• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Home
  • About
  • Policies
  • Events
  • Publications
  • Contact
  • Support
  • Join

Australian Family Party

Family Matters

  • Family Resilience
  • Family Economics
  • Family Technology
  • Free to Speak
  • Free to Believe
  • Free to Work

Senate Election 2022

Black Hawk Down!

13/05/2022 by Australian Family Party

black-hawk-downThere’s a scene in the movie ‘Black Hawk Down’ where the sergeant yells to one of his soldiers, ‘Get in the truck and drive!’ ‘But I’ve been shot’, the soldier replies. ‘We’ve all been shot, now get in and drive’.

I couldn’t sit by and watch both Labor and Liberal Governments introduce their anti-family, anti-Christian, anti-business policies and not try to do something about it. I couldn’t say, sorry, can’t help you, I’ve been shot. I had to get back in the truck and drive.

Bad things happen to everyone. Some have been shot by cancer, others by the loss of a child, or by a relationship breakdown, or by an addiction, or a moral failure, or being accused – or even worse convicted – of a crime they didn’t commit. I’m no different, except for me it was very public.

In my case it was a business failure. I wasn’t as smart as I thought I was. I’d bitten off more than I could chew and paid the price.

But you can’t let your past mistakes define you. You have to get back in the truck and drive.

I’ve called my election campaign, ‘Unfinished Business’.

Australia has economic and social problems that it wants 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, addiction to alcohol, gambling, drugs and pornography, and suicide.

And it has social and economic goals it wants to achieve – full employment, affordable housing, low crime rates. Looking to politicians, bureaucrats and regulators to solve these problems and achieve these goals is, however, a lost cause. The world is changing so profoundly – in social attitudes, world economics, and especially technology – that politicians and bureaucrats are hopelessly ill-equipped to manage it. They are simply outdated and outgunned.

The major parties and their apparatchiks live in a world that is foreign to ordinary people.  Simply put, they do not know enough to make the correct decisions. Those at the ‘top’ know less than those at the ‘bottom’.

Over the past decade – before Covid-19 hit – the economy was quite healthy and yet government debt still increased every year under both Labor and the Liberals.

Over the next few years, Commonwealth debt is forecast to exceed a trillion dollars – that’s 1,000 billion dollars. It is not going to end well. The old adage, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch”, hasn’t been around for 100 years for nothing.

We are heading for very tough times thanks to irresponsible fiscal (spending) and monetary (interest rates) policies. You simply can’t spend hundreds of billions of dollars like we have and expect no repercussions.

Someone is going to have to pay for it. And that someone is the next generation. The English rock band The Who – Pete Townshend on guitar, Roger Daltrey on vocals, John Entwistle on bass, & Keith Moon on drugs – got it right when they said of the older generation, “…things they do look awful cold …. (hope I die before I get old!)”

Someone has to go into bat for them and the family.

The Australian Family Party is based on six key principles: Family Resilience, Family Economics, Family Technology, Free to Speak, Free to Believe and Free to Work.

Basically, the family has been dudded. It’s time to push back in the form of:

  1. Recognition – shifting the centre of gravity from the political class to the family.
  2. Encouraging family formation – getting married and starting a family.
  3. Home ownership – addressing land supply for new housing.
  4. Cost of living – introducing income-sharing and stopping price-gouging – power prices in particular.
  5. Free to work – your rights at work need to become your rights to work.
  6. Free to speak and free to believe.
  7. Technology – addressing the indisputable links between social media and mental health.

Society relies on three levels of protection against harm. Level one is a person’s own conscience; level two is the family to keep its members in check; and level three is the police. Nurturing the conscience starts in infancy. Here, childhood connection is vital. There needs to be more incentive for parents to look after their own children and less emphasis on government-subsidized childcare.

For a free society to prosper, people have to be able to control themselves. Teaching self-control starts with the family. The family cultivates within a child the right way to view life and the world around us.

A renaissance is needed, one that puts the family at the centre of society. Every decision by government should be measured against how it affects the family.

The State has a duty to the family. Society has a duty to the family. And what the State and society owe the family is not food or housing or education or health care, what the family is owed first and foremost is ‘recognition’.

We can serve Australia best by putting the family first. Click here to see our how-to-vote card.


Authorised by Bob Day, 17 Beulah Road, Norwood SA 5067

Filed Under: Australian Character, Australian Politics, Election '22, Family Policy, Family Resilience, Freedom, Senate Election 2022, South Australia

Sitting Ducks: News from the Campaign Trail

06/05/2022 by Australian Family Party

campaign-siiting-ducksA political candidate was asked where he stood on the issue of duck shooting.

“I have friends who are duck shooters”, the aspiring politician answered, “and I have friends who oppose duck shooting. And I always stand by my friends”.

They say if you can’t ride two horses at the same time, you don’t belong in the circus.

The campaign trail can be a hazardous place for candidates. Sometimes all it takes is one slip-up and your election prospects are finished. The circus tent collapses on top of you.

Fortunately, no such calamity has befallen us yet. But then again, there’s still a fortnight to go! As a wise sage once observed, “Politics is like swimming in a dirty river. Just don’t swallow any of the muck”.

Putting up campaign posters all over the state was always going to be a big challenge. That was until our party faithfuls stepped forward – Nicole Hussey (Yorke Peninsula, Mid North and Eyre Peninsula), Lionel Zschech and Peter Ieraci (Murray Bridge to Mt Gambier), Tim Vivian (Riverland), Tony Kew (Barossa), Dieter Fischer (Elizabeth & Gawler), Alex Banks and Joe Tripodi (Golden Grove & Salisbury), Adrian Redman, Matt Barnes, Peter Heidenreich and Pat Amadio (suburban Adelaide) and I covered the Adelaide Hills. Mission Accomplished.

Our next challenge is early voting. Record numbers of voters are expected to turn up at early voting centres at this election. We desperately need volunteers to attend these early voting centres. There are usually between 1 – 3 early voting centres per electorate, so if you are available to hand out that all-important how-to-vote card at a centre near you, please contact us here as soon as possible. Thank you.

Then there are the candidate forums, radio interviews and endless questions about preferencing. Preference arrangements are another hazardous business.

Preference recommendations are often not, as a lot of people might think, a descending order of like-mindedness. Rather, they are a calculated trade-off between reciprocity – you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours – and the likelihood that your preferences might assist someone else to be elected – compared to the alternatives. If a candidate has no chance at all of being elected – for example, a minor party candidate in a safe (major party) Lower House seat – there is no point preferencing that candidate just because their policies are similar to yours. Preference arrangements are not the place to signal virtue. They are the place to help you get elected. It goes without saying that you can help your constituency a lot more if you are elected than if you’re not!

To be clear, how-to-vote cards are recommendations only. Once in the polling booth, voters can preference candidates in any order they wish, however we recommend voters number the candidates in a certain way to help us get elected.

Candidate forums can also be tricky – especially during Q & A. You’re up on the stage like the proverbial sitting duck. For audience members who have been crusading on a particular issue for 20 years, this is their opportunity. They want a ‘Yes or No’ answer from you as to whether you will support a Royal Commission into their cause. Often the cause does have merit, but ‘Yes or No’ answers can be a trap for young players. Forums are also time-consuming. Questioners who forget for a moment (or ten minutes) that they have the microphone in their hand to ask a question, sometimes give political speeches. This is where a good forum MC is the candidates’ best friend.

All in all, the campaign is going very well. We’re right where we need to be at this point. We have also introduced a new digital marketing arm to the campaign and included a new video series. If you could please follow us on Facebook and share our posts with your family and friends that would be really helpful. Thank you.

One final matter, we have a $5,000 bill to pay for our how-to-vote cards. Can you help? If so, please go to our Support page here.


Authorised by Bob Day, 17 Beulah Road, Norwood SA 5067

Filed Under: Australian Character, Australian Politics, Election '22, Family Policy, Family Resilience, Freedom, Senate Election 2022, South Australia

E is for …

29/04/2022 by Australian Family Party

heh-senate-electionAt the recent State election we drew box J, the 10th letter of the alphabet. Readers may recall the reference to the 10th letter of the Hebrew alphabet ‘Yud’ in a recent State election post. The Yud was an important letter in Hebrew, we said, because first and foremost, it was the first letter of the name of God, YHWH: Yud – Heh – Vav – Heh.

Well, wouldn’t you know it, for the Federal election we’ve drawn the letter E, the 5th letter of the alphabet, which in Hebrew is Heh. Heh is the second letter of the name of God.

Seems we’re spelling out God’s name here – just two more elections to go …

Not only does the letter Heh appear twice in God’s name, in Hebrew writings ‘H is used as an abbreviation for YHWH, and when God declares, ‘I am here!’, He uses the phrase ‘Heh-neh!’

Heh is also called the ‘timeless letter’, as the Hebrew words for past, present and future are all connected to the letter Heh.

Like the number 10 in our State election post, the number 5 is also very significant in Scripture. Again, from the first chapter of Genesis in which God creates light, He mentions the word ‘light’ five times. This is believed to be connected to the light revealed in the five books of Moses – the Torah (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy), the five characteristics of mankind (physical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual, consciousness) and our hands containing five fingers which represent our physical connection to work and the world. We note also that the Hebrew word for work and worship are the same – Avodah. It’s why we say denying a person the right to work is like denying them to right to worship. ‘He who builds a factory, builds a temple’, Calvin Coolidge famously declared, ‘He who works there, worships there’.

This all accords perfectly with our Family, Faith and Freedom policies of ‘Family Resilience, Family Economics and Family Technology’ and ‘Free to Speak, Free to Believe and Free to Work’.

At this election, every voter will be asked to cast two ballots – one on a small green ballot paper for the House of Representatives – your local MP – and the other on a very large white ballot paper for the Senate – representing the State.

The House of Representatives ballot paper is quite straightforward – simply number the candidates (usually between five and ten of them) in your order of preference.

The Senate ballot paper, however, is not so straightforward.

For a start, it is a metre long and contains 22 registered political parties or groups above the black line and over 50 individual candidates below the line.

You can choose whether to vote above or below the line, but not both. Voters must number a minimum of six boxes if they choose to vote above the line, or a minimum of twelve boxes if they choose to vote below the line.

As discussed above, we have drawn box E on the Senate ballot paper. E for Employment, E for the Economy, E for Education, E for Excellence, E for Endurance, E for Eternity, E for Elvis, E for Elijah and of course, E for Esther for such a time as this.

We are recommending to voters that they vote above the line and follow our how-to-vote card by placing a 1 in box E, then a 2 in box J for Australian Federation Party, and then a 3 in box S for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, 4 in box A for Liberal Democrats, 5 in box G for National Party and 6 in box U for United Australia Party.

Click here to view or download our how-to-vote card.

All we need now are a few more V for volunteers to do some letterboxing and hand out the how-to-vote cards and, of course, a few D for dollars to help pay for them.


Authorised by Bob Day, 17 Beulah Road, Norwood SA 5067

Filed Under: Election '22, Australian Character, Australian Politics, Family Policy, Family Resilience, Freedom, Senate Election 2022, South Australia

Stamp of Approval – Election Special!

22/04/2022 by Australian Family Party

stamp-of-approvalConsider for a moment the humble postage stamp. Its usefulness lies in its ability to stick to one thing until it gets to where it has to go.

As we all navigate our way through the postal system of life, we experience highs, lows, stumbles, slip-ups, breaks and bruises along the way. Mine are all listed here: Bob Day.  But as chronicled in Tennyson’s ‘Ulysses’, our aim is to be ‘strong in will, to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield’. And as the Bible teaches, ‘in all these things, we can be more than conquerors’.

At the recent SA State election, the Australian Family Party – in its first election, no less – polled over 10,000 votes, giving the Party a credible voting base on which to build. We have a solid membership list, a strong policy platform and a database of Newsletter recipients which runs into the thousands.

Since the election, a number of members have contacted me saying, “That was a good practice run Bob – when can we go again?”

Well, the answer is now!

Bob-Day-SenateAs most members would know, last year the major parties increased the minimum number of members a party needs in order to gain federal registration from 500 to 1,500 – a threefold increase (what did Adam Smith say about ‘industry incumbents banding together to keep out new entrants’?) This ruled out the Australian Family Party running in the forthcoming Federal election.

But hope is not lost. This week I lodged with the Australian Electoral Commission my nomination to run as an independent Senate candidate in the election. We will again campaign under the FAMILY banner and ‘Putting the family first’ slogan which I launched in 2020. However, to secure a box ‘above the line’, I have teamed up with highly regarded and experienced DLP stalwart Pat Amadio who will run as the No 2 candidate on the ticket. This approach has worked successfully in the past and there’s no reason it can’t again.

It’s worth noting that when I was elected to the Senate in 2013, the non-major party vote in SA was 50%. In 2016 it was 40% and in 2019, 32%. At the recent State election it was also around 30%. Coincidentally, at this election a number of those same candidates from 2013 – Penny Wong and Don Farrell (Labor), Simon Birmingham (Liberal), Nick Xenophon and I (and of course the Greens and numerous other minor parties) will once again be vying for the same six Senate seats. In 2013, I was elected in the No 5 position ahead of Simon Birmingham at No 6. To be elected today, a candidate would need a primary vote of around 7%. With at least 30% of people unlikely to vote for a major party, that is eminently achievable. Can history repeat itself?

What will definitely happen at this election, however, will be the final effect of the 2016 deal between the Liberal Party and the Greens which abolished Senate Group Voting Tickets. Group Voting Tickets allowed voters to simply put a 1 above-the-line and delegate to their party of choice the distribution of preferences. Using Group Voting Tickets, minor parties came to arrangements with each other to combine their votes to get ahead of the Greens. The Liberal–Greens deal ended that. Former Liberal Prime Minister John Howard warned the Liberals at the time that their deal with the Greens could backfire on them. “The principal beneficiary of these changes will be the Australian Greens,” he said.

He was right. The Greens currently have 9 Senators. After this election they will have 12, giving them the balance of power in the parliament – enough to join forces with Labor to pass or block legislation. The Liberals could have had more liberty-minded, family-friendly, low-tax Senators like me and David Leyonhjelm and John Madigan, but instead did a deal with the Greens to get rid of us all. The Liberals and Nationals can rant and rave all they like about Adam Bandt and the Greens, but they have only themselves to blame. They have become the Greens’ enablers.

The world is changing so profoundly – in social attitudes, world economics, geo-politics and of course technology – that politicians, public sector bureaucrats and regulators are hopelessly ill-equipped to manage it. They are simply outdated and outgunned.

As for personal freedoms – free to speak, free to believe and free to work – these alone should motivate us to fight.

Please join us. If you are available to do some letterboxing in your area or hand out some how-to-vote cards on election day – or better still, at early polling stations – please contact us here.

Our first challenge, however, will be to raise some money for this campaign, so please dig deep and give this election campaign your ‘stamp of approval!’


Authorised by Bob Day, 17 Beulah Road, Norwood SA 5067

Filed Under: Australian Politics, Election '22, Family Policy, Family Resilience, Freedom, Senate Election 2022, South Australia

Primary Sidebar

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter

 

Senate-election-HTV

Donate button

Bob Day AO, Federal Director Profile

Bob Day AO

Profile is here.

Subscribe to our Mailing list!

* indicates required



Recent Posts

  • Black Hawk Down!
  • Sitting Ducks: News from the Campaign Trail
  • E is for …
  • Stamp of Approval – Election Special!
  • After the Whirlwind
  • SPECIAL ELECTION EDITION No. 2!
  • Hedgehog World
  • SPECIAL ELECTION EDITION!
  • Till Death Us Do Part
  • Leaders are Readers
  • First They Ignore You …
  • The Wisdom of Crowds
  • Dances With Wolves
  • Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?

© 2022 The Australian Family Party
Privacy Policy
Contact Us