Australian Family Party

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Oppenheimer

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oppenheimerOn the 14th of August, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was interviewed by Neil Mitchell on Melbourne’s 3AW. Part of the interview went like this:

“Mr Albanese, if you were dictator, what’s the first thing you would do?”

“Ban social media”, he replied.

How telling.

That the Prime Minister would ban social media – our most popular means of communication – is brutally authoritarian.

It reminded me of a scene in the movie Oppenheimer in which nuclear scientist Robert Oppenheimer meets with President Harry Truman shortly after the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War 2.

Following his successful testing of the bomb, Oppenheimer was known to have uttered the words, “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds”, a quote from the Bhagavad Gita, a holy scripture from Hinduism.

After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Oppenheimer told Truman he felt he had “blood on his hands”.

Truman angrily responded with the words, “The blood is on my hands, not yours. It was me who dropped the bomb, not you”.

With that the meeting was over and Truman said he “never wanted to see that man again”.

There’s more than a little Oppenheimer in Albanese’s view of himself and the world around him. Here’s why I think that.

There’s an old Greek proverb, “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows only one thing.”

Albanese knows only one thing – politics. It’s all he’s ever done.

But as we know, the world isn’t made up of just one thing, it is made up of a whole range of competing factors and trade-offs that differ for different people of different ages who live in different places and have different priorities.

Like the ‘crystallised intelligence’ vs ‘fluid intelligence’ paradigm. Crystallised intelligence employs experience and wisdom and knows how the world works. Fluid intelligence knows how to study, learn facts and pass exams. Foxes vs hedgehogs. We’ve all met them.

Harry Truman, a Democrat (a bit like the Labor Party here in Australia), was a very good President. Before entering politics, Truman was a soldier and then a shopkeeper. A better understanding of how the world works you wouldn’t get than by owning a shop! Harry was quite the fox.

But the story is told of when Truman was elected President, his former army buddy and shopkeeper partner, Eddie Jacobson, said to him, “O Harry, now that you’re President, everyone’s going to start telling you what a great man you are, when you and I both know you ain’t”.

Anyone who gets to the top needs an Eddie Jacobson in their lives.

Being knowledgeable on one subject can narrow one’s focus, lead to over-confidence and dismiss dissenting views. This can lead to self-deception, even delusions of grandeur. The Voice perhaps?

The world is a very dangerous place, and it is impossible to predict what will happen next. There are countless variables and factors. Foxes understand this innately, hedgehogs not so much.

For this reason, we have to stop letting the hedgehogs run the show. Let them be advisers, by all means, but do not put them in charge.

They may be fine leading other hedgehogs in a particular field, but the world is not parliament house or a laboratory or a hospital or a courtroom or a classroom or a police station. We can’t let scientists or police commissioners or judges who do not have to answer to the people run the place. Being answerable to the people forces you to understand how the world really works and how to assess the many trade-offs – as the Prime Minister will soon find out.

On a more celebratory note, next month marks the three-year anniversary of the launch of the Australian Family Party – and almost one hundred Newsletters!

Inaugural letterbox flyer from 2020

Our membership is strong and the response to the Newsletters, all of which are listed on our website, has been phenomenal – especially The New Gulag, The MATS Plan Re-visited, Black Hawk Down, Two Stories, One Lesson and of course Remembering Andrew Evans.

But, like the story of ‘the turtle on the fence post’ (if you ever see a turtle sitting on top of a fence post, what is the one thing you know? – It didn’t get there by itself!), if anyone wants to get to the top of the fence post in any field – sport, the arts, business, and yes, politics – you’re not going to get there by yourself. You’re going to need a lot of help from a lot of people.

In our case, that includes other minor parties.

As I outlined in The Shrinking Forest earlier this year, alliances with like-minded parties are essential for success.

More news about that in coming months.

The New Gulag

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new-gulagIn his famous three-volume masterpiece, The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn described the frozen wastelands of Siberia where political prisoners and dissidents the Soviet state considered dangerous were held (for their speech, not their actions). A gulag was a Soviet prison; an archipelago is a string of islands; hence the term ‘gulag archipelago’ – a string of camps, prisons, transit centres, secret police, informers, spies and interrogators across Siberia.

Today, people are frozen out of society in more subtle ways. The authorities no longer bash down your door and haul you off to a gulag for espousing the ‘wrong views’; instead they silence you and freeze you out of existence in other ways.

No-one describes the current situation better than Scottish commentator Neil Oliver in his Essentials of Life video clip. More about that shortly.

Divide and conquer

As we know, the Left’s chief weapon is division. Unite the disaffected groups and those with grievances, and then ‘divide and conquer’ the rest of us. Divide along racial, generational, sexual, religious or economic lines. Any line will do.

What may have started as ‘the workers vs the bosses’ – ‘the proletariat vs the bourgeoisie’ – and ‘supporting the poor’, was just a ruse to gain power. Workers and the poor have long since been abandoned by the Left who now find other ways to divide and conquer.

In his excellent book, Democracy in a Divided Australia, Matthew Lesh writes:

‘Australia has a new political, cultural, and economic elite. The class divides of yesteryear have been replaced by new divisions between Inners and Outers. This divide is ripping apart our political parties, national debate, and social fabric.

Inners are highly educated inner-city progressive cosmopolitans who value change, diversity, and self-actualisation. Inners, despite being a minority, dominate politics on both sides, the bureaucracy, universities, civil society, corporates, and the media. They have created a society ruled by educated elites – that is, ruled by themselves.

Outers are the instinctive traditionalists who value stability, safety, and unity. Outers are politically, culturally, and economically marginalised in today’s graduate-dominated knowledge society era. Their voice is muzzled in public debate, driving disillusionment with the major parties, and record levels of frustration, disengagement, and pessimism.’

For over a hundred years, Australia fought to remove race from civic considerations. Yet now we are being asked to permanently divide the nation by entrenching an Indigenous Voice into our Constitution. By the ‘Inners’, of course.

In the workplace, politicians are still treating workplace behaviour like a game of football. Australia’s employers (‘the bosses’) are on one team, and Australia’s employees (‘the workers’) are on the other. The game is then overseen by a so-called ‘independent umpire’ called the Fair Work Commission. But of course, this is not how workplaces operate at all. The ‘game’, if you even want to call it that, is played not by two teams of employers and employees, but by hundreds, even thousands of different teams, competing against hundreds and thousands of other teams of employers and employees.

Mark Twain observed, “Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example”.

Here’s one – the infamous Dollar Sweets dispute where unions were picketing Fred Stauder’s confectionery business. Other confectionery businesses were approached to support Fred but were rebuffed saying, “Why should we care if Dollar Sweets goes down? It will mean more business for us.”  So much for ‘bosses vs workers’.

While paying lip service to free markets, property rights, personal responsibility, self-reliance, free speech, lower taxes, the rule of law, and smaller government, the Liberal Party in Australia has all but abandoned these ideals in practice. As has big business, which, truth be known, was never on the side of free markets. Corporations have always wanted markets they can dominate, and to eliminate the competition. If that means aligning with the Left or doing the government’s bidding, so be it.

Which includes – and here we return to our ‘new gulags’ theme – closing a person’s bank account, destroying them on social media or excluding them from employment. Business is right on board with this.

The Left will keep pushing its woke agenda until it is stopped. And it will not be stopped with facts, figures, logic, evidence or reason. It doesn’t care about any of that. It will only be stopped with political power.

Holding conferences, writing opinion pieces, producing podcasts and YouTube interviews in the hope of persuading people have, I’m afraid, had their day. The ‘Inners’ now rule.

Stopping the relentless march of the Left will require political power. Seats in parliament. Which means like-minded people and parties forming alliances and working strategically and tactically together to win seats.

In Neil Oliver’s video clip, he says, “When it comes to the state, that which it can do, it certainly will do” and “What can happen to anyone, will soon happen to everyone”.

So, if you belong to a think-tank, lobby group or centre-right political party, and want to stop the woke Left further ruining our country, then please encourage your organisation to place less emphasis on winning arguments and more emphasis on winning seats – as previously outlined here and here.

Beam Me Up, Scotty

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beam-me-upIt is two years since we launched our ‘Family, Faith & Freedom’ campaign invoking that iconic TV series Star Trek.

Since that time, each of these three foundational principles of Western Civilisation has been relentlessly attacked by three destructive and sinister campaigns – Climate, Race & Gender.

Let’s start with Family.

Have you noticed how many childcare centres have sprung up lately?

As former US President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) used to say, “In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.”

If one wanted to indoctrinate the next generation, then getting to the children as early as possible is the key.

Applying the FDR principle, the more children into childcare – or ‘early learning centres’ – the better.

But why so many?

Could it be due to the entirely manufactured housing affordability crisis – or to be more accurate, the entirely manufactured ‘land affordability’ crisis – forcing both parents out to work?

As we have pointed out here before, Australia does not have a ‘housing’ affordability problem, it has a ‘land’ affordability problem. As most people know, over the past 20 years, the cost of building a new house in Australia has roughly kept pace with inflation. Land prices, however, have skyrocketed. By deliberately restricting the amount of land available on the urban fringes of our cities, governments have sent the price of land and thus housing through the roof. It is now virtually impossible to buy a house and service a mortgage on one wage. Hence, both parents out to work and young children into childcare.

And what, dare we ask, are the children being taught in these ‘early learning centres’?

First, there is the international ‘Climate Action Childhood Network’ which states on its website, “We believe a paradigm shift in early childhood education can provide a path to deeper societal changes that are required”.

Then there are the ‘Acknowledgement of Country’ mantras which are taught to children.

And of course, the ‘Rainbow Agenda’.

‘Climate, Race and Gender’, the leitmotifs of the Left sweeping the Western world. The long march through all our state institutions indeed.

Again, an entirely manufactured ‘climate emergency’ is set to destroy our economy. The collapse of the energy grid as a result of the manic shift to so-called ‘renewables’ is all but inevitable.

And ‘Race’ will divide society. For over a hundred years, Australia has fought to remove race from civic considerations. Yet now we are on track to permanently divide the nation by entrenching an Indigenous Voice into our Constitution.

As former Labor Minister and Commissioner for Charities and Not-For-Profits, Gary Johns said recently, “Are Aboriginal people really that different that we need a treaty to talk to each other? Do people who are neighbours and workmates need a treaty to get on? The very thought of heading down such a road would divide Australians and destroy reconciliation”.

And ‘Gender’ will undermine the family, society’s most fundamental building block.

One of the world’s most prestigious universities, Johns Hopkins, has just redefined lesbianism as ‘a non-man being attracted to a non-man’, and Sydney’s Royal Hospital for Women is countenancing the transplanting of wombs into ‘women assigned male at birth’.

LGBTIQA+ literature, an anti-Christian mindset and events such as ‘Gay Pride Month’ also brook no dissent, inflicting immense pressure to participate. There is no ‘opting out’. “Why are you not celebrating with us? Are you homophobic? Or a bigot?” Intimidation is the weapon of choice.

Our ‘Family, Faith & Freedom’ post has stood the test of time. I encourage you to re-visit it.

I would also encourage you to watch this magnificent clip about freedom by Scottish commentator Neil Oliver. It is breathtaking in its truthfulness: Neil Oliver ­– the pursuit of happiness.

Thank you for your support, it is greatly appreciated. Without it we cannot continue our fight for Family, Faith & Freedom. Please support us here.

Remembering Andrew Evans

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Andrew-EvansAndrew Evans was elected to the South Australian Parliament’s Upper House (Legislative Council) in February 2002 with a primary vote of 4.0%. Not bad for a first-time candidate and a new party.

Before going into politics, Andrew had been the senior pastor at SA’s largest Pentecostal Church – Paradise Assemblies of God (AOG).

Andrew formed the Family First Party in 2001, and the party immediately became known for its Christian-based, social conservatism – particularly on issues such as abortion, euthanasia and the LGBT agenda.

At the 2006 State election, Family First added a second Upper House member (Dennis Hood).

In July 2008, shortly after his 73rd birthday, Andrew resigned his seat and former Liberal Party MP Robert Brokenshire was nominated by the party to replace him.

As it happened, also in July 2008, the Liberal Party was holding its controversial Mayo preselection contest following Alexander Downer’s sudden resignation from Federal parliament. I was a candidate in that preselection contest and resigned my 20+ years of Liberal Party membership as a result of that controversy.

The following day, Andrew rang me and invited me to join Family First and head up the party’s federal aspirations. I accepted and ran as the Family First candidate in the subsequent Mayo by-election gaining 11.4% of the primary vote. I was not elected as the Member for Mayo, which went to the Liberals’ Jamie Briggs.

Following the by-election, I became the party’s lead Senate candidate and was elected to the Federal Parliament in 2013 and again in 2016.

Andrew and I were able to unite the religious social conservatives and the free-market libertarians, an essential element in developing preference arrangements. As Andrew often said, ‘there’s no point having all these great ideas, if you can’t get yourself elected!’

On the social side, one of Andrew’s great political achievements was the removal of the statute of limitations for child sex abuse.

Before Andrew’s election in 2002, no person in South Australia could be prosecuted for a sexual offence if the offence had been committed before December 1982.

Andrew had this ban overturned.

The new laws operated retrospectively so that people who had committed certain sexual offences before December 1982 could be prosecuted.

As was said on the floor of the House at the time, ‘… in relation to the tolerance of such incidents, and the subsequent chain of events put in place by the Hon Andrew Evans, this will indeed be a significant lasting legacy of his contribution to this parliament’.

But the party wasn’t called ‘Family First’ for nothing. Andrew and I set about highlighting things that were important to establishing and maintaining healthy families. Our motto became ‘every family, a job and a house’. If every family had a job and owned a house, the benefits to the nation would be incalculable. Australia would be transformed. So why didn’t every family have a job and own their own home? In short, barriers to entry.

When it came to jobs and houses, Australia was not a free country.

For the low-skilled, or poorly educated, or socially disadvantaged, or for those who lack connections or self-confidence, the barriers to entry to getting a job are serious indeed.

As for barriers to home ownership, for more than a hundred years the average Australian family was able to buy its first home on one wage. The median house price was just three times the median income allowing young home buyers easy entry into the housing market.

As we know all too well, the median house price is now more than nine times annual income and home ownership is out of reach for most young families. Increasing supply through more broadacre land release became our mantra.

Then there’s the way the family is taxed. Family First strongly advocated income-splitting for single-income households and putting an end to price-gouging by state governments of water and power costs.

Andrew and I maintained our friendship right up to the end. We last spoke last year when he knew his time was limited. He was a friend and mentor. When it came to minor party politics and how to deal with a church-based membership, Andrew knew everyone and was able to get people to stand as candidates like no-one else before him.

Andrew passed away last Friday.

We have lost a great man.

It’s Time

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its-timeIn 1911, French physician and psychologist Édouard Claparède published his observations of a female amnesiac patient. The woman was suffering from a debilitating form of amnesia which left her incapable of forming new memories. She had suffered localized brain damage that preserved her basic mechanical and reasoning skills, along with most of her older memories, but beyond the duration of a few minutes, the recent past was lost to her.

Claparède’s patient would have seemed straight out of a slapstick farce had her condition not been so tragic. Each day the doctor would greet her and run through a series of introductions. If he then left for 15 minutes, she would forget who he was, and the same introductions would happen all over again.

One day, Claparède decided to vary the routine. He introduced himself to the woman as usual, but when he reached out to shake her hand for the first time, he concealed a pin in his palm.

It wasn’t friendly, but Claparède was on to something. When he arrived the next day, his patient greeted him with the usual blank welcome and with no memory of the previous day’s activities – until Claparède extended his hand. Without being able to explain why, the woman refused to shake his hand. She was incapable of forming new memories, yet she had nevertheless remembered something – a subconscious sense of danger, a remembrance of past trauma. She failed to recognize the face and the voice she’d encountered every day for months, but somehow, buried in her mind, she remembered a threat.

I’m indebted to Gerry from Rants, Raves, Reviews & Reflections for his excellent summary of Claparède’s famous experiment.

It’s been said that ‘Those who ignore history, are destined to repeat it.’

How then do we help people to remember?

Last week, we repeated the phrase, ‘Lest we forget’.

What pins can we plant into public discourse to ensure that we do not repeat the disasters of the past?

For example, in 1972, Labor leader Gough Whitlam was elected on the back of a great campaign song called It’s Time. Some of the lyrics went like this:

It’s time for freedom,
It’s time for moving, It’s time to begin,
Yes It’s time.

It’s time for children,
It’s time to show them, Time to look ahead,
Yes It’s time.

Time for better,
Come together, Time, Time, Time,
Yes It’s time.

It’s Time became the most memorable song and slogan in Australia’s political history. It did more than sell a political message, it captured a mood, a vibe.

As a 20-year-old public servant at the time, naturally I voted for it!

It didn’t take long however, for Whitlam’s real agenda to leap out of the song’s Trojan Horse.

Once elected, Whitlam made the not-so-modest statement, “There are moments in history when the whole fate and future of nations can be decided by a single decision. This is such a time.”

What followed was massive social and economic policy upheaval.

Unemployment, inflation and a total failure to manage the economy led to Labor suffering a massive defeat in 1975.

We voted Whitlam in on the ‘vibe’. When we realised what we’d done, however, we quickly voted him out again.

But imagine for a moment that Whitlam’s policies had been inserted into our Constitution and not just into legislation.

Whitlam was temporary. The Voice will be permanent.

The Whitlam disaster is our Claparède pin.

It’s Time …

…. to Vote No.

Keystone Kops

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Keystone-KopsA local police force was chasing a criminal who had fled into a large disused building. Their first thought was to surround the building, but they then realized that the building was so large and had so many doors and windows, they didn’t have enough police on the scene to cover all the exits. So instead, they surrounded the building next door which was smaller and had fewer exits.

Our nation is facing some serious economic problems – inflation, rising interest rates, high mortgages (forcing both parents out to work), high cost of living (educating and raising children, power prices, water prices) – and social ills caused by the rupturing of family relationships, addiction to alcohol, gambling, drugs and pornography, and suicide. Yet what does our government do? Like Keystone Kops, they surround other buildings – such as climate change, an indigenous voice, and distorting words and language. Denying one’s gender is now ‘gender-affirming’, free speech is now ‘hate speech’, abortion has become ‘reproductive health’, euthanasia or assisted suicide is now ‘dying with dignity’, and so on.

In the UK, they say everything is policed except crime. People are arrested for silently praying near an abortion clinic, while assaults and robberies go un-investigated.

How did it come to this?

In short, what we have now is a society and a culture that has banished God and the Bible and replaced it with a society which says, “We are now in charge. We will decide what is right and wrong. We will say what is good and bad.”

It goes right back to the beginning – “Eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and you will be like God.”

That is where Western culture is today.

Over the centuries, we’ve seen numerous tyrants, revolutionaries and despots take over whole societies. None more effective than Engels and Marx in the nineteenth century and Mao and Gramsci in the twentieth century with their ‘long march through all of society’s institutions’ – first and foremost being education and the indoctrination of the young. Then came the law, business, politics, health, the media, the military and finally, the church. Yes, the church.

It was once the case that the church sent its members into the world to convert the world to the church’s ways. What we’ve seen in recent times, however, is a reverse of that with the world sending its members into the church to convert the church to the world’s ways!

These corrupted institutions have shaped the culture. The culture then shapes politics, and politics shapes our laws.

It is world-wide and it is co-ordinated. It is a spiritual battle, and spiritual battles are fought with spiritual weapons.

In the famous story of David and Goliath, when David volunteered to fight Goliath, King Saul tried to put his armour on him, but David rejected it. You don’t fight spiritual battles with secular armour.

Like David compared to Goliath, we are also massively out-sized and out-numbered by our enemies.

But we are not to despair. God will choose who He wants to fight in this battle, and it will be those who put up their hand and say, “Here am I Lord, send me”.

Remembering Frederick Douglass

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Frederick-DouglassFrederick Douglass (1817–1895) is considered by many to be America’s greatest African American. Along with Booker T. Washington and Martin Luther King, these make up their top three.

Born into slavery, Douglass became a free man and rose through the ranks to eventually become the first African American to receive a vote for nomination for President of the United States. His final years were spent as Consul-General to the Republic of Haiti.

Following the American Civil War and the emancipation of America’s slaves, Douglass was asked, “What should be done for these (former) slaves?”

“Nothing!” he replied. “Leave us alone. By freeing us, you’ve done enough already.”

“If you leave us alone, we’ll work our way up. We will create pathways for others to follow.”

The value of getting one’s foot onto that first rung of the ladder cannot be overstated.

I mention this because a number of years ago an application was made to amend the Australian Fast Food Industry Award and dramatically increase the wages of junior employees.

It was unarguable that junior employees’ wages were very low at that time, but this had the significant benefit that many young people from lower socio-economic areas were able to get jobs and, to paraphrase Frederick Douglass, “work their way up”.

Appeals to reject the application fell on deaf ears and a substantial increase in the Award wage occurred.

This had the perverse effect that middle-class college students started applying for the jobs – and getting them. One franchise-owner said to me, “Why wouldn’t I employ the college kids? They’re smart, articulate, reliable, and their parents drop them off and pick them up in a BMW!

“The lower socio-economic kids may not have been as good, but hey, they were cheaper.”

No-one was sacked and replaced, but over time the poorer kids were replaced by the wealthier ones.

Let’s face it, some young people don’t have a lot going for them. They’re not well-connected, may come from dysfunctional families, may not have particularly high IQs, and may have other problems as well. The one thing they do have going for them, however, is their ability to compete with the more fortunate ones on price.

In short, they were prepared to work for less in order to get a start.

Not anymore. We have taken away from them that one last remaining labour market advantage they had over the rich kids.

This form of price-fixing is at the heart of labour market regulation. It’s called ‘centralised wage fixing’. It is putting the power to dictate to someone what they can and cannot work for – regardless of what they want – into the hands of people completely remote from the circumstances of those whose lives they are about to ruin.

When people, young people in particular, are excluded from full participation in community and working life, the social costs can be enormous – drug and alcohol abuse, crime, domestic violence, poor health, depression, frustration, boredom, bikie gang recruitment, civil disorder, teenage pregnancy, even suicide. This is what can happen when young people don’t have a job. They are locked out of the labour market at exactly the time they are biologically ready to enter into relationships, get married and start a family.

No-one is arguing against a welfare safety net, but we have to allow people to get a foot on that first rung of the ladder.

The current political battle is not between Left and Right, rich and poor. It’s between freedom and authoritarianism. It’s between those who, like Douglass, want to help people become self-reliant by removing barriers to entry to things such as jobs and housing, and those who see those without jobs and houses as political opportunities to get themselves elected. “It’s not your fault”, political opportunists say. “You are a victim. The system did this to you. That rich kid took your job. Those baby-boomer investors took your house. Vote for me and the government will look after you. I’ll remake that cruel and nasty free-market capitalist system.”

Not only is this economically stupid, it is morally reprehensible.

Thank you for your support.

Postscript: Last month we were advised of a cost increase in sending out our Newsletter. Can you help? Even in a small way? Every bit helps. If so, please go to our Support page here. Thank you so much.

 

 

The Shrinking Forest ­– Part 5

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thomas-sowell-shrinking-forest‘Eye on the Prize’

Noted US economist and philosopher Thomas Sowell once said, “It is difficult to imagine a more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions into the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.”

In our last post, we presented a solution to the nation’s current economic, social and political malaise.

We noted that facts and figures no longer mattered. That arithmetic, engineering, economics and, of course, common sense were now out the window. We also lamented that forums, podcasts and other intelligent conversations with world-leading authorities also no longer have any political effect.

But just when you think things couldn’t get any worse, along comes the nation’s Treasurer with a Whitlamesque plan to remake society and the economy using “Values-based capitalism involving public-private co-investment and collaboration and the renovation of key economic institutions and markets”.

“We will renovate the Reserve Bank and revitalise the Productivity Commission”, Treasurer Jim Chalmers said.

“It’s not just our economic institutions that need renewing and restructuring, but the way our markets allocate and arrange capital as well”, he added.

Mr Chalmers proposes to do this through the efforts of “business, labour and government”.

If that doesn’t send a chill up your spine, nothing will. As Thomas Sowell says, this is dangerous stuff.

Economist Dimitri Burshtein predicts the Treasurer’s version of values-based capitalism will leave the nation broke.

To stop this madness, the major parties’ hands need to be forced through the brutal reality of balance-of-power politics.

As discussed, at the last Federal election, the total centre-right (CR) vote would have been enough to get a senator elected in every state. That equates to 12 senators elected over the two-election Senate cycle.

Substantial political power could be achieved if the CR parties formed a single party bloc, namely a:

LIB-DEM ONE-NATION UNITED-AUST SF&F FAMILY PARTY Coalition

Note that I have since included the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party (SF&F) who, it must be acknowledged, did well in at least two states at the last Federal election.

Such an alliance would see One Nation and UAP each having 4 of the 12 seats in the parliament, Lib Dems 2, a Christian Family Party 1 and the Shooters, Fishers & Farmers Party 1.

Encouragingly, the Liberal Democrats have responded positively.

As discussed, having even one Senate seat gives a party a platform, a status, and a portal into the Federal Parliament for its members.

Working together, a twelve-seat Senate bloc would be a formidable political force.

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.

Like 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 the five political constituencies across all six States to hold together to save the nation from people like 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 is the day-to-day administration, compliance and member servicing. A modestly sized Secretariat would be able to manage this.

Thank you for your support.

The Shrinking Forest – Part 4

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shrinking-forest‘A Centre-Right National Strategy’

In The Shrinking Forest – Part 1, I outlined the problem, the cause of the problem and denounced the rent-seekers who cash-in on the problem. In Part 2, I emphasized the role of family, faith and free speech, and in Part 3, the connection between Christianity and liberty.

Part 4 is a solution.

The great author/philosopher Eric Hoffer once said, ‘Every great cause begins as a movement, then becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket’.

Feeding, clothing and educating children are some of the key necessities a family provides. But we don’t tax people in order to set up government supermarkets to feed our children or government clothing stores to clothe them. Walk into any supermarket and see the incredible range of food and other essential goods available. Same with clothing … and motor cars.

So why do we do it for other services – such as education?

It costs Australian taxpayers approximately $20,000 pa to educate a student in a government school and $12,000 pa to educate a student in a non-government school.

With around four million school students in Australia, that adds up to nearly $70 billion pa. A big investment.

Considering the cost differential, and the fact non-government schools consistently outperform government schools in overall student performance, why doesn’t the government do more to encourage parents to send their children to non-government schools? It would allow parents to choose what is best for their children and at the same time reinforce the primacy of parents in the education of their children.

The same would apply to housing, public transport and many other services. Quality and range would improve.

This goes to the heart of what centre-right (CR) parties generally agree on – the primacy of the individual and the family over the government. CR parties believe 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.

And while the Left has a global playbook to draw on – themes, tactics, language – the right does not.

Apart from a unique confluence of events and conservative leaders in the 1980s – Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Pope John Paul II – the conservative right is, globally, quite fragmented.

In Australia, the Left – Labor, Greens and Teals – are a lot more organised than the right.

We need to get our act together.

Now it’s one thing to identify a list of structural problems, fixing them is a different matter.

To counter this ever-increasing influence of the Left over public policy, a centre-right national strategy is sorely needed.

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, and left-of-centre minor parties and pseudo-independents, then they need to work more closely together.

At the last Federal election, the total 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, yet only two out of six were elected – Queensland (One Nation) and Victoria (UAP).

One can only imagine how frustrating it must be for Pauline Hanson, Malcolm Roberts and Ralph Babet watching the Federal Parliament destroy society and the economy before their very eyes.

Standing at polling booths alongside other like-minded, CR parties made me think back to the 2013 Federal election.

The Coalition went to the 2013 election promising to abolish the carbon tax, abolish the mining tax and stop the boats. Upon election, seven (CR) Senate crossbenchers voted in support of these three key election pledges giving the Government the numbers it needed (33 + 7) to get its legislation passed. More about those numbers (33 + 7) shortly.

Following this successful endeavour, I met with then Prime Minister Tony Abbott and put to him what I 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.’ 40–40–40.

It had been 40 years since a Liberal Government under Malcolm Fraser had a majority in the Senate and squandered the opportunity.

Enlisting the support of Senator David Leyonhjelm, I tried to convince the Prime Minister and Senate Leader Mathias Cormann – and anyone who would listen – that the best way to get the Coalition’s policies through the parliament was to have more senators like us.

Needless to say, my suggestion was not taken up.

In fact, the exact opposite happened. The Coalition teamed up with the Greens (who voted against abolishing the carbon tax, mining tax and stopping the boats) and changed the Senate voting laws to get rid of those senators who had just supported them! As a result, and as predicted by John Howard, 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 out there can explain why the Coalition would do that, I’d love to hear from them.

On the policy front, as it now stands, we are faced with the following reality:

  • Facts and figures no longer matter. The clearer the facts, the more they are ignored. Arithmetic, engineering, economics and, of course, common sense are out the window.
  • Forums, podcasts and other intelligent conversations with world-leading authorities also no longer have any political effect. Again, logic and reason no longer matter.

To stop further descent into economic and social chaos, substantial political power is required.

As discussed last week, I would argue it is not possible to ‘break through’ all this. We have to ‘break with’. Forget facts and figures, logic and reason, we have to force the major parties’ hands through the brutal reality of balance-of-power politics.

Substantial political power could be achieved if the CR parties formed a single party bloc, namely a:

 LIB-DEM ONE-NATION UNITED-AUST FAMILY PARTY Coalition.

As discussed above, at the last Federal election, the total CR vote would have been enough to get a senator elected in every state. That equates to 12 senators elected over the two-election Senate cycle.

Based on current levels of the primary vote, One Nation and UAP would each have 4 of the 12 seats in the parliament, Lib Dems 2, and 1 seat each for 2 other minor parties.

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

Working together, a twelve-seat Senate bloc would be a formidable political force.

The Shrinking Forest – Part 3

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shrinking-forest‘How Christianity Informs Classical Liberalism’

In my last two articles for Political Itch, The Shrinking Forest – Part 1 and The Shrinking Forest – Part 2 , I showed how George Orwell’s novel 1984 seems to be coming true, how the size of government grows ever larger and how rent-seekers are not only doing what they’ve always done but are getting much better at it. How this happens without sparking a popular uprising, I invoke the fable of ‘the shrinking forest’. I also explained why our fellow citizens are so disengaged from politics and what they can do to start the fightback.

In this part (Part 3) I’d like to discuss how we’ve reached this position – specifically how our opponents have attacked classical liberalism and libertarianism by first undermining Christianity. You may be sceptical of this. You make not even see a link. But history reveals all and lessons from the past illuminate what our opponents are doing today.

Western democracy was founded in Christianity and in the family. It’s why Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the co-authors of The Communist Manifesto, were determined to undermine both. Marx and Engels knew faith and family were the enemy. They did not like what families and people of faith talked about around the dinner table.

In his brilliant book, The Subversive Family, British writer Ferdinand Mount argued that marriage and the family, far from being oppressed by the ruling class, were in fact the chief bulwarks against authoritarianism. Family, faith and freedom are without doubt the best bulwarks against division and authoritarianism.

As for faith, removing Christians from the public square seems to be the unstated aim. ‘Net zero Christians by 2050’, quipped by Rebecca Weisser.

‘Every citizen is equal before the law.”

I would argue that the Christian is the model libertarian. Knowing that one day they will stand before their Creator and give an account of themselves, Christians aim to be the personification of personal responsibility. Endowed with a free will to choose right or wrong, Christians cannot blame anyone else for their actions. It follows therefore, that if God is going to hold people responsible for their actions, then God would give them the right to decide how they conduct their lives.

For example, taking away from someone the right to decide for themselves how much they are willing to work for, is to deny them a God-given right to work. People do things for their reasons, not yours, and people constantly make trade-offs depending on a range of factors known best only to themselves and their families.

It is also why the Bible tells us not once, but twice, “Do not favour the poor in court”. This is real justice, not ‘social justice’.

Favouring one group of citizens over another based on socio-economic or racial grounds is not only immoral, it also foolish. It always ends badly – especially for the favoured group.

Note, this is not to be confused with obligations we have towards each other in a personal capacity. ‘Who is my neighbour?’ Jesus was asked, in the famous ‘good Samaritan’ parable.

In this, the Christian has no difficulty with public policy – ie, ‘what is sinful vs what should be unlawful’. Sin is personal, the law is for everyone.

And then there’s family. There has been a relentless push to replace father and mother, male and female, with something else. A village perhaps? There was that leftist trope – ‘It takes a village to raise a child.’ As one wag responded, ‘Yes, and it takes a village idiot to believe that.’

More troubling is the breadth of the battleground.

Just look at the global coordination achieved by the Left with respect to Black Lives Matter, Roe v Wade, transgenderism, climate and Covid. Notice the activists all seem to read from the same script. It’s formulaic for sure and almost robotically applied globally regardless of where the original issue occurred.

The Covid response was near uniform globally and we are only now seeing the effects with little to no accountability. There were protests in Adelaide with pictures of George Floyd – a police excessive-use-of-force issue in faraway Minneapolis USA. The US Supreme Court then ruled that abortion should be a state matter and, out of nowhere, the rapid response pro-abortion rallies were rolled-out city by city in Australia, each jurisdiction of which had abortion laws already in place. Go figure.

Whatever you think of these issues, my point is that the global coordination is chilling.

There is no doubt Australia has economic and social problems that it is going to have to solve – inflation, rising interest rates, high mortgages (forcing both parents out to work), high cost of living (educating and raising children, power prices, water prices) – and social ills caused by the rupturing of family relationships due to mental health and addictions of various kinds.

Our nation also has economic and social goals it wants to achieve – increased productivity, affordable housing, lower crime rates. However, looking to politicians, bureaucrats and regulators to solve these problems and achieve these goals seems to be a lost cause.

As for free markets, property rights, personal responsibility, self-reliance, free speech, lower taxes, the rule of law, and smaller government, these have all but been abandoned.

Major party MPs seem more interested in making friends across the aisle than looking for ways ‘to improve the life of the ordinary citizen’ as described by Charles Taylor in his book, The Affirmation of the Ordinary Life.

Once elected, MPs are easily captured. They like being Members of Parliament and they like being liked – including by members of other parties. They also love socialising; they don’t want to be ostracised or booed on the ABC for making a stand or championing a cause. On issue after issue, they seem weak. They have lost both their philosophical bearings and religious convictions. Take away religious conviction and classical liberalism becomes less grounded. One flows from the other.

I would argue it is not possible to ‘break through’ all this. We have to ‘break with’. We have to force the major parties’ hands through the brutal reality of balance-of-power politics.

Next week I would like to flag a ground-breaking idea for change. Something practical. An innovation which I trust will bring hope and optimism.

Thank you for your support.

And please keep reading Political Itch ….!