at the ‘bottom’.

Over the past decade – before Covid-19 hit – the economy was quite healthy and yet government debt still increased every year under both Labor and the Liberals.

Over the next few years, Commonwealth debt is forecast to exceed a trillion dollars – that’s 1,000 billion dollars. It is not going to end well. The old adage, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch”, hasn’t been around for 100 years for nothing.

We are heading for very tough times thanks to irresponsible fiscal (spending) and monetary (interest rates) policies. You simply can’t spend hundreds of billions of dollars like we have and expect no repercussions.

Someone is going to have to pay for it. And that someone is the next generation. The English rock band The Who – Pete Townshend on guitar, Roger Daltrey on vocals, John Entwistle on bass, & Keith Moon on drugs – got it right when they said of the older generation, “…things they do look awful cold …. (hope I die before I get old!)”

Someone has to go into bat for them and the family.

The Australian Family Party is based on six key principles: Family Resilience, Family Economics, Family Technology, Free to Speak, Free to Believe and Free to Work.

Basically, the family has been dudded. It’s time to push back in the form of:

  1. Recognition – shifting the centre of gravity from the political class to the family.
  2. Encouraging family formation – getting married and starting a family.
  3. Home ownership – addressing land supply for new housing.
  4. Cost of living – introducing income-sharing and stopping price-gouging – power prices in particular.
  5. Free to work – your rights at work need to become your rights to work.
  6. Free to speak and free to believe.
  7. Technology – addressing the indisputable links between social media and mental health.

Society relies on three levels of protection against harm. Level one is a person’s own conscience; level two is the family to keep its members in check; and level three is the police. Nurturing the conscience starts in infancy. Here, childhood connection is vital. There needs to be more incentive for parents to look after their own children and less emphasis on government-subsidized childcare.

For a free society to prosper, people have to be able to control themselves. Teaching self-control starts with the family. The family cultivates within a child the right way to view life and the world around us.

A renaissance is needed, one that puts the family at the centre of society. Every decision by government should be measured against how it affects the family.

The State has a duty to the family. Society has a duty to the family. And what the State and society owe the family is not food or housing or education or health care, what the family is owed first and foremost is ‘recognition’.

We can serve Australia best by putting the family first. Click here to see our how-to-vote card.


Authorised by Bob Day, 17 Beulah Road, Norwood SA 5067

Filed Under: Australian Character, Australian Politics, Election '22, Family Policy, Family Resilience, Freedom, Senate Election 2022, South Australia

Sitting Ducks: News from the Campaign Trail

06/05/2022 by Australian Family Party

campaign-siiting-ducksA political candidate was asked where he stood on the issue of duck shooting.

“I have friends who are duck shooters”, the aspiring politician answered, “and I have friends who oppose duck shooting. And I always stand by my friends”.

They say if you can’t ride two horses at the same time, you don’t belong in the circus.

The campaign trail can be a hazardous place for candidates. Sometimes all it takes is one slip-up and your election prospects are finished. The circus tent collapses on top of you.

Fortunately, no such calamity has befallen us yet. But then again, there’s still a fortnight to go! As a wise sage once observed, “Politics is like swimming in a dirty river. Just don’t swallow any of the muck”.

Putting up campaign posters all over the state was always going to be a big challenge. That was until our party faithfuls stepped forward – Nicole Hussey (Yorke Peninsula, Mid North and Eyre Peninsula), Lionel Zschech and Peter Ieraci (Murray Bridge to Mt Gambier), Tim Vivian (Riverland), Tony Kew (Barossa), Dieter Fischer (Elizabeth & Gawler), Alex Banks and Joe Tripodi (Golden Grove & Salisbury), Adrian Redman, Matt Barnes, Peter Heidenreich and Pat Amadio (suburban Adelaide) and I covered the Adelaide Hills. Mission Accomplished.

Our next challenge is early voting. Record numbers of voters are expected to turn up at early voting centres at this election. We desperately need volunteers to attend these early voting centres. There are usually between 1 – 3 early voting centres per electorate, so if you are available to hand out that all-important how-to-vote card at a centre near you, please contact us here as soon as possible. Thank you.

Then there are the candidate forums, radio interviews and endless questions about preferencing. Preference arrangements are another hazardous business.

Preference recommendations are often not, as a lot of people might think, a descending order of like-mindedness. Rather, they are a calculated trade-off between reciprocity – you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours – and the likelihood that your preferences might assist someone else to be elected – compared to the alternatives. If a candidate has no chance at all of being elected – for example, a minor party candidate in a safe (major party) Lower House seat – there is no point preferencing that candidate just because their policies are similar to yours. Preference arrangements are not the place to signal virtue. They are the place to help you get elected. It goes without saying that you can help your constituency a lot more if you are elected than if you’re not!

To be clear, how-to-vote cards are recommendations only. Once in the polling booth, voters can preference candidates in any order they wish, however we recommend voters number the candidates in a certain way to help us get elected.

Candidate forums can also be tricky – especially during Q & A. You’re up on the stage like the proverbial sitting duck. For audience members who have been crusading on a particular issue for 20 years, this is their opportunity. They want a ‘Yes or No’ answer from you as to whether you will support a Royal Commission into their cause. Often the cause does have merit, but ‘Yes or No’ answers can be a trap for young players. Forums are also time-consuming. Questioners who forget for a moment (or ten minutes) that they have the microphone in their hand to ask a question, sometimes give political speeches. This is where a good forum MC is the candidates’ best friend.

All in all, the campaign is going very well. We’re right where we need to be at this point. We have also introduced a new digital marketing arm to the campaign and included a new video series. If you could please follow us on Facebook and share our posts with your family and friends that would be really helpful. Thank you.

One final matter, we have a $5,000 bill to pay for our how-to-vote cards. Can you help? If so, please go to our Support page here.


Authorised by Bob Day, 17 Beulah Road, Norwood SA 5067

Filed Under: Australian Character, Australian Politics, Election '22, Family Policy, Family Resilience, Freedom, Senate Election 2022, South Australia

E is for …

29/04/2022 by Australian Family Party

heh-senate-electionAt the recent State election we drew box J, the 10th letter of the alphabet. Readers may recall the reference to the 10th letter of the Hebrew alphabet ‘Yud’ in a recent State election post. The Yud was an important letter in Hebrew, we said, because first and foremost, it was the first letter of the name of God, YHWH: Yud – Heh – Vav – Heh.

Well, wouldn’t you know it, for the Federal election we’ve drawn the letter E, the 5th letter of the alphabet, which in Hebrew is Heh. Heh is the second letter of the name of God.

Seems we’re spelling out God’s name here – just two more elections to go …

Not only does the letter Heh appear twice in God’s name, in Hebrew writings ‘H is used as an abbreviation for YHWH, and when God declares, ‘I am here!’, He uses the phrase ‘Heh-neh!’

Heh is also called the ‘timeless letter’, as the Hebrew words for past, present and future are all connected to the letter Heh.

Like the number 10 in our State election post, the number 5 is also very significant in Scripture. Again, from the first chapter of Genesis in which God creates light, He mentions the word ‘light’ five times. This is believed to be connected to the light revealed in the five books of Moses – the Torah (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy), the five characteristics of mankind (physical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual, consciousness) and our hands containing five fingers which represent our physical connection to work and the world. We note also that the Hebrew word for work and worship are the same – Avodah. It’s why we say denying a person the right to work is like denying them to right to worship. ‘He who builds a factory, builds a temple’, Calvin Coolidge famously declared, ‘He who works there, worships there’.

This all accords perfectly with our Family, Faith and Freedom policies of ‘Family Resilience, Family Economics and Family Technology’ and ‘Free to Speak, Free to Believe and Free to Work’.

At this election, every voter will be asked to cast two ballots – one on a small green ballot paper for the House of Representatives – your local MP – and the other on a very large white ballot paper for the Senate – representing the State.

The House of Representatives ballot paper is quite straightforward – simply number the candidates (usually between five and ten of them) in your order of preference.

The Senate ballot paper, however, is not so straightforward.

For a start, it is a metre long and contains 22 registered political parties or groups above the black line and over 50 individual candidates below the line.

You can choose whether to vote above or below the line, but not both. Voters must number a minimum of six boxes if they choose to vote above the line, or a minimum of twelve boxes if they choose to vote below the line.

As discussed above, we have drawn box E on the Senate ballot paper. E for Employment, E for the Economy, E for Education, E for Excellence, E for Endurance, E for Eternity, E for Elvis, E for Elijah and of course, E for Esther for such a time as this.

We are recommending to voters that they vote above the line and follow our how-to-vote card by placing a 1 in box E, then a 2 in box J for Australian Federation Party, and then a 3 in box S for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, 4 in box A for Liberal Democrats, 5 in box G for National Party and 6 in box U for United Australia Party.

Click here to view or download our how-to-vote card.

All we need now are a few more V for volunteers to do some letterboxing and hand out the how-to-vote cards and, of course, a few D for dollars to help pay for them.


Authorised by Bob Day, 17 Beulah Road, Norwood SA 5067

Filed Under: Election '22, Australian Character, Australian Politics, Family Policy, Family Resilience, Freedom, Senate Election 2022, South Australia

SPECIAL ELECTION EDITION No. 2!

15/03/2022 by Australian Family Party

The Big Salami

salamiIn his excellent book Blink! Malcolm Gladwell describes how it is possible to weigh up situations in the ‘blink’ of an eye.

In other words, how to make good decisions in an instant by doing what he calls ‘thin slicing’.

Thin slicing is a concept similar to taking a big salami, and no matter how thin you slice it, everything you want to know about the whole salami is in that one slice.

Often you don’t have time to study or research a situation or a person; you have to analyse what is going on by finding that thin slice.

The Bible uses the term shibboleth for this. Shibboleth is Hebrew for ‘stream,’ and it comes from the Old Testament book of Judges, where Jephthah and the men of Gilead fought the Ephraimites and captured the Jordan River crossing. As people crossed the river, to distinguish who was friend or foe, they had everyone say the word ‘shibboleth’. If they couldn’t pronounce it properly, they knew they were the enemy. From this, the word shibboleth was absorbed into the English language to describe a key identifier or a dead give-away. It would be like hearing someone say, “where did I put my jandals?” You’d know straight away they were a New Zealander. It’s a shibboleth.

In the New Testament, St Paul’s letter to the Colossians describes another form of thin slicing. He writes, “Let the peace of God rule in your heart.” Another translation puts it, ‘Let the peace of God be the umpire in your heart’ – Colossians 3:15.

In other words, weighing up important decisions in the blink of an eye and asking yourself, “Do I have peace in my heart about this decision?”

Or is it like in Star Wars – “I’ve got a bad feeling about this, Obi Wan Kenobi”.

At this election, every voter is asked to cast two ballots – one on a small green ballot paper for the House of Assembly (the Lower House) and the other on a very large white ballot paper for the Legislative Council (the Upper House).

The House of Assembly ballot paper is quite straightforward – simply number the candidates in your order of preference.

The Legislative Council ballot paper however, is not so straightforward. It is nearly a metre long and contains 19 registered political parties or groups above the red line and over 50 individual candidates below the red line.

JVoters can choose whether to vote above or below the line – but not both. Voters can also choose whether to number just one box above the line, all 19 boxes above the line or any number in between. If voting below the line, a voter must number a minimum of 12 boxes.

The Australian Family Party has drawn box J on the white ballot paper – J for Jephthah from Judges.

When casting your vote at this election, take a deep breath, close your eyes and let the peace of God be the umpire in your heart.


Authorized by Bob Day Australian Family Party 17 Beulah Road, Norwood SA 5067

Filed Under: Australian Character, Australian Politics, Election '22, Family Policy, Family Resilience, Freedom, Prayer, South Australia

Hedgehog World

12/03/2022 by Australian Family Party

hedgehog-fox “It is dangerous to make predictions – especially about the future.”
– Danish physicist Niels Bohr

After the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, global experts announced it was ‘the end of history’. Humanity had, they said, reached “not just the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end-point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the adoption of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government”. They wrote books, went on world speaking tours and people like me paid hundreds of dollars to hear them tell us where the world was headed.

They could not have been more wrong if they tried. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine being Exhibit A. China’s threat to Taiwan Exhibit B.

In a previous post I quoted James Surowiecki’s book, ‘The Wisdom of Crowds’, in which the author describes how ordinary people are collectively smarter than so-called experts when it comes to problem-solving, decision-making, innovating, and predicting. The reason why, he explains, is that individual experts are inherently biased. They are part of a club. He says the knowledge and common-sense of ordinary people, however, eliminates bias and produces a clearer and more coherent result.

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

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 are different for different people of different ages living in different places and with 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 and pass exams. Foxes vs hedgehogs. We’ve all met them.

Being knowledgeable on one subject narrows one’s focus and increases confidence, but it also dismisses dissenting views. This can lead to self-deception. As we’ve seen in Europe, the world is a messy and complex place – and dangerous to predict. There are countless variables and factors. Foxes understand this innately, hedgehogs not so much.

The bottom line is, we have to stop letting hedgehogs run things. Advisers, yes. Leaders, no. They may be fine leading other hedgehogs in a particular field, but the world is not a hospital or a laboratory or a courtroom or a classroom or a police station. We don’t want the country run by epidemiologists and police commissioners.

Next month marks the 110th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. A number of people at the time made statements before the ship set off on its doomed voyage – all of them fatally wrong. Among them was the ship’s captain, Edward J. Smith, who said, “I cannot conceive of any disaster happening to this vessel. Modern shipbuilding has gone way beyond that.” Not to be outdone was Phillip Franklin, vice-president of the White Star Line, the ship’s owner. Prior to the voyage, Franklin said, “This boat is unsinkable.”

After the tragedy, a devastated Franklin regretted his remarks. “I thought she was unsinkable. I based that opinion on the best expert advice.”

The internet has given the world access to the latest information on every subject under the sun. Instantly. Some of it is accurate, some of it is not.

The lesson is, by all means listen to what experts have to say, but then make up your own mind. We can’t let experts dictate what the rest of us can and cannot do – for the simple reason that they are hedgehogs. They are only good at one thing. (Strange, too, that when they take off their hedgehog uniforms and go home, they act more like foxes and don’t always practice what they preached when they were wearing their hedgehog uniforms …. just saying).

Global experts are having to re-think the ‘end of history’ given recent events in Europe and Asia.

National experts are having to re-think responses to climate change – “Even the rain that falls isn’t going to fill our dams and river systems”. Tell that to the people of Queensland and NSW! Billions of dollars have been wasted building desalination plants, and millions more wasted maintaining them.

Our State experts told us we needed to build a road which has all the traffic going one way in the morning and then all the other way in the afternoon.  Needless to say, that didn’t last very long and great expense was incurred re-building the road so that traffic could go both ways all day long.

Bert Kelly made the logical point, “If these experts were as clever as they make out, they wouldn’t be here, they’d be sitting in the South of France with their feet in a bucket of champagne”.

This election, send the hedgehogs a message.

Tell them you’re exhausted from being told what to do all the time – ‘must do this; can’t do that’.

Vote ‘J’ for James (as in James Surowiecki from The Wisdom of Crowds) and get the respect you deserve.

 


Authorized by Bob Day Australian Family Party 17 Beulah Road, Norwood SA 5067

Filed Under: Election '22, Australian Character, Australian Politics, Family Policy, Family Resilience, Freedom, South Australia

SPECIAL ELECTION EDITION!

08/03/2022 by Australian Family Party

J is for …

how-to-voteIn Hebrew it is the “hameat hamachazik et hamerube” – ‘the little that holds a lot’.

It is referring to the 10th letter of the Hebrew alphabet: ‘yud’, the most important of all the letters. The name of God starts with a yud – YHWH – Jehovah in English. It is also the smallest letter in the alphabet – the size of a small comma – and yet every letter in Hebrew contains a yud, because the moment the pen touches the paper, there it is.

In English, yud is the equivalent of our letter ‘J’, which is also the 10th letter of our alphabet. The number 10 is very profound in Scripture. From the first chapter of Genesis in which God creates 10 things – light, sky, land, sea, plants, sun, moon, stars, living creatures and finally humans – to the 10 plagues of Egypt; to the commandment to give a tenth of one’s income (the tithe); to Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year – the 10th day of the 10th month; to Abraham’s 10 tests; and, of course, the 10 Commandments.

At this election, every voter is asked to cast two ballots – one on a small green ballot paper for the House of Assembly (the Lower House) and the other on a very large white ballot paper for the Legislative Council (the Upper House).

The House of Assembly ballot paper is quite straightforward – simply number the candidates (usually around five or six of them) in your order of preference.

The Legislative Council ballot paper however, is not so straightforward.

For a start, it is nearly a metre long and contains 19 registered political parties or groups above the red line and over 50 individual candidates below the red line.

Voters can choose whether to vote above the line or below the line, but not both. Voters can also choose whether to number any amount of boxes above the line – from just one box to all 19 of them. If voting below the line, a voter must number a minimum of 12 boxes.

The Australian Family Party has drawn box J on the white ballot paper. Box No 10. How’s that for divine providence! J for Jehovah, J for Jerusalem, J for Joshua, J for Joseph, J for Joanna, J for Judges and, of course, J for Jesus.

We are recommending voters vote above line and follow our how-to-vote card by placing a 1 in the box marked J, then a 2 in the box marked M for One Nation, and then a 3 in the box marked A for the Liberal Democrats. Both One Nation, led in South Australia by the phenomenal Jennifer Game and the Liberal Democrats’ highly respected leader Kenelm Tonkin have conducted themselves impeccably throughout this election period. Their pro-life, pro-family, pro-freedom stance has been exemplary, and I cannot speak highly enough of both of them.

Click here to view seat by seat how-to-vote cards.

All we need now are a few more V for volunteers to hand out the how-to-vote cards and we’re done.


Authorized by Bob Day Australian Family Party 17 Beulah Road, Norwood SA 5067

Filed Under: Australian Character, Australian Politics, Election '22, Family Policy, Family Resilience, Freedom, South Australia

Till Death Us Do Part

05/03/2022 by Australian Family Party

seesaw-politics-deathThe ancient story is told of a merchant in Baghdad who sent his servant to the market. After a short while the servant came back white and trembling. “Master”, he said, “just now when I was in the market, I was jostled by someone in the crowd, but when I turned, I saw it was death who jostled me. Death looked me in the face and made a threatening gesture toward me and I ran. So please, lend me your horse so I can ride away and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and hide.” The merchant lent him his horse and off he rode as fast as he could. The merchant then went to the market himself and saw death standing in the crowd. “Why did you make a threatening gesture toward my servant when you saw him this morning?” the merchant asked. “That was not a threatening gesture”, death replied, “I was just surprised to see him here in Baghdad as I have an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.”

Politics is the ultimate near-death experience. Especially for political leaders. You can run but you can’t hide.

For major-party leaders, there is always a conga-line of would-be successors just waiting for an opportunity to pounce. Not all are qualified to take on the top job.

I once commented to a political colleague about an over-ambitious politician, “He thinks he’s going to be Prime Minister one day”, I said somewhat uncharitably. “Bob, they all do”, he replied.

So much time and effort are taken up in major parties with this sort of stop-at-nothing ambition. As a result, the welfare of the nation takes a back seat. The public recognizes this and is constantly looking for credible alternatives.

In a recent major analysis of voting trends, The Australian newspaper reported, “Support for minor parties and independents has reached its highest level in four years.”

The time is right.

People see the political seesaw in operation, with one of the major parties permanently Araldited onto one end of the political seesaw and the other major party permanently Araldited on the other. They yearn for a sensible, balance-of-power party to stand in the middle of the seesaw, leaning one way when one of the majors gets out of control and leaning the other way when the other does the same.

Matthew Abraham, who has been covering SA politics for a very long time, last year 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. Liberal and Labor: two peas in a pod.

Fiercely independent, the aim of the Australian Family Party is to bring out the best and subdue the worst in our political system. To stand on the seesaw and watch and lean.

There is much that can be done – in both social and economic terms – to reduce the pressure on families including income splitting for taxation purposes, subsidies for grandparents who look after grandchildren, putting an end to price-gouging by state governments of water and power costs, and much more.

Power prices, house prices, water prices. Family budgets and family businesses – family farms, family shops, trade contractors, are all under siege. The unbearable cost of energy, regulation and taxation is sending family businesses to the wall.

The Australia we once knew is disappearing before our very eyes.

In 2013, David Flint and Jai Martinkovits wrote a book called, ‘Give Us Back Our Country’. In the nine years since they wrote that book, it is clear we are not getting our country back any time soon. If anything, more of our country and our freedoms have been taken from us. In a recent article Flint no longer called for our country to be ‘given’ back, but rather for us to take it back.

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Australian Character, Australian Politics, Election '22, Family Policy, Freedom, South Australia

Leaders are Readers

26/02/2022 by Australian Family Party

“If you want to get anywhere in life, you have to read a lot of books.” – Roald Dahl

leaders are readersI was fortunate to have not one, but two mentors in my life – Ray Evans and Bert Kelly. Both were iconoclasts – people who challenge the accepted wisdom and sacred cows of their day. Ray and Bert exposed with great effect the myth that government knows what’s best. “Never let the government help you”, was one of Bert’s favourite sayings.

Both Ray (pictured) and Bert were great readers.

Mark Twain said reading, like travel, was ‘fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrowmindedness. Broad, wholesome, charitable views cannot be acquired by vegetating in one’s own world’.

GK Chesterton wrote of ‘telescope people’ and ‘microscope people’ – telescope people who study large objects and live in a small world, and microscope people who study small objects and live in a big world. Think about that for a while.

And Rudyard Kipling who wrote of the importance to society of discipline, courage and valour, and of the dangers of societies becoming luxurious and feeble. As the general courage of a community declines, he wrote, people become timid.

For a nation or society to function properly it needs leaders who are readers.

‘Show me a family of readers, and I will show you the people who move the world’, said Napoléon.

 ‘There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate’s loot on Treasure Island,’ quipped Walt Disney.

Shortly after World War II, George Orwell published his novel ‘1984’. The story was set in a country ruled by ‘Big Brother’, a supreme dictator in an all-powerful, one-party state. The central character, Winston Smith, whose job it was to re-write the nation’s history books to fit the current narrative of the state, was continually tormented by his task. The department in which he works is called ‘The Ministry of Truth’. Orwell’s novel exposed the true nature of authoritarian governments which cling to power by generating fear, distorting facts and censoring alternative views. For a book published in 1949, his description of surveillance technology to track and trace its citizens is downright spooky – think facial biometric scanning and GPS tracking used by the South Australian government during Covid.

What we learn from books such as ‘1984’ and Orwell’s other great novel Animal Farm, is that there is nothing new under the sun and that lurking in every society are men and women with authoritarian tendencies who are ever ready to ‘generate fear, distort facts, and censor alternative views’.

As well as books like ‘1984’ and Animal Farm which issue dire warnings, there are books which impart knowledge, explain how the world works, record history, and enlighten us about religion, art and sport. And there are, of course, books which simply entertain.

‘Without books’, wrote Ron Manners in his Foreword to the IPA’s 100 Great Books of Liberty, ‘I would not have heard of HL Mencken or his comment about the 1930s Roosevelt New Deal dividing America into “those who work for a living, and those who vote for a living”.’

Top of the list of books that have changed the world, is of course, the Bible. From the story of Nimrod, the world’s first tyrant who was bent on world domination, to life-changing stories of the prodigal son, the good Samaritan, David and Goliath, Daniel and the lions’ den, Moses and the ten commandments, and of course the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. For those seeking hope and inner peace about what is happening in the world, the Bible is the great refuge.

After the Bible, one cannot go past Shakespeare. Hamlet, the Merchant of Venice, Romeo and Juliet, Richard III, and for sheer intrigue and ambition, best of all, Macbeth.

And the number three book that has changed the world has to be Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations and the concept of letting individuals set prices which suit them, rather than ‘markets’ which can get distorted by a perverse range of agendas.

For sheer enjoyment, no bookshelf is complete without a few of Jeffrey Archer’s page-turners. Top of my list of Archer novels is Kane & Abel, followed by A Matter of Honour. Agatha Christie’s crime mysteries, Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte and Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice are absolute delights.

‘I find television very educational’, said Groucho Marx. ‘Every time someone turns on the TV, I go to another room and read a book.’

Essential other reads include Pilgrim’s Progress; Donald Horne’s The Lucky Country; Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life; How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie; JR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings; Exodus by Leon Uris; great Russian writers Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky – War & Peace and Crime & Punishment. Closer to home, anything by Geoffrey Blainey; Greg Sheridan’s God Is Good For You; founder of the China Inland Mission Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret; two of Malcolm Gladwell’s books, Blink and Outliers; John Maxwell’s books on Leadership; Frank Furedi’s book How Fear Works and Bob Buford’s books on Half Time.

…. and Hairy Maclary from Donaldson’s Dairy.

If you would like to help with the coming election, please make a donation here.

Filed Under: Australian Character, Australian Politics, Election '22, Freedom, South Australia

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