Australian Character

When John D Rockefeller died in 1937 he was reputedly the richest man in the world. At his funeral were many of his employees as well as a large contingent from the press.

Spotting Rockefeller’s chief accountant in the crowd, a young journalist from The Washington Post approached the accountant after the funeral.

“Weren’t you Mr Rockefeller’s accountant?” enquired the journalist. “Yes, I was,” replied the accountant.

“Tell me,” whispered the journalist, “How much did he leave?”

“All of it,” whispered the accountant.

Benjamin Franklin said, “In this world nothing is certain except for death and taxes.” Will Rogers went on to say, “And the only difference between death and taxes is death doesn’t get worse every time parliament sits!”

Great friends, good job, nice car, see the world, live life to the fullest, save a few dollars, get married, buy a house, start a family, stay healthy.

This was the ‘Great Australian Dream’ for many young Australians.

It might still be the Great Australian Dream, but it’s getting harder by the minute.

Young people can’t afford to buy a house and start a family, and many are burdened with HECS debts.

Then there’s income tax, payroll tax, land tax, petrol tax, the goods & services tax (GST), stamp duty, power company dividends, water company dividends, the River Murray Levy, the Emergency Services Levy, the Regional Landscape Levy, the Solid Waste Levy, the Medicare Levy, Council Rates … local, state and federal governments tax us at every turn.

Not to mention, of course, pensioners who are unable to afford to heat their homes or water their gardens.

The Great Australian Dream and belief in ‘Family, Faith & Freedom’ need to be promoted and defended.

Which brings us to the results of the election.

In South Australia, the final 6^th Senate seat went to the 3^rd Liberal on the ticket – Kerrynne Liddle with 5.3% of the primary vote (total Liberal vote 33.9% minus 28.6% used for the 1^st and 2^nd Liberals, Simon Birmingham and Andrew McLachlan).

The ‘freedom’ parties of One Nation, Liberal Democrats, Australian Federation Party, UAP, Great Australian Party, IMOP and ourselves polled, between us, 10.9% of the primary vote – more than double the primary vote of the 3^rd Liberal and enough to have secured that 6^th spot.

Now whether a single ‘Family, Faith & Freedom’ Party would attract the same total is anyone’s guess – but it might. Especially considering that each of these areas will continue to be under attack over the next few years.

And whilst a combined 10.9% for the ‘freedom’ parties is a start, the reality is that nearly 90% of voters still voted for climate and covid/tax and control parties.

The new Labor government’s commitments – now with additional pressure from the Greens and Teals – to spend more on childcare, aged care, housing, the NDIS, PBS, and climate change, at a time of rising interest rates, high inflation, food prices, power prices, petrol prices and rent prices all going up, a mental health crisis among young people, volatile global events, and concerns over religious and personal freedoms do not bode well for the defenders of ‘Family, Faith & Freedom’. Recently tabled legislation in the ACT, for example – a sign of things to come perhaps? – further weakens protections for religious organisations. If passed, it will allow secular courts to intervene even in the internal workings of the church, including the ordination of ministers and who can, and who cannot, take communion.

So where to now for the Australian Family Party? How do we respond to all this?

As discussed in a previous post, the Party has a credible voter base, a solid membership list, a strong policy platform, a database of Newsletter recipients that runs into the thousands and we have just run two elections like clockwork. We have much to offer.

Two elections – State and Federal – hot on the heels of each other, has been quite an effort. Time now for some reflection on both. Your feedback would be most welcome here.

To our members and supporters who uphold us in so many ways, thank you for your support.

PS Thank you to all those who have contributed to our election budget. We’re nearly there, so any support to close the books on these two elections would be most welcome. Thank you.

The 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.

A 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.

This 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 21^st 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

There’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

A 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

At the recent State election we drew box J, the 10^th letter of the alphabet. Readers may recall the reference to the 10^th 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 5^th 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