Australian Family Party

Family Matters

Australian Politics

Life Lessons from Les Mis

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les-misWhen the great French novelist Victor Hugo was in his 80s, he reflected on his life with the words, “I am like a forest that has been continuously cut down; yet each time I am cut down, the new growth has more life than ever”.

Hugo’s writings reflect his understanding of Biblical truth – that we are ‘continually and always being sanctified’ (Hebrews 10:14).

His epic novel, Les Miserables, embraces themes of crime and punishment, law and grace, sin and repentance, love and redemption.

As most will recall, the main character in the novel, Jean Valjean, is convicted of a petty crime and is imprisoned. He manages to escape before completing his sentence and begins to lead a bitter and resentful life. When he is treated kindly by a local bishop he repays the bishop’s kindness by stealing from him.

He is caught, but instead of pressing charges, the bishop vouches for him and invokes the words of Jesus, telling him to ‘go and sin no more’.

This is grace, unmerited favour, and it has a profound effect on him. His life, having been cut down, re-grows with love and ‘more life than ever’.

Valjean’s antagonist throughout the story is the ruthless and unforgiving policeman, Javert.

As US cleric Bishop Robert Barron puts it, ‘If Valjean represents grace, Javert is the embodiment of the law’ – harsh and unyielding.

Ultimately, Javert, being the proverbial Pharisee, cannot handle Valjean’s act of grace towards him and takes his own life.

This theme of law and grace permeates the Bible.

Jesus, for example, was crucified between two thieves.

These two thieves represent the two types of people in our fallen world: those who accept God, and those who reject Him.

As recorded in the gospels, both men speak to Jesus.

The first thief to speak represents those who reject God, “Aren’t you supposed to be the Christ? If you are, then save yourself … and us!”

No contrition, no remorse, no acceptance of responsibility for his crimes.

The second thief then rebukes his accomplice, “Don’t you fear God? We’re being justly punished for our crimes, but this man has done nothing wrong”.

The second thief takes responsibility. He doesn’t blame others. He admits he’s a sinner and is redeemed.

This is at the core of what has gone wrong with the world in which we now live.

As described in my last newsletter, Noughts and Crosses, sometimes we need to be reminded of what our Judeo-Christian heritage has brought to the world – the establishment of schools, universities, hospitals, aged care organisations and welfare agencies. The elevation of women, as well as the abolition of slavery, cannibalism, child sacrifice and widow burning.

The ‘equality of human beings’ is a Judeo-Christian idea which led to the abolition of slavery and international human rights.

All form the basis of Western civilisation which acknowledged original sin and the need for redemption.

We fail, we sin, we feel guilty. Acknowledging this is virtue.

In response, we confess, we repent, we accept forgiveness, and then we move forward with confidence. That is how we survive the vicissitudes of life.

I have proven this in my own life.

Marxists, leftists, and people from many other cultures, however, do not see it that way.

To them, admitting fault is seen as weakness. They do not accept responsibility for their situation. They blame others. To them, all is a zero-sum game.

And herein lies the problem.

By rejecting God’s system of confession, repentance and forgiveness, Westerners respond by looking elsewhere to placate their guilt – virtue-signalling being one of the main outlets.

As British-born American philosopher and scholar Kwame Anthony Appiah points out, watching King Charles acknowledge the unceded – or ‘stolen’ land – on which the Canadian parliament stands begs the question, ‘Then why do they continue to occupy it? And the obvious contradiction: acknowledging theft while benefiting from it is like apologising for eating someone’s lunch while still holding the sandwich!’

This is the West surrendering to the anti-God Left.

British journalist and political commentator Douglas Murray makes this point in his 2017 book, The Strange Death of Europe.

It is civilizational suicide.

Speaking of which, allow me to make an observation or two about the recent Federal election.

First, before too many claims are made about Labor getting a ‘strong mandate’, at the previous election (2022) Labor’s primary vote was 32.5%. In 2025, it was 34.5% – a 2% improvement.

As a percentage of registered voters, however – including informal votes and those who chose not to vote – Labor’s vote was just 29.5%

Seats won, however, paints a very different picture – from 77 seats in 2022 to 94 seats in 2025 – a 22% increase.

Winning 62% of the seats with 29% of the vote is starting to look like the UK or Europe!

Or compare Labor’s vote in 2016 (34.7%) 69 seats; 2019 (33.3%) 68 seats; 2022 (32.5%) 77 seats; and now 2025 (34.5%) 94 seats!

The disparity between votes and seats in 2025 is due to changes in preferences by the Liberal Party and minor parties.

In the past, the Liberal Party would typically put Labor last on its how-to-vote cards. This time it put the Greens last, resulting in what one might describe as the bright and silver lining on an otherwise dark and gloomy cloud – the ejection from parliament of Greens leader Adam Bandt!

In India it was said that people did not cast their vote but rather vote their caste. India’s caste system divided its society into hierarchical groups based on birth, occupation and ‘dharma’ – a cosmic order of law and moral principles that apply to all beings and things – and people voted accordingly.

That Labor’s vote does not change materially from election to election suggests that the old ‘Labor, right or wrong’ principle is alive and well.

Whether it’s education, immigration, net zero, energy or the environment – power bills going up $1,300 instead of coming down $275 – Israel and the Palestinians, international relationships (UN, WHO, WEF etc), the taxing of unrealised capital gains on our superannuation, abortion and euthanasia, the Albanese government is deeply entrenched in the Left of politics.

It will not end well.

Which is why we are readying ourselves.

Our merger plans with the DLP (and other like-minded parties) are progressing and we are looking forward to contesting the next election on the horizon – the South Australian State election in March next year.

Thank you for your support.

Rock, Paper, Scissors

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rock-paper-scissorsLord Byron, in his moving poem Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, offers the following reflection on life:

I seek no sympathies, nor needs,
The thorns which I have reaped are of the tree I planted,
They have torn me, and I bleed
I should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed.

If there’s one immutable lesson we learn from life, it is ‘we reap what we sow’.

From the micro to the macro, from the personal to the national, we know that actions have consequences.

In the natural world of physics, Isaac Newton formulated the laws of motion – his third law being that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction – meaning that if one object exerts a force on a second object, the second object exerts an equal and opposite force back on the first.

We can all relate to this.

In the political world, it is said, ‘No good turn goes unpunished’ or ‘Why is he attacking me? I never did him any favours!’

My father used to say, ‘Beware of beginnings’. Once you start something, it is difficult to end it.

You may not even be thanked for beginning it, only criticized for ending it.

Which must be how America and Donald Trump are feeling right now.

For 80 years, America has patrolled the world’s shipping lanes, keeping trade functioning.

It has, at its own expense, been the world’s policeman and the principal source of funding for all manner of aid and humanitarian relief.

So, when a new President wants to clean up the ‘waste, fraud and abuse’ in the system and start forcing wealthy countries to pay more towards their own defences, instead of the world thanking them for 80 years of benevolence, it cops nothing but abuse.

Surely it is time the rest of the world acknowledged that it should not be left to one country to solve all the world’s problems.

After all, a strong America – militarily and financially – is undoubtedly a good thing for the world.

Even more so considering the rise of China.

In another case of reaping what has been sown, it has long been an accepted understanding in liberal democracies that there be a balance between a State’s three heads of power – the Legislature (congress/parliament), the Executive (President/Prime Minister/Cabinet Ministers) and the Judiciary (judges/courts).

It is the ‘rock – paper – scissors’ of how democratic societies govern themselves.

As we learn from the childhood game, ‘the rock blunts the scissors, the scissors cuts the paper, and the paper wraps the rock’.

If, however, one of the branches becomes too powerful and no other branch can control it, the system collapses.

Witness the dangerous overreach by some of the world’s judiciaries in taking on the role of opposition to popularly elected governments.

While we understand why those accustomed to having power do not like relinquishing that power – access to taxpayers’ money to fund their political infrastructure being the primary reason – engaging in relentless legal warfare such as that waged against Donald Trump invariably backfires.

And what French President Emmanuel Macron’s left-wing Renaissance party could not achieve at the ballot box, has been taken up on its behalf by the courts to convict the leading contender in the next election, Marine Le Pen, banning her from contesting the election!

Similar legal shenanigans have been occurring in Brazil, Romania and Israel, with unelected judges going out of their way to thwart the will of the people.

Canadian author Mark Steyn makes an ominous prediction:

‘We will soon no longer be able to vote ourselves out of this’.

In other words, no matter how people vote, the ruling class will not accept it.

The upshot will undoubtedly be the deterioration of national cohesion and the undermining of confidence in a country’s institutions.

We reap what we sow.

In one final observation, health has always been one of those ‘actions have consequences’ domains.

The term ‘fat cats’, for example, was once used to describe rich people. Poor people were undernourished and thin.

Today, it is often the case that the poor are obese, and the rich are thin!

Why is that?

Why has obesity more than doubled over recent years when governments spend more on health than ever before – and promise to spend even more at every election?

The same goes for education.

In 2013 the federal government spent $12bn on schools.

It is now $30bn, yet all the objective tests show school results going backwards.

The Australian’s Greg Sheridan says, ‘Whatever the problem was, it wasn’t money’.

But perhaps it was.

Too much of it, that is.

We reap what we sow.

Thank you for your support.

VUCA World

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Donald-TrumpAs most will recall, the Coalition went to the 2013 election promising to ‘abolish the carbon tax, abolish the mining tax and stop the boats’.

Upon election, seven Centre-Right (CR) Senate crossbenchers voted in support of these three key election pledges giving the Coalition Government the numbers it needed (33 + 7) to get its legislation passed.

The seven Senators comprised three Palmer United Party (PUP) Senators, Ricky Muir of the Motoring Enthusiasts’ Party which had entered into a formal alliance with PUP, the DLP’s John Maddigan, the Liberal Democrats’ David Leyonhjelm and me, representing Family First.

With four Senators in his team, plus the fact Clive Palmer had been elected to the House of Representatives seat of Fairfax, watching Clive Palmer in action during that time reminded me of a comment by Winston Churchill about US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles whom he described as “… the only bull I know who carries around his own china shop!”

Clive was, and still is, a force of nature.

Following this successful endeavour, David Leyonhjelm and I met with Prime Minister Tony Abbott and put to him what we called a 40–40–40 game plan: ‘40 votes (a Senate majority) to fix 40 years of unfinished business and set the nation up for the next 40 years.’

We tried valiantly to convince him that the best way to get Coalition policies through the parliament was to have more Senators elected like us. That is, if the Coalition couldn’t win a majority in its own right – which seemed unlikely (and still seems unlikely) – it should at least attempt to achieve a majority with the support of like-minded minor party Senators.

Needless to say, our suggestion was not taken up.

In fact, the exact opposite happened. The Coalition, under Malcolm Turnbull, teamed up with the Greens (who had voted against ‘abolishing the carbon tax, abolishing the mining tax and stopping the boats’) and changed the Senate voting laws to get rid of those very Senators who had supported them!

As a result, and as predicted by John Howard at the time, the Greens increased their number of Senate seats from 10 to 12, Labor increased its number of seats from 25 to 26, centre-left parties increased from 1 to 3, the Coalition lost a seat, and the CR parties dropped from 7 seats to 3. From 33 + 7 (a CR majority) to 32 + 3 (a CR minority). A loss of 5 Senate seats!

If anyone can explain why the Coalition did that, I’d love to hear from them.

Well, Clive is back, this time as Chairman of the Trumpet of Patriots Party (formerly the Australian Federation Party).

Readers of this blog would recall numerous exhortations by me for Australia’s CR parties to work more co-operatively and to move from thinking ‘State-based’, to thinking and acting ‘nationally’.

If a CR party gets a Senator elected, that Senator should be viewed by their party not as their State Senator, but as their National Senator. The Senate, after all, hasn’t been a state-based institution for more than a hundred years. There is virtually no recognition of States in the way the Senate operates. Senators don’t even sit with their State colleagues; they sit with their party colleagues.

Which brings us to the impending Federal election.

We are currently living in what has been described as a VUCA world – volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous.

Many believe, me included, that what Donald Trump has done, and is doing, in America is badly needed here in Australia (ignore his tariffs on steel – they are so insignificant that they will have no effect on us. Donald Trump is a free-trader – he personally oversaw numerous free-trade deals when he was last in office. In any event, if we are so concerned about the price of steel, we should be focussing on the energy, IR and business regulation costs associated with making Australian steel).

What Trump is giving America, and the world, is a long-overdue dose of reality.

The borrowed time, the borrowed money, is coming to an end.

Europeans and Australians have been freeloading on America for more than 50 years and Americans want it to stop.

We should want it to stop.

The world has been acting like a school playground with its bullies and weaklings and America playing the part of the teacher trying to protect the weaklings from the bullies.

But the weaklings in this case do not need to be weak. Countries such as Germany and Australia are wealthy and resourceful and could, like Israel, stand on their own two feet if only they had a mind to.

Trump famously said, ‘Drill, baby, drill.’

We should be saying, ‘Mine, baby, mine!’ and ‘Farm, baby, farm!’

As has been wryly observed, there really are only two industries in the world – mining and farming. The rest are jobs.

And Australia happens to be very good at mining and farming.

Also on Trump’s list are:

  • Ending the climate change/renewable energy scam
  • Curbing immigration
  • Championing free speech
  • Supporting Israel
  • Instituting a Department of Government Efficiency (D.O.G.E.)
  • Advocating for a peace deal in Ukraine
  • Ending support for the transgender movement.

On that last point, we had the unbelievable spectacle during a recent NSW Government Estimates Hearing of the NSW Minister for Women and PREVENTION OF SEXUAL ASSAULT, Jodie Harrison, saying if ‘someone identifies as a woman, they should feel free to use the women’s changerooms’.

This is the sort of wokeness that needs to be purged from society.

Our Prime Minister, however, seems to be going out of his way to annoy America’s newly elected President.

Albanese has made no secret of the fact that he doesn’t like Donald Trump – or America for that matter – but for Australia’s sake does he have to take the opposite side to Trump on everything?

It brings to mind those two great books – ‘How To Win Friends and Influence People’ and ‘How to Lose Friends and Irritate People’.

Anthony Albanese, Penny Wong, Kevin Rudd and many others have clearly been reading the wrong book!

Albanese and Labor are taking Australia down a very dangerous path.

From the Israel–Palestinian conflict to Russia and Ukraine – ‘We stand with Ukraine and will consider sending troops there’ – to censorship laws, to cosying up to the UK’s Keir Starmer who also detests Trump, Albanese has gone out of his way to make it clear he is not on the same page as our most important ally.

Former Labor Foreign Minister Bob Carr says Australia should re-consider its relationship with the US and re-open discussions with the French on the submarine project!

The French! Who are, shall we say, ‘not famous for their military reliability’.

And all this while Chinese warships sail around our coastline!

In preparation for the 2026 SA State election, we have completed the Australian Family Party’s re-registration process with the SA Electoral Commission.

However, to:

  1. Promote the all-important cause of centre-right minor parties nationally (à la 2013) and
  2. Help enact Trump-like policies here in Australia,

I have joined the Trumpet of Patriots (ToP) SA Senate team for the forthcoming Federal election and Nicole Hussey, also from the Australian Family Party, will be the ToP candidate for the South Australian seat of Boothby.

Thank you for your support.

The Eyes Have It

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WesleyThey say to be a successful traveller, you need a good sense of humour – and no sense of smell!

And for those who know anything about travelling around Europe – and know anything about Europeans in particular – they would understand the observation that heaven is not ‘up there’ and hell not ‘down there’, but rather that these places can be found in Europe.

‘Heaven’, they say, is where the Swiss are the administrators, the French are the cooks, the Germans are the mechanics, the Italians are the lovers, and the English are the policemen.

‘Hell’, on the other hand, is where the Italians are the administrators, the French are the mechanics, the Swiss are the lovers, the English are the cooks, and the Germans are the policemen!

Vive la différence!

Speaking of Europe, it was Oxford professor John Littlewood, who first published his theory on why he believed road accidents in Europe were substantially higher than those in Britain.

Littlewood suggested that it was all connected to the observation that a significant majority of people – seventy per cent in fact – have what he calls a ‘master right eye’.

In countries such as Britain that drive on the left, that first split-second view of approaching, overtaking or sudden change in traffic will be seen by the majority of drivers with their master right eye.

In countries that drive on the right, however, that split-second picture of traffic conditions is first seen by the left eye, which is the master eye in only thirty per cent of people.

Littlewood says that the same comparisons can be made with other countries which drive on the left – Japan, Australia, New Zealand – and comparable countries which drive on the right – the United States and Canada.

Littlewood says that the ancient Romans intuitively understood this and as a result drove on the left.

Driving on the right, he says, is Napoleonic – the result of the French Revolution – and like so many other things that derived from that great convulsion, they can be fatal.

On that score, much has been written about why England did not suffer the same catastrophic consequences that befell France in the late 1700s, when social conditions – Charles Dickens and all that – were very similar.

Why was there no English version of the French Revolution?

London and Paris – A Tale of Two Cities?

Many contend that it was the influence of the evangelist John Wesley (1703 – 1791), who was the principal leader of the revival movement known as Methodism.

For more than 50 years, Wesley travelled the length and breadth of England preaching the gospel and exhorting people to ‘… love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind, and love your neighbour as yourself’.

John Wesley did the preaching, and his brother Charles Wesley wrote the hymns:

‘O For A Thousand Tongues To Sing’ … ‘And Can It Be That I Should Gain’ …. and hundreds more beside.

Others, however, put the difference between the two countries down to that other great English religion – cricket!

Cricket?

Yes, cricket.

It’s been said that ‘If you understand cricket, you understand life’.

By the late 1700s cricket had become a well-established sport throughout England with villagers – rich and poor alike – playing on the many village greens across the land.

The rich and the poor knew each other!

In France, the rich lived in Versailles, the poor lived in Paris.

They didn’t know each other.

It’s a lot harder to execute someone you go to church with, sing hymns with, and play cricket with!

In France, there were no such inhibitions. The banality of evil ….

We don’t know whether John Wesley played cricket during his travels, but it would be a fair bet that he did.

In the English-style village in which I live in the Adelaide Hills – Houghton – this year marks the 150-year anniversary of the laying of the village church’s foundation stone. Throughout that time – including through two World Wars, the Great Depression, devastating bush fires and other cataclysmic events – Houghton Church and its members have been a source of comfort and care to the local residents. It has also been an important connection point for community events including its annual Christmas Carols on the Green and Pancake Tuesday, as well as being an active participant in Anzac Day and Remembrance Day services. And of course, weddings, Christenings and funerals held at the church provide a service to the community during life’s ever-present milestones.

Houghton Village once had a hotel called the Travellers Rest. It is no longer there, but the ground on which it once stood now forms part of the Village Green where community events take place and many a traveller stops and rests.

In the words of another great hymn:

‘His eye is on the sparrow,
And I know He watches me …’

The eyes have it.

Thank you for your support.

On Your Marx …

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MarxMarx or Schumpeter?

Socialism or free markets?

It’s a debate that has raged for more than a hundred years.

Socialists contend that although socialism may not have worked out all that well in practice (an understatement if ever there was one), it is still the kindest and fairest form of society, and if ever it were truly tried, it would result in a more prosperous and just world.

Or, as former US Vice-Presidential candidate Tim Walz put it recently, ‘One person’s socialism is just another person’s neighbourliness!’

Free markets, they say, are the exact opposite of this. They are rapacious and predatory.

So, who is right, and who is wrong?

Although the arguments I use below have been put forward in one form or another many times, I am indebted to US commentator Ben Shapiro for crystalizing a number of the key points referred to in this debate.

First, free markets are economic systems by which individuals are free to exchange the products and services of their labour with others.

Socialism is about government planning – politicians and public sector bureaucrats deciding the value, and hence the price, of everything.

The fundamental difference between these two systems goes to the heart of our understanding of what it means to be human.

Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter wrote, ‘Two principles stand above all others: the fundamental human right to do as we please with our own property – whether it be our human capital or our life savings – and, as a corollary of this, a belief in the inherent moral superiority of an economy based on freedom of contract rather than collective coercion.’

Similarly, philosopher John Locke said, ‘Every man has property in his own person, and nobody has any right to it but himself. The labour of his body, the work of his hands, are properly his. Whatsoever he removes out of the state of nature … and has mixed his labour with it, and joined it to something that is his own, thereby makes it his property.’

Hence, the essential element of free markets is individual liberty – no-one possessing a veto over another person’s right to decide what they can and cannot do with their labour.

This freedom of exchange, they argue, leads to a robust system of supply and demand in which sellers and buyers agree on prices.

And because the preferences of human beings are fluid, the price of a product or service can only be determined in a free market, as it is only the buyer who can determine what the price of a product or service should be. Further, that price can change over time as individuals decide what their priorities are at a particular time.

US philosopher Thomas Sowell says, ‘The free market is nothing more than an option for each individual to choose among numerous existing institutions or to fashion new arrangements suited to his or her own situation and taste.’

‘Free markets reward hard work. They reward people who are willing to give up something that is guaranteed in favour of something that is not guaranteed. Accordingly, because entrepreneurs and innovators take risks, they ought to reap the reward.’

Aristotle suggested that individuals are equal in their rights, but not in their qualities.

Each ought to have the same rights to take advantage of their own natural abilities.

Christians believe that every person will one day stand before their Creator and give an account of themselves. They will not be able to blame anyone else for their lives but will be required to take responsibility for their own actions.

If that is the case, then that person should have the fundamental right to decide, as Schumpeter and Locke have articulated, what value they place on their labour at any given time in order to fulfil what they believe are their obligations to their families.

This is, of course, fundamentally at odds with current laws in Australia.

In Australia a person can:

    • 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 they can NOT enter into an employment arrangement which they believe is best for them. They are subject to a multitude of wage-fixing laws.

When asked why this happens, we are told, ‘It’s for their own good – we don’t want them to be exploited’.

The old ‘We want you to be safe’ mantra.

This has been demonstrated many times – for example, the dramatic increase in youth unemployment when unrealistic wage laws were introduced and when Aboriginal stockmen were awarded ‘equal pay’ in the 1960s.

In the latter case, pastoralists argued that the application of award rates to aborigines on cattle stations would cause massive unemployment.

The Northern Australian Workers’ Union mounted the case, but it was the Commonwealth Government’s intervention which was the most telling:

‘If numbers of aborigines are thrown out of work by the award of equal pay, they will be given aid on government settlements,’ they argued.

‘And if any problems of native welfare – whether of employees or their dependants – arise as a result of this decision, the Commonwealth Government has made clear its intention to deal with them.’

Thus began the tragedy of aboriginal townships and settlements.

In his article, ‘How to create unemployment: The Arbitration Commission and the Aborigines’, journalist and author Gerard Henderson said the Stockman’s decision was ‘staggeringly irresponsible’.

‘Almost from the date of the Commission’s decision there was a dramatic decline in Aboriginal employment on cattle stations in the Northern Territory and Western Australia – with devastating social consequences for the former employees and their dependants.’

Right there is the key aspect of socialism – ‘We will decide what’s best for you’.

‘We will also decide what you need and don’t need.’

‘And first and foremost, you don’t need to own private property’, decreed Karl Marx, the founder of socialism. 

In short, socialism is a system that places the individual under the control of the authoritarian state.

Is it any wonder it encourages revolutionaries?

Once established, socialism encourages laziness and stupidity and encourages people to lie.

Socialist politicians lie about what their policies are achieving – Australia’s current energy policies being a prime example – and their public sector subordinates lie to their political masters because they don’t want to get on the wrong side of them.

And people who are forced to live under socialist rule lie in order to survive, hence the proliferation of black markets in socialist economies.

The result is untold misery.

Thank you for your support.

Christmas 2024

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Christmas-2024It’s been said, ‘Our lives are not examined for medals, diplomas or degrees, but for battle scars’.

In our Newsletters this year we have covered subjects from nuclear power to the nuclear family; from Sherlock Holmes to the Sex Pistols; from the Palestinians to the Pearly Gates; from A.I. to Adoption; from Machiavelli to the Monkey’s Paw; from universities to euthanasia – and a whole lot more in between!

We’ve also discussed our Judeo/Christian heritage – Judaism focusing on what a person does, Christianity focusing on what a person believes. Or as one wag described the difference, ‘Jesus saves, but Moses invests!’

Which brings us to the turmoil in the Middle East.

Although not impacting upon Australia directly, the conflict has unexpectedly flushed out the proverbial sheep from the goats. And by goats, we mean those who are hostile to our only Western ally in the region, Israel.

Anthony Albanese and Penny Wong will be forever condemned for their betrayal of not only a strategic military ally, and a country that is our cultural and spiritual kin, but also for their betrayal of the entire Jewish community in Australia.

Israel will, of course, as it always does, emerge even stronger as a result of this attack on its people.

Israel is about to become the region’s superpower.

Decades of trying to be a good neighbour to those who wish to destroy it are over.

A new Israel-dominated Middle East, supported by the United States, will emerge.

Those Arab states that have embraced modernity – Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, and others – will thrive and prosper.

Those that have not will become irrelevant.

The re-election of Donald Trump this year will change the world – from the Middle East to Europe to South-East Asia.

On the domestic front, we have covered two by-elections in South Australia – Dunstan and Black – caused by the resignations of two consecutive Liberal leaders in Steven Marshall and David Speirs.

In the Dunstan by-election, Labor candidate Cressida O’Hanlon defeated Liberal candidate Anna Finizio by just 360 votes. There was essentially no difference between Labor’s result and the Liberals’ result between the 2022 General Election and the 2024 by-election. Each dropped 3 per cent to the Greens who increased their vote by 6 per cent – from 13 per cent to 19 per cent.

Our candidate, Dr Nicole Hussey, held her own admirably amongst the field of five extremely capable women. Nicole’s speech at the Declaration of the Poll was particularly well-received.

The Black by-election was a different story entirely.

As previously reported, the much more conservative seat of Black switched quite spectacularly from the Liberal Party to Labor with a massive 13 per cent swing.

And while all the media attention was focused on the major parties, the Australian Family Party secured a very encouraging 5 per cent of the primary vote.

Our candidate, Jonathan Parkin, together with family, friends, Party members, and our new DLP partners, worked tirelessly during the by-election and the results speak for themselves.

As well as achieving a 5 per cent primary vote, we manned all the polling booths and covered all our expenses. Replicated State-wide, 5 per cent would be more than enough to secure a SA Upper House seat and be well on the way towards a Senate seat!

So, with so many highs and lows this year, how should we end the year?

I love the story of the Spanish patriot leader Navarez who, on his deathbed, was asked by the priest if he had forgiven his enemies.  “I don’t have any enemies”, said Navarez, “I shot them all.”

And Voltaire, who was asked on his deathbed if he wished to renounce the devil. To which Voltaire replied, “Now, now my good man, this is no time to be making enemies”.

They say that everything rises and falls on leadership. It is the greatest need in the world today.

Former Western Australian MP John Hyde used to say, “Any lightweight can lead kids into a lolly shop, but it takes real leadership to lead them out.”

Australia is very poorly led at the moment.

It is often observed in business that some people don’t have 20 years’ experience as they claim, but rather, have one year’s experience repeated 20 times.

Anthony Albanese has been in parliament for nearly 30 years and yet still acts like an immature university activist. One year’s experience repeated 30 times.

Former Labor leader Bob Hawke was a strong leader who appointed competent people to run the nation’s key portfolios – Peter Walsh as Finance Minister, John Button as Industry Minister, Bill Hayden as Foreign Minister and others.

Likewise, John Howard, who appointed people of the calibre of Peter Costello, Nick Minchin, John Anderson and Peter Reith.

Compare those Ministers with the likes of Chris Bowen, Jim Chalmers and Penny Wong!

That is not good for Australia.

All this and more lie ahead in 2025.

So, what about 2025?

I would like to keep churning out these Newsletters, as I think the topics we discuss are extremely important and very few are covering them.

In response, I trust you have enjoyed receiving them as much as I have enjoyed writing them – all of which are sent out and will continue to be sent out – free of charge. This enables anyone and everyone to access them and stay informed.

If, however, you are in a position to support this important mission, please click here.

As Christmas Day approaches, I will leave you with this wonderful insight from Max Lucado:

If our greatest need had been technology, God would have sent us a scientist.
If our greatest need had been finance, God would have sent us an economist.
If our greatest need had been pleasure, God would have sent us an entertainer.
But our greatest need was forgiveness, so He sent us a Saviour.

To all our members and supporters, have a wonderful Christmas and New Year, and thank you again for your support throughout 2024.

 

Why ‘Big Abortion’ leads inevitably to ‘Big Euthanasia’

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Guest Writer Timothy Lynch

EuthanasiaHeinrich Heine’s ominous line, “Those who burn books will in the end burn people,” is one of the most quoted in modern history. It appears in his 1821 play, Almansor.

While it has become a leitmotif of Holocaust remembrance – the sentence is engraved at Berlin’s Opernplatz commemorating the Nazi book burning of 1933 – Heine was actually describing the burning of Korans by Christians in late 15th-century Granada.

There is a certain irony in the contemporary Islamist zeal to burn books that offend the Prophet. Heine, a German Jew, was warning all of us that absolutist positions have murderous consequences.

The British House of Commons has missed the irony. In 1967, its MPs gave us abortion on demand; last week, it did the same with euthanasia. The move from withdrawing the right to life from the youngest to the oldest was not linear. But, as in Australia, it was perhaps inevitable.

Pressuring your old granny to shuffle off this mortal coil now has the veneer of choice. It is a chosen “death with dignity” that drives the voluntary assisted dying camp. There is dignity in abortion, too, we are often told. But dignity invites exploitation, and choices are subject to pressure. Abortion may have been safe (save for its target) and legal. It has not become rare. What will stop euthanasia being subject to the same forces?

Big Abortion will find its companion in Big Euthanasia. Scientists will devise more efficient (and thus “more dignified”) death pods. Medical insurers will offer discounts to check out early. Parties of the left will seek to clothe reproductive rights and assisted dying in the same moral superiority. All the time we will be asked to celebrate the primacy of choice.

The US offers some lessons here. Unlike Britain, Europe and nearly all of Australia, Americans have not embraced VAD; it is legal in only 10 states. But at abortion they are world leaders. Since the US Supreme Court removed most protections of unborn children (in Roe v Wade, 1973), more than 60 million have been aborted – an average of more than a million a year. There were more abortions last year, the year after Roe was repealed, than in the year before it. Blue states such as New York and California have the most liberal abortion regimes in the world.

Democrats celebrated the procedure at their convention in Chicago this year. It was the one issue on which Kamala Harris spoke with fluency and conviction (if not electoral gain).

Two in every five abortions in the US are of a child of colour. African-American women comprise less than 8 per cent of the US population but in 2021 accounted for 42 per cent of all terminations.

The Democratic Party has been complicit in reducing its own voter base; non-Hispanic black women are its most reliable constituency and the demographic most depleted by abortion. If there is such a thing as structural racism and white supremacy, abortion might be their greatest exemplar.

Economic disadvantage (say liberals) and family breakdown (say conservatives) are cited as the causes of this disparity. Ideology aside, it is hard to ignore the ubiquity of a reproductive right that its original framers claimed would be used hardly at all.

Sound familiar? Euthanasia will be safe, legal and rare. Most British MPs pushed this line last week. We heard similar from our legislators when assisted dying was legalised in every Australian state between 2017 and last year. Only the territories have held out; the ACT will offer the procedure from next year. Access to assisted suicide, they all said, would absolutely not become a tool of population control or of political economy: “We would never put National Health Service/Medicare budgets before the right to life.” But the expansion of legal abortion since the early 1970s suggests otherwise.

An entire industry inevitably will develop around the right to die, as it has the right to abort. Euthanasia, like abortion, will be offered for more reasons rather than fewer. Bone cancer (one of the worst ways to die) is now grounds for the state to assist in your suicide. Will severe depression or gender dysphoria eventually trigger this assistance too? History suggests they will. My best friend of 50 years has clubfoot. Aborting him for this would have appalled some pro-choice activists in 1967. But this is now a routine reason to terminate a pregnancy. Why should we suppose euthanasia is immune to the same slippage?

Families across Britain, as we have seen in Europe and increasingly in Australia, will start to think about assisted dying as one of the several options that getting old presents. Just as abortion is now euphemised and celebrated as healthcare, assisted dying will become part of elder care.

Covid was not an advert for state government protection of care home residents. Are we confident they would hold the line when more permissive assisted dying policies are proposed?

A loving family will, of course, want to end the suffering of a loved one. My mum and dad are 85 and 86. There are few days when I do not contemplate how they will die and the role the NHS will play. Passage of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill in England may offer us some sort of additional option. But what about the families animated by greed or laziness?

Vested interests, as with the abortion industry, will make access to assisted dying easier and imbue it with moral virtue: “Your dying will help fight climate change.” The pressure on an ailing relative to “let go” will increase. The weakest and most vulnerable members of any society (after children in the womb) will be afforded, across time, fewer and fewer protections. All the while we will be told of the golden age of dignity and choice now upon us.

You start by aborting babies, you end by gassing grandma.

Timothy J. Lynch is professor of American politics at the University of Melbourne.

This article first appeared in The Australian on 5 December, 2024.

Back in the Black – Part 2

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BlackThe Black by-election is over and, as widely reported, the seat switched quite spectacularly from the Liberal Party to Labor in a massive 13 per cent swing.

And while all the media attention was focused on the major parties, the Australian Family Party secured a very encouraging 5 per cent of the vote.

Our candidate, Jonathan Parkin, together with family, friends and Party members, worked tirelessly in the lead-up to the by-election and the results speak for themselves.

Replicated State-wide, 5 per cent would be more than enough to secure a SA Upper House seat and be well on the way towards a Senate seat.

As discussed previously, at the last Federal election, the total Centre-Right (CR) vote in each state (NSW 12.3%, Vic 11.5%, Qld 15.6%, WA 11.5%, SA 10.8%, Tas 9.8%) would have been enough to get a Senator elected in every state.

That equates to 12 Senators elected over the two-election Senate cycle, and yet only two out of six were elected – Queensland (One Nation) and Victoria (UAP).

If the CR minor parties (which, by and large, do genuinely believe in ‘family, faith and freedom’) are to counter the major parties, the Greens, left-of-centre minor parties and pseudo-independents, then they need to work more closely together.

This goes to the heart of what CR parties generally agree on – the primacy of the individual and the family over government. CR parties believe that governments are there to serve the people, not the other way around. They take the side of the people; the Left believes in the power of the state.

Accordingly, I am pleased to announce that the Australian Family Party is currently in merger talks with the DLP (formerly the Democratic Labor Party).

To be known as ‘DLP – Australia’s Family Party’, this new Party will add further potency and capability to our cause.

Having even one Upper House seat gives a party a platform, a status, and a portal into the Parliament for its members.

For any project to succeed it must work effectively on three levels – strategy, tactics and operations.

Strategy is the big picture. This is the primary aim. In our case it is to have twelve Senators who can hold together for a minimum of twelve years.

As with anyone who has ever done a jigsaw puzzle, it is vitally important to have the picture on the box before you start. In other words, what the puzzle will look like when it’s finished.

In our case, we want twelve Senators, representing our various political constituencies across six States to hold together to save the nation from people such as Jim Chalmers.

Tactics is about which Parties get to represent which States and at which election. Initially, agreement would be reached for both the 2025 and 2028 elections.

To have six Senators elected in 2025 and six more in 2028, it will be vital that all parties, in all six States agree to work together and for each other, keeping an eye on the main prize.

Operations are the day-to-day administration, compliance and member servicing. A modestly sized Secretariat would be able to manage this.

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 worked was called ‘The Ministry of Truth’.

Orwell’s novel exposed the true nature of authoritarian governments which hold on 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 citizens is downright spooky.

“Know everything in order to control everyone”, said Adam Weishaupt.

Technology and mass surveillance allow governments to do just that – know everything.

More government, more spending, more taxes, more regulation, more state power, more state control. Income tax, payroll tax, land tax, petrol tax, the goods and services tax, stamp duty, excise duty on alcohol and tobacco, 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 and many, many more. Local, state and federal governments taxing us at every turn.

And of course, that most pernicious of all taxes – inflation tax.

Pernicious because it so disproportionally affects those who spend a higher percentage of their income on food, petrol, electricity and gas, which are more susceptible to price rises.

Naturally, the government blames everyone else for the price rises – greedy business owners, supply chains, Vladimir Putin … anyone but themselves.

In the story of the forest that was continually shrinking, the trees kept voting for the axe. The axe, you see, was very clever: it was able to convince the trees that because its handle was made of wood, it was one of them.

It will be our job to present an alternative to these axe-wielding, ‘top-down’ power merchants.

Thank you for your support.

Breaking the Adoption Taboo

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

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

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

It seems the chief barriers to increasing the rate of adoptions in Australia are state and territory government child protection authorities. In South Australia, for example, the inquest into the death of toddler Chloe Valentine revealed the abject squalor of the environment the child was forced to endure – an environment that authorities were well aware of.

An anti-adoption culture appears to be ingrained in state and territory child protection authorities.

Jeremy Sammut, Deputy Opinion Editor at the Australian Financial Review and a former Senior Researcher at the Centre for Independent Studies, has written extensively on this issue.* He summarises the situation as follows:

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

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

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

It has been 50 years since the introduction of the single mother’s pension by the Whitlam Government. This policy helped end the practice of forced adoption, as the provision of taxpayer-funded income support gave women who became pregnant out of wedlock the option of keeping their children.

The unintended consequence, however, is that welfare for single mothers has led to the very social problems forced adoptions were designed to prevent – the inability of many single mothers to properly care for their children.

The right to welfare became a pathway to welfare dependency which has contributed significantly to the scale of the child protection crisis confronting Australia today.

In South Australia last month, a bill was introduced into the parliament requiring that women who choose to terminate a pregnancy after 28 weeks not euthanize the child and induce it stillborn, but induce it and deliver it alive.

After 28 weeks, with proper care, babies are viable outside the womb.

The bill did not prevent women from terminating their pregnancies, it only insisted that if a woman decided to terminate her pregnancy after 28 weeks, the baby must be born alive, not euthanized and be born dead.

Presumably, as the woman was planning to abort the child, giving the child to a loving couple to adopt would not be opposed. This would have given rise to a significant number of new adoptions.

The bill was defeated 10 votes to 9 in South Australia’s Upper House.

As a woman’s ‘right to choose’ a termination was not being compromised, why anyone would oppose saving the life of the child when it was going to be aborted anyway is beyond me.

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

Five years later, little has changed.

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

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

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

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

Black By-election

We still need a few more volunteers to assist for a couple of hours each day from Monday 11th November – Saturday 16th November.

If you live in Adelaide’s southern suburbs and are available to help, please send me a message here and click ‘Federal Director’.

Thank you.

*Dr Jeremy Sammut is the author of several research papers and the book, ‘The Madness of Australian Child Protection: Why Adoption will Rescue Australia’s Underclass Children’.

Back in the Black

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tractorIt’s been said that there are only two industries in the world – farming and mining. The rest are jobs.

Everything we use is the result of something being grown or something being mined.

Yet both are constantly maligned by the Left.

‘Australia is just a farm and a mine’, they snarl.

To which we should all respond, ‘Well, we happen to be very good at farming and mining’.

On these pages just a few months ago we celebrated the 50th anniversary of Western Mining’s discovery of the gold, silver, copper and uranium ore body at Olympic Dam in South Australia.

Olympic Dam became one of the State’s most successful projects (and biggest earners!)

At the time of Federation in 1901, South Australia 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 Liberal Premier Tom Playford, South Australia prospered.

A grower himself, Playford believed in farming and mining. He also believed in things which flowed from farming and mining. Unsurprisingly, he remained Premier of South Australia for nearly 30 years.

Playford was an advocate for ‘cheap land, cheap power, cheap water, and cheap labour’. Wages might have been 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 by enticing companies to set up in their states.

He was also not into bread and circuses and would never allow himself to be seduced by grifters.

Like former Labor Premier John Bannon, South Australia’s current Labor Premier Peter Malinauskas is likeable and sincere. He is also equally naïve.

John Bannon was infatuated with Tim Marcus Clark and his State Bank opportunists.

Bannon allowed the bank to invest billions of dollars of South Australian taxpayers’ money in schemes and projects he didn’t understand.

It was all a scam.

I predict the same will happen with the current Premier’s infatuation with so-called ‘green hydrogen’ and all things renewable.

These renewable energy merchants are, in my opinion, nothing more than corporate parasites who go around manipulating the political process in order to extract money from taxpayers and consumers.

They are a curse.

They rake in billions of dollars gaming the system, raising energy prices, impoverishing consumers, destroying jobs, and fleecing taxpayers.

Playford understood all this.

He also knew how unpredictable the world could be and was a great believer in being self-sufficient – at both a personal and at a State level.

In 1946, he established the Electricity Trust of South Australia (ETSA) and in 1960 built the Port Augusta power station. By 1970 South Australia was completely self-sufficient for electricity – 24 hours a day, 7 days a week – not reliant like we are today on interstate cables ‘for when the sun don’t shine and the wind don’t blow’!

He also oversaw the construction of the Port Stanvac oil refinery in South Australia which began refining crude oil in 1963!

Since then, almost all of SA’s manufacturing and self-sufficiency industries have been shut down and SA is no longer self-sufficient.

The car industry has gone, the Onkaparinga Woolen Mills have closed, so too Port Stanvac refinery, the Port Augusta power station and countless ASX (Australian Stock Exchange) Top 100 companies – Fauldings, Elders, Normandy Mining, Adsteam, Southcorp and of course, one of the world’s biggest companies, News Ltd – have all left town.

Strategic oil reserves, strategic food reserves, strategic water and power policies … who is talking about these things today?

Sir Tom would turn in his grave.

Speaking of no longer being in the black, SA is to have a by-election in the seat of Black following the resignation of former Liberal leader David Speirs.

During the Dunstan by-election earlier this year, the Australian Family Party supported the Liberal Party with its preference decisions due to David Speirs’ commitment to the values of family, faith and freedom.

In replacing Speirs, the Liberals have elected Vincent Tarzia who is also on the same page in these areas.

Matthew Abraham, who has been covering SA politics for a very long time says, ‘While Labor is well-placed to win Black, Tarzia as leader is focussed and no slacker.’

Abraham says Malinauskas, ‘Is still a vote magnet, but cost of living remains the main issue in Black. This should play in Tarzia’s favour.’

Jonathan-ParkinThe Australian Family Party’s candidate in Black is Jonathan Parkin (pictured). A former commercial airline pilot, Jonathan has lived in the electorate for most of his life. Married with two children, he has been involved in a number of community activities, including the Nipper program at the local Seacliff Surf Life Saving Club. More about Jonathan in coming weeks.

The by-election is on Saturday 16th November, with early voting from Monday 11th November – Friday 15th November.

At the general election in 2022, Black was a ‘3-way contest’ – Labor, Liberal and Greens – with the Greens’ candidate feeding preferences to Labor and no-one preferencing the Liberal Party.

Not this time.

If you would like to help influence the outcome of this by-election, please let us know here (choose Federal Director from the button list). We need volunteers on polling day, and at the early voting centres. If you can volunteer for an hour or two, that would be most helpful.

Also, the cost to run in a by-election – candidate registration, how-to-vote cards, etc., is around $1,500.

If you can make a small contribution to help cover these costs, again this would be greatly appreciated. Please click here.

Thank you for your support.