Family Policy

The Unmasking of Australia

11/12/2021 by Australian Family Party

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

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

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

Has Covid unmasked Australia?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is needed today as much as it was then.

We are being tested. Will we be found wanting?

‘Beware of Beginnings …’

27/11/2021 by Australian Family Party

pharoah-moses-beginnings In his brilliant new book, ‘The Magna Carta of Humanity’, Os Guinness writes, “The great paradox of freedom is that the greatest enemy of freedom is freedom itself. Freedom cannot keep itself alive. It requires responsibility, which can be burdensome. People become complacent, self-satisfied, self-congratulatory. It is the beginning of the end.”

Freedom is a two-edged sword. People need to be free – “… life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness …” and all that jazz – but as Winston Churchill said, “Freedom also gives the enemies of democracy the freedom to undermine it”.

The Late Rabbi Sacks wrote:

“Those who are naïve about human nature find themselves disappointed again and again.

“Revolutions, protests and civil wars still take place because people think that removing a tyrant or having a democratic election will end corruption, create freedom and lead to justice and the rule of law – and still people are surprised and disappointed when it does not happen. All that happens is a change of faces in the corridors of power.”

After the French Revolution, Napoleon was more dictatorial than Louis XVI. After the Russian Revolution, Stalin was far more brutal than the Czar, and after the Cultural Revolution, Chairman Mao was more autocratic and murderous than any of the Emperors of the Chinese dynasties.

Each of these tyrants – Napoleon, Stalin and Mao – as well as fomenting anti-sovereign hatred – held a deep hostility towards God:

“We will never be free until we strangle the last king with the guts of the last priest.” – Diderot.

What the people who supported these tyrants naïvely overlooked was the inability of human beings to prevent the abuse of power and position once it has been attained.

Even democratically governments, acting ‘on behalf of the majority’, do not have the right to do whatever they want to a minority or to an individual. The ‘majority rules’ principle cannot be used to create a society of 1^st and 2^nd class citizens. Society cannot function like that.

Take the case of the vaccinated vs the unvaccinated. Even though they might be a majority, the vaccinated need to understand that the unvaccinated will not allow themselves to be bullied or oppressed. It is a mistake made by majorities and dictators since the days of Pharoah and Moses. If you oppress minorities beyond a certain point – and we are getting very close to that point – they will retaliate. And history shows that even though they may be outnumbered, the minority usually wins.

If they haven’t studied history themselves, one would hope our parliamentarians have employed enough graduates from places like the ‘Institute for Public Policy and Governance’ to advise them of these things.

But the real threat to our country is not the virus or the vaccinated or the unvaccinated, it is the authoritarian takeover of every aspect of our lives by those in power. We are witnessing the beginning of a new authoritarian bureaucracy. And we know where that leads – a surveillance state.

“Know everything in order to control everyone.” – Adam Weishaupt (1786)

If the vaccine is all it is cracked up to be, those who are vaccinated have nothing to fear from those who are not vaccinated. Excluding the unvaccinated from every aspect of life from air travel to employment to sporting events, will not end well.

For a start, thousands of people have valid medical reasons why they can’t have the vaccine. Many of them have medical certificates signed by their doctors and yet are still being excluded.

The Australian Constitution (Part 5, Section 51 Clause 23A) expressly forbids any form of ‘civil conscription’ with respect to “the provision of … pharmaceutical and medical services”. In other words, no compulsory vaccinations!

Constitutions are written expressly to contain the limits of government power in order to protect the rights of minorities and individuals.

We need to be very careful over these next few months.

As my late father used to say, “Beware of beginnings …”

Family Resilience

20/11/2021 by Australian Family Party

pagliacci-family A man visited a doctor saying he was deeply depressed. Confiding in the doctor, the man said he felt all alone in a threatening world and that life was just too hard. What’s more, he said he was very uncertain about what lay ahead for himself and his family.

The doctor responded with a suggestion: “The great clown Pagliacci is in town tonight. Take your family to see his show, it will cheer you up no end.”

The man burst into tears. “Doctor, I am Pagliacci.”

Mental illness costs the Australian economy $180bn a year. More than 3,000 Australians take their lives each year. More young men take their own lives than are killed in road accidents. Boys raised in father-absent environments are five times more likely to commit suicide, ten times more likely to abuse drugs, fourteen times more likely to commit rape, and twenty times more likely to end up in a correctional facility. Fatherless households are a dreadful problem.

As are divorce, domestic violence, loneliness and addiction to alcohol, gambling, drugs and pornography.

Suicide rates have increased. Rates of depression have sky-rocketed. Drug overdoses, the ICE scourge, something is very wrong.

There is a strong link between the health of the family and crime. It begins in the home.

Pagliacci is a fictional story based on an Italian opera. But its message of people suffering in silence is potent.

But there is hope. The family.

Family has what is called ‘agency’. It can do things.

Family provides meaning, belonging and security. Strong family relationships reduce depression and anxiety disorders, strengthen the immune system and speed recovery from surgery.

We all know there is no model or perfect family. Every family is flawed because it is made up of flawed human beings. But the family is the place to cultivate the right way to view life and the world around us. These are indeed difficult times but we’ve known hardships before. They are the ‘snakes and ladders’ of life and these too will pass.

Social ills caused by the rupturing of family relationships – divorce, de-facto relationships, fatherless households, single mothers bringing up children, high housing costs – lead to a breakdown in society. Family breakdown is costly.

The Australian Family Party believes the family should be the State’s top priority. The Australian Family Party believes it is time to strengthen the family. It is time to protect the family, to fight for the family, your family is the one thing you’d take a bullet for.

If you are interested in becoming an Australian Family Party candidate at the next State election – or would like to support a candidate in the election – please let me know here.

Calling all Candidates – Election ’22!

15/11/2021 by Australian Family Party

south-australia-parliament It wasn’t without its challenges, but on Friday we received notification of the Party’s official registration in South Australia. Thank you to all those who helped with this endeavour.

With no time to lose, our next focus is the upcoming South Australian state election due on 19 March.

Australia needs strong, stable and resilient families like never before, and we need voices in our parliaments – both State and Federal – that will stand against those forces which are eroding family life.

“Always looking for good people”

We are seeking to field as many candidates as possible to represent the Party in South Australia’s 47 Member House of Assembly, plus 2 candidates for the State’s Legislative Council.

The 47 members who make up the House of Assembly (‘the Lower House’) represent the 47 electorates across the state. Each electorate has approximately 22,000 voters who live in approximately 15,000 dwellings – an average of 1.5 people per household.

The 22 members of the Legislative Council (‘the Upper House’) do not have separate electorates but cover the whole state. Each Member is, in effect, a whole-of-state representative.

Being a candidate in an election is not difficult. In fact, it is a great experience.

Candidates are asked to oversee their chosen electorate during an election campaign. This involves co-ordinating volunteers to look after polling places (between 10–20 in each electorate) – essentially enlisting family and friends to hand out how-to-vote cards on election day.

If you are interested in becoming a candidate, please contact us here.

Then there’s the financial side of things.

First, the Electoral Commission charges $1,000 to nominate as a candidate. Second, pre-election flyers cost around $500 per electorate and distribution of those flyers a further $1,000. Third, how-to-vote cards cost another $500. All up, a total of $3,000 per electorate is needed to fund a local electorate campaign.

If you would like to support us in this extremely important election – the events of recent months in the parliament cannot be forgotten – but are not able to stand for election yourself, perhaps you would consider sponsoring a young person who might be considering a political future? We have younger members who have the energy and conviction but do not as yet have the financial resources to fund their own election. We firmly believe that if we do not nurture and mentor our younger members, we’ll be stuck with a parliament of no-conviction careerists forever!

In a major analysis of voting trends, the Australian newspaper last month reported, “Support for minor parties and independents has reached its highest level in at least four years.”

The time is right.

There is so much that can be done both in social policy – as events of recent months will attest – and financially, to reduce the pressure on families including income splitting for taxation purposes, subsidies for grandparents who look after grandchildren, putting an end to price-gouging by state governments of water and power costs, and much more.

As we prepare for the upcoming elections, we urgently need resources to fight the good fight. Please add your voice to those seeking to stand up for family values by assisting in this shared work. You can contact us here and/or donate here.