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Noughts and Crosses

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CrossFrançois-Marie Voltaire, the world’s most famous atheist, once proclaimed that although he didn’t believe in God, he employed devout Christians to be his accountant, his cook and his barber because, he said, ‘I don’t want to be robbed, poisoned or have my throat slit!’

Voltaire’s credo is a variation of the admission by another famous atheist, Richard Dawkins, who has taken of late to describe himself as a ‘cultural Christian’. He feels ‘at home’, he says, in the Christian ethos, going on to say that substituting Christianity with anything else ‘would be truly dreadful’.

Sometimes we need to remind ourselves of Christianity’s great contributions to the world.

Most of the world’s languages for example were put into writing by Christian missionaries.  More schools and universities were started by Christians than by any other group. Motivated by a sense of concern for others, Christians established hospitals, aged care organisations and welfare agencies.

The elevation of women was a Christian achievement, as was the abolition of slavery, cannibalism, child sacrifice and widow burning. Before Christianity came along, almost every civilisation and culture practised slavery or human sacrifice.

Countries which today enjoy the greatest civil liberties are generally those places where the Christian gospel has penetrated the most.

There is a Chinese proverb, “The tears of strangers are only water”. When there is famine or genocide in Africa, for example, Christianity says, “Those people are human like us, we need to help them”. Other cultures say, “Yes, it’s a problem but it’s not our problem”.

The ‘equality of human beings’ is a Christian idea which led to the abolition of slavery and international human rights. US Founding Father Thomas Jefferson said, “That all men are created equal is self-evident”. Most cultures throughout history however, reject this. ‘Inequality’ is what is self-evident they say – height, weight, strength, intelligence, truthfulness, talent etc. What Jefferson was referring to of course was ‘moral equality’. Each life is as valuable as any other.

Closer to home, the Reverend John Flynn founded the Flying Doctor Service and the Australian Inland Mission. His Presbyterian Ministers were known as ‘the boundary riders of the bush’ and were responsible for establishing communication through the inland pedal wireless.  Early colonial Governors Macquarie, Hunter and Brisbane were committed Christians. Governor Macquarie personally promoted the British and Foreign Bible Society and the Sunday School Movement. And Australia’s Constitution begins with the phrase, “…. humbly relying on the blessing of Almighty God ….”

Which brings me to a disturbing but symptomatic example of attempts to remove Christianity from the public square – in this case, quite literally.

For more than 30 years, a small church in the Adelaide Hills village of Houghton, has erected three crosses at Easter time. The crosses are simple but strong structures which have steel ‘cleats’ attached to them to enable the crosses to drop into pipe sleeves in the ground. After Easter, the crosses are removed, the pipe sleeves capped, and a small amount of dirt and grass placed over the caps awaiting re-discovery the following year.

Easter

For reasons known only to local government bureaucrats, but obscure to common sense, the local council this year saw fit to remove the crosses shortly after they were installed.

The improbable reasons given for removing the crosses were that the Council had been ‘inundated with complaints’, that ‘no permit had been issued’, and ‘there were public safety concerns’. As one resident put it, ‘Safety concerns? What were they concerned about? That they’d go out there one morning and find someone had been nailed to one of the crosses and they would get the blame?’

EasterNot only had the crosses been removed, but a ‘Parking Infringement Notice’ had been attached to one of them together with a card inviting the reader to contact the Council for further information. This I subsequently did, only to be threatened with ‘another fine’ if the church didn’t immediately repair the slight depression in the ground where the crosses once stood!

One is always loath to attribute to malice what can be better explained by over-zealous bureaucracy, hence a post on Facebook and subsequent local backlash over the Council’s actions did result in an immediate offer by the Council to reinstate the crosses.

Regrettably, the industrious Council inspector had not only removed the crosses, but for some inexplicable reason had also dug out the in-ground sleeves which made it a major task to re-assemble the display.

As for the alleged ‘inundation’ of complaints – none having ever been recorded over the previous 34 years – the Houghton Church and its local residents enjoy a relationship going back 150 years. A local calendar features the following description of Houghton Church:

‘In August 2025, the Houghton Uniting Church will celebrate the 150th Anniversary of the laying of its foundation stone. Throughout that time – including through two World Wars and other cataclysmic events – Houghton Church and its members have been a source of comfort and care when needed. It has also been an important connection point for community events including its annual Christmas Carols on the Green and Pancake Tuesday events, as well as being an active participant in Remembrance Day and Anzac 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.’

These Councils need to be reminded of the old saying, ‘Be careful what you wish for’.

Banning Christianity from the public square is one thing, but trying to ban it from the local village square takes it to a place where even angels fear to tread …!

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Grapes of Wrath

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grapes-of-wrath“Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword
His truth is marching on
Glory, glory, hallelujah …”

“John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave
John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave
John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave
But his soul goes marching on
Glory, glory, hallelujah …”

Many have noticed the similarity between the tunes of Julia Ward Howe’s epic ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’ and the well-known campfire ditty, ‘John Brown’s Body’, and would be forgiven for assuming that the ditty was based on the hymn.

It was, in fact, the other way around.

During the American Civil War, Julia Howe, a poet, heard Union troops singing ‘John Brown’s Body’ – named after the famous slave abolitionist, John Brown. A preacher who was with Howe at the time suggested she write new lyrics to the tune.

She agreed and took her inspiration for the new lyrics from the Book of Revelation, the last book of the Bible, “The angel swung his sickle on the earth, gathered its grapes and threw them into the great winepress of God’s wrath”. (Revelation 14:19)

As we try to make sense of what is happening in the world, it is only natural to be apprehensive about what lies ahead. Are we in the end times as prophesied in the Bible? Is World War III imminent? Are we approaching Armageddon?

We get anxious. We want to avoid trials and difficulties.

UK Bishop N.T. (Tom) Wright asks, “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 learn from birds and aeroplanes that headwinds lift us higher.

Our Catholic friends call it ‘the divine mystery of suffering’.

During personal trials, it is often our family and friends who are more distressed at what is happening to us than we are.

Such as when John the Baptist was in prison and the disciples went to see him. When he saw how distressed they were, and that being locked up in prison he was helpless to comfort them, he came up with an idea. He told them to go to Jesus and ask Him if He was the Messiah or should they look for another!

Some think that John the Baptist was having doubts, but I don’t think so. Remember, this is the same John who when he was still in his mother’s womb jumped when Jesus, also still in the womb, came into the room. It was John, who when he saw Jesus coming to be baptised said, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world”, and then witnessed the heavens opening and the spirit descend upon Jesus. It wasn’t John who was doubting, it was his supporters! But he knew that if they spent some time with Jesus, it would take away their doubts.

Hosea the prophet says the riches of life are found in the desert. With great trials come great blessings.

Elijah the prophet lived by a stream in the Kerith Ravine – until it dried up and he had to depend on God for his sustenance. His faith endured and prepared him for what was to come.

Life’s trials are sent to make us, not break us.

Jesus chose Peter to become the leader of his new church.

It was Peter who preached the first gospel message at Pentecost establishing the Christian church. Yet it was also Peter, who on the night before Jesus was crucified, denied three times that he even knew Jesus.

Jesus did not choose the disciple closest to him – John the Divine – who wrote both the magnificent Gospel according to John and the Book of Revelation.

Nor did he choose the brilliant intellectual and academic, Paul, who wrote most of New Testament theology.

No, to head up the church, he chose Peter, the one who had failed him.

The Old Testament’s Saul became King of Israel without going through suffering. His character never developed, and he became an envious, shallow man.

David, on the other hand, spent years in suffering and heartache. When he finally became King, God said David was ‘a man after my own heart’.

We should not resent or despise failure or suffering. They develop character like no other.

It is the grit that forms the pearl.

Suffering, difficulties, trials are the grit that leads to the pearl.

Our lives will be an inspiration to those who watch us face the trials that come our way.

What we lose in the flames, we find in the ashes.

Thank you for your support.

Carpet Call: The Imperfect Gift of Religious Freedom

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arabian-carpetJohn Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols) is a clever guy.

As Robert McCall (aka Denzil Washington) says to Miles, a troubled teenager, in the movie Equalizer 2, ‘It takes talent to make money, Miles, but it takes brains to keep it’. Regardless of one’s taste in music, there’s no doubting John Lydon had talent – and brains.

‘Imperfection is at the heart of life’, Lydon once said. ‘Imperfection is the greatest gift of all.’

‘Arabic rug makers will make their work perfect except for one tiny stitch, because nothing is perfect in the eyes of God. Only God is perfect. I think that is magnificently intelligent’.

Before the 2022 federal election, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese promised to overhaul religious protection laws in Australia.

Under existing law, faith-based organisations are able discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity when hiring teachers or workers via an exemption from anti-discrimination laws.

The Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) now says that exemption should be scrapped entirely.

No legislation has yet been introduced.

Not content to wait for the Federal Government to act, activists have shifted to the old ‘State by State’ stalking horse approach – find the most amenable State, introduce the law there and then get other States to adopt it one by one. Once a few States have adopted the new law, the Federal Government is then pressured into doing the same. It’s a tried-and-tested model of creeping change.

Former SA Greens Senator and now Greens SA Upper House member Robert Simms is proposing to introduce legislation into the SA Parliament next month which would remove all exemptions from anti-discrimination laws.

There are some things people will not be dictated to or lectured about. One of those is their faith or their morals – particularly what they teach their children. They will certainly not be brow-beaten or cowed into submission by being called bigots or homophobes.

The Left talks about equality and tolerance but this religious freedom debate is not about either of those. It’s about discrimination against religious people. The Left may call for tolerance but what they really want is for everyone to agree with and endorse – even celebrate – their view of the world. They are not interested in debate or argument; they simply want the legislative power of the state to force everyone to comply.

If being free means anything, it means citizens having the right to ensure that the religious and moral education of their children conforms with their own convictions – as outlined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Australia is a signatory.

It means having freedom of conscience and the freedom to believe and practice the core tenets and values of a person’s faith. It is the state’s role to protect those rights.

There’s no doubt that the Left is out to undermine our freedoms. They’re coming for our churches, our schools, our faith-based organisations, our farms, our mines, our cars and, most of all, our children. They’re also coming for our old people with their euthanasia packs, for our about-to-be-born babies with their grotesque abortion laws, and they’re coming to indoctrinate our primary school children. They’re also coming for Christmas Day and Australia Day and Anzac Day and Remembrance Day. These people mean business.

People and faith-based organisations – schools, hospitals, aged care providers and charities – should not have to rely on exemptions from anti-discrimination laws to function in accordance with their faith.

They should, by right, have the freedom to select people as they see fit.

Political parties grant that right to themselves because they rightly believe that the political allegiance of a job applicant matters.

In environmental groups, views about climate change are relevant; in women’s shelters, gender is very important.

Saying you can only become a member of a chess club if you play chess is not discriminating against people who don’t play chess!

In ethnic clubs and institutions, ethnicity is sensible and practical.

We accept all these differences.

And in faith-based organisations, faith matters.

Forcing faith-based schools to become indistinguishable from secular schools with respect to staffing is irrational. After all, no-one is forced to work for a faith-based organisation or send their children to a faith-based school where all the staff follow that particular faith.

Expressions of faith by a person or faith-based organisations must be declared lawful.

Statutory exemptions are totally inadequate.

Exemptions granted can just as easily be withdrawn – as is now being proposed.

The right to religious freedom must be treated as a pre-eminent right and be recognised and protected. Human Rights Commissions should have no role to play.

A Commonwealth law, by reference to its Objects clauses, must recognise religious freedom as pre-eminent and override all state and territory anti-discrimination laws.

To paraphrase John Lydon, while such a law may be imperfect, it would be a magnificent gift.

Thank you for your support.

Mind Your Language

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languageWhat you call something is very important.

Everyone knows that a suit is comprised of a jacket and a pair of pants. Two jackets are not a suit. Neither can two pairs of pants be called a suit.

This was an argument I often made during the marriage debate. Marriage, I argued, was the joining of a man and woman in a special relationship.

If two men or two women wished to be joined together, then they can call it something else, but not marriage; not a suit.

This idea of insisting that words reflect their true meaning, and that things be called what they are, is not a new idea.

As long ago as 500BC, Chinese philosopher Confucius said, ‘If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success.’

Modern-day politics has become largely about controlling the language.

As US preacher Chuck Swindoll says, ‘they adopt our vocabulary but not our dictionary.’

Farmers used to drain water-logged swamp areas of their land, and no-one batted an eye.

Then swamps were renamed ‘wetlands’, and now can’t be touched.

We’ve re-named euthanasia ‘dying with dignity’; abortion is now referred to as ‘reproductive health’ or ‘planned parenthood’ or simply ‘pro-choice’.

Free speech is branded hate speech, local aboriginal tribes have become ‘First Nations’, power cuts are now called ‘load shedding’, tax increases are re-badged as ‘budget savings’ and denying one’s gender has become gender affirming.

A person on 50 per cent of the median wage is officially on the ‘poverty line’.

‘Safe schools’ and ‘respectful relationships’ are anything but – as evidenced by lessons in bestiality presented to 14-year-old schoolgirls in South Australia.

The Good Book says, ‘Woe to those who say that evil is good and good is evil, that dark is light and light is dark, that bitter is sweet and sweet is bitter.’ – Isaiah 5:20.

Then there are the perpetual ‘straw man’ arguments – mispresenting an opponent’s position in order to quickly and easily destroy their arguments.

‘Trickle-down economics’ is a straw man argument. There is no such theory in economics. But opponents of free-market economics invented the term ‘trickle-down’ to suggest free-markets are all about favouring the rich and hoping some of their wealth will ‘trickle down’ to those lower on the socio-economic ladder.

Then there’s the ubiquitous use of the term ‘flat-earthers’ when no-one, anywhere throughout history, thought the world was flat. Not the Egyptians, not the Phoenicians, not the ancient Greeks; no-one thought the earth was flat. They weren’t silly. By standing on high ground and watching their tall ships sail over the horizon, they knew that the earth was round, they just didn’t know how big it was. Christopher Columbus left Spain and headed west for India, not to prove the world was round, but to determine its size.

Or take the phrase Terra Nullius – a term used to manipulate debate on indigenous matters.

‘Australia was founded on the basis of Terra Nullius,’ is one of those myths that survives by repetition, not historical fact.

Terra Nullius is a Latin term meaning ‘land belonging to no-one’.

Yet no-one ever said Australia was not occupied.

The term ‘terra nullius’ was not mentioned anywhere in Australia until 1977!

Regarding exploration and occupation, the book 18th Century Principles of International Law stated that, ‘All territory not in the possession of states who are members of the family of nations and subjects of International Law must be considered as technically res nullius and therefore open to occupation’. ‘Res nullius’ – land not owned by a recognised nation, is not the same as ‘terra nullius’ – land not occupied by anyone – for example, Antarctica.

And on a similar vein, that Aborigines didn’t get the vote, or were treated as ‘flora and fauna’, until 1967.

All false. All examples of the mutilation of language to influence and deceive.

US author Michael Malice writes, ‘they’re not using language to communicate, they’re using it to manipulate’.

Thank you for your support.