Australian Family Party

Family Matters

Australian Character

Dances With Wolves

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wolvesSome time ago a friend of mine wandered into a tattoo shop in Sydney.  As you’d expect, on the walls were all manner of tattoos – animals, cars, people and of course a whole range of  words and slogans. One slogan in particular caught his eye.  It said, “BORN TO LOSE.”

My friend asked the tattooist, “Does anyone ever ask for that tattoo there, ‘BORN TO LOSE’?”  “Yes, sometimes,” said the tattooist.

“Why on earth would anyone want ‘BORN TO LOSE’ tattooed on their body?”  my friend asked.

The tattooist replied, “I only tattoo on their body what’s already tattooed on their mind.”

The Roman Stoic philosopher Lucius Seneca warned his critics, “Throw me to the wolves, and I will return leading the pack”.

Such contrasting outlooks on life.

Let’s ask ourselves this question, ‘what are we tattooing on impressionable young minds?’

Stoicism? Or surrender? Resilience? Or resignation?

Author Os Guiness once said, “It’s not the wolves at the door that’s the problem, it’s the termites in the floor.”  It’s not the external threats on our borders, it’s the rot within.

My first job after leaving school was with the South Australian State Government. I was there about six years, and I must confess the public sector didn’t suit me all that well.  I remember a guy there called Nigel who was very unhappy in his job and would complain almost daily.  It used to drive me nuts. So, one day I plucked up the courage and said to him, “Nigel, you’re obviously not happy working here, why don’t you leave and do something else?”  He replied, “What’s the point? I’m going to be retired in 17 years.”

On a remote dirt road in the northwest territories of Canada there’s a large sign which says, “Be careful which rut you choose – you’ll be in it for the next 50 miles”.  We often hear people say that their lives are in a rut. Like the old farmer out in the paddock holding a piece of rope and scratching his head, not sure whether he’s lost a cow or found a rope.  Or the cat that sat on the hot stove. If a cat sits on a hot stove, what can you be sure of? – He’ll never sit on a hot stove again. But then he’ll never sit on a cold one either. He’s ‘overlearned’ from his experience. Nigel was all those things.

As we know, it’s not what you’re good at in school that matters but what you’re good at in life.

Let’s teach our young people to be ‘better at life’. To let them know that through trials and difficulties we discover the treasure.

And where best to teach this? In the home, in the family.

Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?

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african childrenThe story is told of two people chatting one day, “You know, if I ever get to meet God, I’m going to ask him straight out why he let all those children in Africa starve to death?”  The other person responds, “What a coincidence, because he’s going to ask you the same question.

It is one of the most profound questions mankind ever asks, “If there’s a God, why do bad things happen to good people?”

It was famously asked by Gideon three thousand years ago.

In the Gideon story, the archangel Gabriel meets the young Gideon in a forest and greets him as if he were a 5-star General – “Hail thou mighty Man of Valour!” says the archangel, “The Lord is with you.”  At this stage, Gideon was a nobody – “… my family is poor and I am the least in my father’s house”, Gideon responds. I’m sure if someone had told Gideon or his family that he would one day lead the armies of Israel or that a worldwide organisation would be named after him – Gideons International – they wouldn’t have believed it!

“Hail though mighty Man of Valour!  The Lord is with you.” Now Gideon doesn’t take this lying down but responds with that most profound of statements – “If God is with us, why do the Midianites do these terrible things to us?”  In other words, “If there’s a God, why do all these bad things happen?

The Midianites were a ferocious race of people. They swarmed around the Middle East like locusts raping and pillaging wherever they went. They were not merchants, they were not farmers, they were not traders, they were warriors.  And the archangel answers Gideon the same way we are called to respond to poverty and injustice – “Go and do something about it!”  So Gideon did – and in no uncertain terms – eventually defeating the Midianites.

In the Old Testament book of 1st Chronicles, King David spoke of ‘The people of Issachar’, people who “understood the times and what needed to be done”. In 2022 we need modern-day ‘people of Issachar’. People who understand the times and what needs to be done.

At the Australian Family Party, we believe we know what needs to be done. We talked about it a fortnight ago:

More: Respect, courtesy, courage. Honesty, humility, tolerance. Generosity, compassion, discernment, common sense. Marriage, children, adoption and income-splitting for stay-at-home parents. More pro-family policy. More recognition of Australia’s Judeo-Christian heritage. More patriotism and support for our armed forces. More self-reliance and personal responsibility. More freedom of speech, freedom of thought, freedom of religion. More doctor-training, palliative care, affordable housing, support for grandparents. More roads, ports, reservoirs, independent schools. More property rights, small businesses, and funding the ‘user’ of services such as aged care, child care, disability care, energy, housing, superannuation, pharmaceuticals, education and public transport – instead of the ‘provider’ of those services.

Less: Gambling ads, alcohol consumption, poker machines, tax. Divorce, suicide, loneliness, fatherless households, crime, prostitution. Less hubris. Less abrogating responsibility to un-elected bureaucrats and the duplication of Federal and State functions – health and education in particular. Fewer cost of living rises – food, petrol, childcare, mobile phone and internet costs. Less rules that apply to some but not to others. Less government spending and fewer international treaties. And less factional politics, social media and government surveillance.

Get rid of: Fearmongering and the weaponization of issues such as climate and covid. Price-gouging and profiteering from climate and covid. Wastefulness, hypocrisy, double standards. Barriers to home ownership and the distortion of Australia’s history. Pornography, abortion and euthanasia. And let’s get rid of vaccine mandates, vaccine passports, social distancing, masks, perspex screens, lockdowns, dobbing in your neighbours, discrimination based on medical status, QR codes and the testing and quarantining of healthy people.

This would certainly be a good start.

The Three Russians

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three-russiansIt’s time to bring the famous Russian brothers to Australia. We desperately need to apply them to legislation, to politicians and to Australia’s citizens. The three Russians are Morov, Lessov and Ridov – what should we have ‘more of’, what should we have ‘less of’ and what should we get ‘rid of’!

Let’s start with some personal character traits applicable both to politicians and citizens alike:

Morov: Respect, courtesy, courage. Honesty, humility, tolerance. Generosity, discernment, common sense. Marriage, children, adoption and income-splitting for stay-at-home parents. More pro-family policy. More recognition of Australia’s Judeo-Christian heritage. More patriotism and support for our armed forces. More self-reliance and personal responsibility. More freedom of speech, freedom of thought, freedom of religion. More doctor-training, palliative care, affordable housing, support for grandparents. More roads, ports, reservoirs, independent schools. More property rights, small businesses, and funding the ‘user’ of services such as aged care, child care, disability care, energy, housing, superannuation, pharmaceuticals, education and public transport – instead of the ‘provider’ of those services.

Lessov: Gambling ads, alcohol consumption, poker machines, tax. Divorce, suicide, loneliness, fatherless households, crime, prostitution. Less hubris. Less abrogating responsibility to un-elected bureaucrats and the duplication of Federal and State functions – health and education in particular. Less rules that apply to some but not to others. Less government spending and fewer international treaties. And less factional politics, social media and government surveillance.

Ridov: Fearmongering and the weaponization of issues such as climate and covid. Price-gouging and profiteering from climate and covid. Wastefulness, hypocrisy, double standards. Barriers to home ownership and the distortion of Australia’s history. Pornography, abortion and euthanasia. And let’s be rid of vaccine mandates, vaccine passports, social distancing, masks, perspex screens, lockdowns, dobbing in your neighbours, discrimination based on medical status, QR codes and the testing and quarantining of healthy people.

Of all the above however, the worst is fearmongering. What politicians, health officials and the mainstream media have done to this country over the past two years is unforgivable.

Australians were a united, fun-loving, irreverent, tough-minded, down-to-earth people. Now look at us.

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

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

We want our lives back. We want politicians and bureaucrats to stop watching us and to get off our backs and out of our pockets.

Perhaps 16th Century Swedish Statesman Axel Oxenstierna put it best when he said, “Behold my son, with how little wisdom the world is governed.”

The Unmasking of Australia

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unmasking-muriel-bill“I love acting, it’s so much more real than life”, quipped Oscar Wilde 150 years ago.

“Give a man a mask and he’ll say what he really thinks”.

He could have been talking about trolls. In fact, he was talking about trolls. 150 years on, social media has given the world a mask to say anything. To say what it really thinks.

Has Covid unmasked Australia?

Mateship, egalitarianism, tolerance, toughness, the fair go, down-to-earthness (if that’s even a word) …. for over 100 years Australia has defined itself by these admirable qualities. Crocodile Dundee, The Dish, Muriel’s Wedding and, of course, The Castle.

Are we still Crocodile Dundee? Are we still The Dish? Do we still have ‘the vibe’? Are we Muriel? Or are we more like Muriel’s father Bill?

Let’s be honest with ourselves – what does lie beneath?

There’s an old communist joke, “Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything”. In other words, it’s not the rules that matter but the ones who apply the rules. As pointed out before, the very word ‘bureaucracy’ gives the game away. Bureaucracy is derived from two words – ‘bureau’ from the French word for ‘desk’ and ‘kratos’ from the Greek word for power, hence ‘bureau-krat’, ‘desk-power’.

And there’s the problem. Authoritarian governments are very open about this, they don’t try to ‘hide the ball’ as the Americans say, but democracies like ours are a lot more squeamish so they try to sugar-coat their authoritarianism with lines such as ‘we’re all in this together’.

There is no doubt Australia is becoming more divided.  Are you vaxxed or vax-free? No-one ‘agrees to disagree’ anymore. Patriotism – the love of one’s country, used to be a no-brainer. Seventeen-year-olds lied about their age in order to enlist so they could fight in World War I.

Everyone was proud to be Australian. Football, meat pies, kangaroos and Holden cars. From the time you could talk, dobbing was considered the most un-Australian thing you could do. Police Commissioners now tell people to dob in their neighbours.

Around the time of Oscar Wilde, but across the Channel in France, the cartoon character Monsieur Prudhomme was rapidly becoming a social phenomenon. M Prudhomme carried a large two-edged sword – one edge of the sword to defend his country against its enemies, the other edge of the sword to attack his country if it stepped out of line!

This is needed today as much as it was then.

We are being tested. Will we be found wanting?