Australian Family Party

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Memory Mountain

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Memory-MountainOne hundred years ago this year, four young Indigenous evangelists first preached the gospel at Ikuntji (Haasts Bluff) 200 km west of Alice Springs.

Ikuntji is the home of the Western Arrernte, Pintupi and Pitjantjatjara people.

The evangelists’ aim was to bring the message of forgiveness to a culture that had little understanding of it.

Local tradition dictated that if you committed an offence, you would have to suffer with payback and retribution which often included spearing and the spilling of blood – ‘Makarrata’.

When the evangelists explained the gospel story, however – in particular the account of the Roman Centurion who thrust his spear into Jesus’ side bringing forth water and blood – for Aboriginal people, this was significant. To them, spearing was about punishment. But here Jesus was being speared and saying, “Father, forgive them. There is no need for payback. You are forgiven.”

To commemorate that encounter, a huge 20-metre-tall cross has been constructed on Memory Mountain at Ikuntji.

Named The Forgiveness Cross, the cross was formally dedicated this year on the 100th anniversary of that memorable first visit.

“This cross will remain a symbol of forgiveness until the end of time”, said Ikuntji Elder Kieran Multa.

“People from every nation can now come together – every nation whether black or white, Chinese or Indian. The cross is the way to meaning, it is the way to forgiveness.”

In a report by Vision Media, years of fighting bureaucratic red tape, fundraising, engineering challenges and searing heat were all overcome to enable this beacon of hope to be realised in the heart of the nation.

This was a very different ‘statement from the heart’.

The Bible says, “The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to those who are being saved it is the power of God.”

Which brings me to the Referendum.

As we said at the start of the year in Remembering the Galatians Group, ‘closing the gap’ (between indigenous and non-indigenous people) and improving the lives of Aboriginal people is a no-brainer.

So why did so many people who support reconciliation, recognition and closing the gap not support the Voice?

Good question.

Well, as we warned back in March, the Voice turned out to be something very different to those things.

First and foremost was the fact that the debate presented not one, but two very different questions – do you support closing the gap, and do you support the Voice?

The problem was, only one of those questions was on the ballot paper.

Greatly admired individuals such as footballer Michael Long and wonderful organisations such as the Salvation Army believed the Voice would be a modest and safe proposal that would ensure Indigenous people ‘could be heard by government on matters related to them’. The Voice, they said, ‘offered hope and possibility for the future’. It would help close the gap.

But how accurate was their assessment?

First, the proposed Voice was to have been a stand-alone new chapter in our Constitution, sitting next to the three other great constitutional institutions: the Parliament (Chapter I), the Executive Government (Chapter II), the Judicature (Chapter III).

According to constitutional law professor Nicholas Aroney and constitutional lawyer Peter Congdon, the proposed new Section 129 establishing the Voice in the Constitution, “would accord the Voice a structural prominence and constitutional status comparable to those other three institutions”.

They argued that the proposed new chapter could fundamentally alter the division of powers between the commonwealth and the states.

“What if Voice representations concern health and education that are currently the domain of the states?

“What if the Voice wants a higher age of criminal responsibility for Indigenous people?

“Will this new head of commonwealth power give the commonwealth power to encroach in areas currently the responsibility of the states?”

No-one knows what the outer limits of this new power would have been. It would have been up to the High Court – not the parliament – to determine those parameters.

Key ‘Yes’ campaigner and architect of the Uluru Statement from the Heart, Professor Megan Davis, said the Voice ‘will have a lot of power’.

Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney said, “The Voice will be the vehicle to negotiate a national treaty with. There has to be a body to negotiate a treaty with, which is why the Voice is so important”.

And listen to this: Peter Jennings, Senior Fellow of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) said, “If the Yes case wins, then Beijing will want to establish relations with the Voice. Just as China courts the leaders of Pacific Island nations, state premiers, and even local councils, the Voice too will be the target of a PRC charm offensive.

“This is Beijing’s playbook.

“If the Voice is enacted, the Chinese will reach out to it within weeks. Then look out for that first funded trip to Beijing for Voice representatives.

“And more broadly, the diplomatic community will want to know how to engage with the Voice. Will that be done through DFAT’s First Nations ambassador who heads the Office of First Nations Engagement? Who will be responsible for shaping that policy agenda?”

The High Court would have to become heavily involved in all of these matters.

Yet we were told persistently that the Voice was merely ‘an advisory body’; a ‘modest and humble request’.

“The almost desperate insistence by the Yes case that the Voice was just an ‘advisory body’ was a claim designed to deceive”, said The Australian newspaper’s Editor-at-Large, Paul Kelly.

On Saturday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, together with Voice elites Noel Pearson, Ray Martin and others, and Voice radicals such as Marcia Langton and Thomas Mayo were totally vanquished.

To quote Shakespeare’s Hamlet, “They have been hoist by their own petard”.

Now most people think that a petard is some kind of flagpole or pikestaff, and you get hoisted up on it. But that’s not what a petard is at all. Petard is French for ‘bomb’, and you get ‘hoisted’, or ‘thrown in the air’, by your own bomb. The bomb blows up in your face. It sure did.

Despite huge political, social and financial resources aligned against it, the No campaign triumphed. As a result, Australia dodged a massive bullet.

In summary, ‘Vote No’ leader Jacinta Nampijinpa Price stated many times throughout the campaign that 80 per cent of Aboriginals enjoy the same standard of living as everyone else.

Think about that for a moment – 80 per cent of Indigenous people are no worse off than anyone else.

The challenge therefore is, how do we now join with people such as Michael Long and the Salvation Army and help the other 20 per cent?

Maybe we could start by visiting Memory Mountain.

Prison Break

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libertyIn 1946, Viktor Frankl, Holocaust survivor and renowned author of the book Man’s Search for Meaning, proposed that the Statue of Liberty on the east coast of America be complemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the country’s west coast. He was later joined in this endeavour by Stephen Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. The dream was to ‘bookend’ the nation with two equally inspiring statues – one representing rights, the other responsibilities.

Both men have since passed on, but their dream is being kept alive by an organisation called Statue of Responsibility.

The dichotomy of rights and responsibilities is often raised during public policy debates.

Indigenous leader Noel Pearson, a key advocate for the Yes campaign, in discussing his work on rights and responsibilities in Cape York has said, “Until we take responsibility, there’ll be no turnaround in closing the gap.

“Do you think my mob like it when I talk about responsibilities?

“They love it when I talk about rights and how they’ve been victimised. They don’t like it, however, when I say take responsibility for your children – nobody’s going to save you until you get your family together.”

Can’t argue with that.

A core tenet of the Christian faith is that one day we all will stand before our Creator and give an account of our lives – and be judged accordingly.

It must follow, therefore, that if a person is going to be held responsible for their actions, that person should have the right to decide how they live their life. Rights – responsibilities.

The first question I asked as a newly elected Senator in 2014 went something like this:

My question is to the Minister for Employment and Leader of the Government in the Senate, Senator Eric Abetz.

I refer to the Prime Minister’s statement on 28 May this year when he said, “People are more than capable of making decisions based on what is best for them”, and also to the statement by the Minister for Social Services when he said, “The best form of welfare is a job”.

If both those statements are true, why then can an 18-year-old in my home State of South Australia

    • get married
    • have children
    • drive a motor vehicle
    • fly an aeroplane
    • buy a house
    • take out a mortgage
    • enter into a mobile phone contract
    • travel to some of the most dangerous places on earth
    • smoke cigarettes
    • drink alcohol
    • enlist in the armed forces and shoot enemy combatants
    • and, of course, vote

but NOT enter into an employment arrangement which, and I again quote the Prime Minister, “is best for them”?

It is customary for crossbenchers to send Ministers advance notice of questions they propose to ask during Question Time. I did so on this occasion. I also took the liberty of sending the Minister the preferred answer I would like to receive.

The Minister duly acknowledged my courtesy in sending him the question in advance and also informed the Senate that this was actually the first time he’d also received a suggested answer.

Humour aside, the answer I was looking for was, “Senator Day is quite right, this government is committed to putting in place employment arrangements which, as the Prime Minister has said, ‘is best for the people making those decisions’. Accordingly, this government will, forthwith, be tabling a simple, one sentence Act of Parliament to be called the ‘Free to Work Bill’. The Free to Work Bill will state the following:

‘Notwithstanding the provisions of the Fair Work Act 2009, any contract of employment between a corporation and a natural person shall be lawful’.

Needless to say, that’s not the answer I got.

But that is all that would be needed.

I have argued that a person could be unemployed, living at home rent-free, with no (or very low) cost of living and would be willing to work at a starting pay rate of say $20 an hour (which is a lot higher than they would be getting on Centrelink), but because penalty rates on weekends or public holidays are around $40 an hour, they are not allowed to take these jobs. They stay unemployed, the business stays shut, and customers don’t get what they want to buy.

prisonIt’s been said that any place you can’t leave is a prison. Australia’s present workplace regulation system is a prison, trapping a person in thousands of pages of regulations.  When I ask why we lock people up like this, I am told “Oh it’s for their own good – we don’t want them to be exploited.”

But where’s the outrage when these same young people end up on drugs or get involved in crime or suffer poor health or become pregnant or become recruits for bikie gangs or even commit suicide?

If those claiming to protect the unemployed from exploitation really cared as much as they say, then why do they do not stop them from doing 101 other things that have a far bigger and more permanent impact on their lives than getting a job – like smoking or drinking alcohol or getting covered in tattoos or getting married or having children or backpacking through South America. At least with a job you can quit at any time.

This is unquestionably an infringement on liberty, freedom and dignity. It violates a person’s right to earn a living and it violates their responsibility to provide for their families.

*          *          *

As mentioned in our previous post, this month marks the three-year anniversary of the launch of the Party and the challenge ahead is as great now as it was when we launched.

Thank you to all those who have supported us thus far. It has been greatly appreciated. Every bit has helped. To enable us to continue this vital work, please continue to support us here.

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.

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Remembering The Galatians Group

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Galatians-voice-gapIn 1994, Uniting Church minister, the late Rev. Dr Max Champion formed an organisation called The Galatians Group. Max adopted the name from the biblical text, ‘You are all one in Christ Jesus’ (Galatians 3:28).

According to Max, the ‘unity in Christ’ referred to did not imply an exclusive religious attachment but rather the humane ordering of human affairs through the exercise of personal freedom which is tolerant of other beliefs, does not demand acquiescence to its own claims, and recognises the mutual responsibility of all.

This was very much in keeping with the Jewish faith tradition when God said to Abraham ‘… all the nations of the earth will be blessed through you and your descendants’ (Genesis 22:18).

The impetus for the formation of The Galatians Group was a Covenanting Statement published by the Uniting Church of Australia in July of that year. While supporting the goodwill towards Indigenous people and the commitment to reconciliation expressed in the Statement, Max and a number of like-minded colleagues were disturbed by its tone and substance.

Of particular concern, said Max, were its ‘ … failure to express the covenant within the framework of Christian unity; the dangerous separation of Australians into ‘Indigenous’ and ‘non-Indigenous’ races; a tendency to treat Indigenous Australians as a homogenous group; reference to the British settlement of Australia as an unmitigated disaster for Indigenous people; a flawed analysis of history – especially the failure to recognise the many benefits to native people that the new world brought; the unwarranted denigration of the work of Australia’s missionaries; and last but not least, a dangerous appeal to guilt which did not distinguish between empathy, blame and responsibility.’

Fast-forward 30 years and many of these sentiments have become even more entrenched.

How did this happen?

In the 1967 Referendum, Australians voted overwhelmingly (over 90 per cent) to eliminate racism from the Australian Constitution. Various state governments had enacted objectionable laws based on race and the new powers given to the Federal government at the referendum allowed them to override these state laws. The referendum also tidied up some anomalies in the census and the counting of the Indigenous population vis-à-vis the allocation of parliamentary seats. It is important to once again note that, prior to 1967, by virtue of the 1949 Citizens Act, all Indigenous people could vote and were full citizens, and were also counted in the census but not all were not included in the allocation of parliamentary seats. This was for purely practical reasons as some indigenous Australians lived in remote regions. The 1967 referendum tidied all this up.

The principle of ‘equality under the law’ – including the political equality of all citizens – ‘one person, one vote’ irrespective of ethnic background, was firmly entrenched in what was the most successful referendum in Australia’s history.

Which brings us to ‘The Voice’ – no, not the TV talent show or the ’80s hit song by John Farnham – but a proposal to insert into Australia’s Constitution an Indigenous body called ‘The Voice’. The Voice will have the power to influence legislation and, according to its proponents (including Prime Minister Anthony Albanese), draw up a Treaty between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians – i.e., “implementing the Uluru Statement in full”. The Uluru Statement says, in part, ‘Aboriginal sovereignty (over Australia) was never ceded or extinguished’.

The Voice needs to be ‘feared and revered’ said one of Uluru’s delegates.

Not exactly what Max Champion had in mind, I suspect.

Mr Albanese also said recently that he wanted Australia to follow New Zealand’s lead on Indigenous recognition. This is somewhat disturbing given the power of veto some Maori groups have over legislation in New Zealand.

Dividing Australians based on their race cannot be the way forward. White privilege may have been an issue in the past, but introducing black privilege does not balance that out.

Nor does it help, before every event, making the statement, “We acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we gather and acknowledge that they never ceded sovereignty.” Or having politicians like Lidia Thorpe out there pushing for black sovereignty, a treaty, and non-indigenous people paying rent to indigenous people for occupying land that ‘always was, always will be Aboriginal land.’ What next? A two-state solution?

‘Closing the gap’ (between indigenous and non-indigenous people) and improving the lives of Aboriginal people is a cause all Australians support.

The Voice, however, is starting to look like something very different.