Covid

Between Elections

01/09/2022 by Australian Family Party

As the late Texas politician Robert Strauss used to say, “You can fool some of the people all of the time – and they’re the ones you need to concentrate on”.

In politics, the golden rule is whatever result you see, that is what was intended.

Former Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson says, “We live in an age of astonishing disengagement by far too many good citizens in the life of our nation. I suspect that without compulsory voting we’d have up to half the electorate not bothering to vote at all.”

If we apply the golden rule to John Anderson’s observation, then citizens being disengaged from politics is exactly what is intended. Keep people in the dark. Do things that turn them off politics. Take parliament’s Question Time for example. Not only do our politicians behave appallingly, they take our money and our freedom and say they will act in our best interests. Instead, they act in their own interest and the interests of the rent-seeking cartels. No wonder people are disillusioned and disengaged.

This world is not a playground, it is a battleground. The troubling aspect, however, is the consistency of the forces on that battleground. Whether it’s Black Lives Matter, Roe v Wade (the US Supreme Court ruling on abortion), transgenderism, climate or Covid, the activists seem to all follow the same script – regardless of where they are in the world or how the issue affects them.

Most people are not into confrontation and opt out, leaving the world to be ‘ruled by those who show up’ as the old saying goes. The problem is that those who show up do not think like the ‘good citizens’ John Anderson has in mind.

The activists want everyone to be like them and embrace their views on everything from morality to marriage to matters of life and death – and everything in between. If you object, as US Bible teacher Chuck Swindoll puts it, “If you don’t shut up, we’ll shut you up”.

The world is polarised like never before. As we’ve said on our website previously, the (political) centre is disappearing. Public policy is becoming like a gym barbell with weights on each end and a long bar between them. People are either at one end of the political spectrum or the other.

Science was once similar to mathematics in that there was general agreement on the facts. Not anymore. ‘Follow the science’ is looking less like mathematics and more like economics, with one side of politics pushing its version of the science and the other side pushing theirs.

So, what is the answer?

As we have argued from the outset, ‘family, faith and freedom’ are the best bulwarks against division and authoritarianism. We must stand firm.

We need to be fierce advocates for the family as society’s key defender. Our Top 10 objectives are to STOP:

The ‘tax and control’ agenda – including opposing digital identity legislation.
Fearmongering – climate change is not a threat to life on earth and nor is Covid.
The money-making racket that is renewable energy.
The indoctrination of children through the education system.
The undermining of faith-based schools and organisations.
The mental health epidemic.
Addictions to alcohol, gambling, drugs and pornography.
The decline in home ownership and the associated rental nightmare.
Social media harming the young.
Bureaucrats running the country.

As the Greens have demonstrated over and over again, the way to get what you want is through political power. You get elected, you do deals to increase your Senate representation, and then when you have the balance of power – like they have now, you flex your muscles and get your way.

If you agree, please continue to support us – particularly between elections.

A basic $20 annual donation would cover our expenses. Please support us if you can here.

Thank you again.

The Three Russians

15/01/2022 by Australian Family Party

three-russians It’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 16^th 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

11/12/2021 by Australian Family Party

“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?