Australian Family Party

Family Matters

South Australia

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.

Abraham Lincoln

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abraham-lincolnOne of Abraham Lincoln’s favorite riddles goes like this:

Question: ‘How many legs does a dog have if you call his tail a leg?’

Answer: ‘Four’.

Explanation: Calling a tail a leg, does not make it a leg.

Nice one, Abe.

Applying Lincoln’s riddle to the recent Victorian election, the one glaring lesson for the Liberal Party is that you can’t call yourself a ‘a party of freedom, personal responsibility, self-reliance, free speech, lower taxes, the rule of law, property rights, free markets and smaller government,’ and then campaign promising the complete opposite of those things and expect to be taken seriously.

Being authentic is still a valuable commodity in politics.

As for the minor parties who, by and large, do genuinely believe in ‘family, faith and freedom’, some hard-headed decision-making might be in order.

Like the art of war, politics is about three things – strategy, tactics and operations. Strategy is the big picture (policy) destination, tactics is about local smarts (candidates, polling, preference arrangements) and operations is the day-to-day mechanics of running a political party and an election campaign. For minor parties, all three are essential – particularly preference arrangements where group voting tickets still exist, as in Victoria.

Using interstate preference agreements, I was elected to the Senate twice –  in 2013 and 2016 – despite having a lower primary vote than some other minor parties. Even at the recent 2022 Federal election, I was the Liberal Party’s first preference after the Liberal and National Party candidates. I wasn’t elected, but having the resources of a major party handing out how-to-vote cards with your name featured in such a prominent preference position is invaluable.

If the right-of-centre minor parties are to counter the left-of-centre minor parties and pseudo-independents, they need to work more closely together. They could, for example, agree to each party being assigned a state or region, with all the other parties agreeing to sacrifice their local chances to ensure, depending on their level of the primary vote, that one or two prizes for each party are achieved.

As for reforming the major parties from within, I do not share the view espoused by the few conservatives left in the Liberal Party that the answer is for more conservatives to join the Party. Reforming from within is flawed for the simple reason that it contradicts basic human nature – the immutable law of self-interest.

How many MPs do you think would be prepared to withstand the threats to their seat from activist lefties? The answer is ‘very few’.

Once elected, MPs get captured. They like being Members of Parliament and they like being liked. They also like the socialising; they don’t want to be ostracised or booed on the ABC for making a stand or championing a cause – especially a moral cause like abortion or euthanasia or transgenderism or challenging the climate change/renewable energy orthodoxy.

In other words, I would argue it is not possible to ‘break-through’, you have to ‘break-with’, and force the major parties’ hands through the brutal reality of balance-of-power politics.

In his very timely 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.’

Jordan Peterson said recently that we have allowed the left to ‘forget its original goal of supporting the poor’, who are paying the most in what he described as the ‘completely fabricated energy crisis in Europe’ caused by the region’s heavy dependence on unreliable renewables.

‘Hiking the price of basic commodities like energy will precipitously knock a large number of people who are hanging on to the edge of the world with their fingernails into the pit. And that’s exactly what’s happened in Europe.

This is something for conservatives to beat the drum about. You want to serve the poor? It’s very straightforward – make energy as cheap as you possibly can. Why? Because energy is work and work is productivity and productivity raises people out of poverty, and we’ve been very good at raising people out of poverty.’

Personally, I would argue the left’s goal was never about ‘supporting the poor’, but rather using the poor to gain power. The poor have long since been abandoned by the left who have now found other ways to gain power – like racial division, Covid-19, and climate change (and its bagman renewable energy).

Will it take a catastrophe to bring voters to their senses?

Perhaps.

In the meantime, here at the Australian Family Party we continue to refine our own ‘strategy, tactics and operations’.

In closing, it has been a very eventful year with the party contesting both State and Federal elections. Thank you for your support throughout the year, particularly our candidates, volunteers and donors. I look forward to continuing the battle in 2023.

Happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year to everyone.

And thank you again.

The Veil of Ignorance

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rawls-slaveryIn his fascinating book, A Theory of Justice, the American moral, legal and political philosopher John Rawls promotes an idea called the Veil of Ignorance.

When drawing up laws, says Rawls, lawmakers should imagine themselves standing behind a curtain or veil, ignorant of what position they themselves will occupy once the law has been passed. Rawls cites a number of examples of this idea, the second being housing which I will cover shortly.

The first example he gives is in relation to slavery. What sort of law would lawmakers write if they were unsure whether they themselves would be slave or slave owner once the curtain was lifted?

His second example of housing is as relevant today as it was in 1970 when he wrote his ground-breaking book.

This approach, he states, would create a more just society.

Let’s consider this in relation to housing.

Knowing what they know now, how would today’s baby-boomers write housing and planning laws if they did not know, once the veil was lifted, whether they would be young or old?

In the event they found themselves in the ‘young’ category, it is beyond doubt they would want low-cost, low-entry level rules to get into their first home – as happened for them 40 years earlier!

As we know, low-cost, low-entry housing is not what first homebuyers are faced with in 2022. Entry-level housing is not three times the median wage like it was for previous generations. It is seven … eight … nine … even ten times the median income.

Regrettably, today’s laws are written more in the mode of ‘I’m alright Jack, pull the ladder up’ rather than, ‘What if I’m a young person trying to get a foot on the employment ladder or trying to buy a first home, or having to pay off a student loan?’

As previously described on this site, Australia does not have, and has never had, a ‘housing’ affordability problem. It has a ‘land’ affordability problem. The actual cost of building a house in Australia has kept pace with inflation and is low by international standards. The price of land on which to the build the house, however, has skyrocketed.

Land is the problem.

By restricting the amount of land available, lawmakers have sent the price of entry-level housing through the roof. Lawmakers have used urban planning laws to restrict the amount of fringe land available and have then drip fed it to a land-starved housing industry.

The ‘scarcity’ that drives up land prices is wholly contrived – it has been a matter of political choice, not geographic reality. It is the product of restrictions imposed through planning regulation and zoning.

Some of the claims used by lawmakers to stop urban growth are that urban growth is not good for the environment, or that it prevents the loss of agricultural land, or that it saves water, or it leads to a reduction in motor vehicle use or it saves on infrastructure costs for government. Although all of these claims are either false and/or misleading, they have become accepted wisdom. Few have had the courage or the insight to challenge them.

One of those few is Patrick Troy.

In his 1996 book The Perils of Urban Consolidation, Patrick Troy, Emeritus Professor at the Australian National University, and a leading thinker on urban planning, squarely challenged the assumptions on which the urban densification principles are based. He pointed to flaws in the figures and arguments which have been used over and over again to support what is speciously called ‘smart growth’ arguing that these policies will produce ‘mean streets’, not ‘green streets’.

Until the 1970s, the development of new suburbs was largely left to the private sector. The many leafy, liveable suburbs like Netherby or Colonel Light Gardens south of Adelaide or Tea Tree Gully in the north-east with their large allotments and wide streets are an enduring testimony to what suburbs looked like before planning laws were introduced. Compare these old suburbs with the packed-like-sardines stuff foisted on young home-buyers today!

leafy-dense

In last week’s Newsletter, we discussed opening up Adelaide’s northern plains to provide access to housing, employment, supply chains and tourism opportunities for the new $100bn maritime defence project based at North Haven.

The northern Adelaide plains are more than three times the size of metropolitan Adelaide – a city of over a million people that has taken over 150 years to get to where it is today. There is enough land in Adelaide’s north to last for centuries.

northern-plains

To enable first home-buyers easy access to housing – on quarter acre (1,000 sq metre) blocks if they want to kick a ball around and/or grow a few vegies, fruit trees and chickens – for around $300,000 and to permanently fix the ‘land’ problem, ensuring future generations do not have to suffer a similar fate, we need to do five things:

  1. Where they have been applied, urban growth boundaries or zoning restrictions on the urban fringe must be removed. Residential development on the urban fringe needs to be made a ‘permitted use’.
  2. Compulsory ‘Master Plan’ communities need to be abolished. If large developers wish to initiate Master Planned Communities, that’s fine, but don’t make them compulsory. This will allow smaller developers back into the market.
  3. Allow the development of basic serviced allotments – ie, water, sewerage, electricity, stormwater, bitumen roads, street lighting and street signage. Additional services and amenities – such as lakes, entrance walls, childcare centres, bike trails, etc – can be optional extras if the developer wishes to provide them and the buyers are willing to pay for them.
  4. Privatise planning approvals. Any qualified Town Planner should be permitted to certify that a development application complies with a Local Government’s Development Plan.
  5. Abolish up-front infrastructure charges and so-called ‘developer contributions’ by Local or State Governments. All infrastructure services should be paid for through the rates system – ie, pay ‘as’ you use, not ‘before’ you use – like it was for the boomers! First home-buyers should not be singled out and forced to pay up-front for Local or State Government infrastructure expansion given that existing homeowners were not required to contribute when they bought in.

Thank you for support.

MATS Plan Revisited

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Part 1

MATS-map

Without doubt, South Australia’s biggest ever public policy failure was the abandonment in 1970 of the MATS Plan (Metropolitan Adelaide Transport Study). The MATS Plan was a world-class road network for Adelaide’s future transport needs servicing a vibrant, emerging city. As a result of that ill-fated decision 50 years ago, SA has suffered incalculable cost, congestion and inefficiency due to its inadequate road system.

At that time, I was working for the SA Highways Department as a Laboratory Technician in the Department’s Materials, Research & Testing Laboratories at Northfield. Our then Commissioner Keith Johinke and all his staff were at the forefront of road transport planning and innovation. The excitement was palpable. Then came a change of government and the announcement that the MATS Plan was to be cancelled. It was an insane decision. All the land for the new road corridors had been acquired and the project was ready to go. So distressed was Commissioner Johinke by this announcement, he refused to sign the papers for the project’s cancellation, leaving it to an underling to carry out the Minister’s orders. The Department never recovered. Nor did Adelaide’s road transport system. I left the Department 5 years later to go into the private sector as did many others. In the 1980s the Department merged with a couple of other government departments and changed its name. A sad end to a once great institution.

Let’s not make that same ‘future planning’ mistake regarding the needs of the new submarine project which has just been announced. An industry sector this size is going to need a massive amount of support industries, including manufacturing, commercial, retail, education, housing, health, and other professional services.

In 1955, another great South Australian visionary, Sir Tom Playford, oversaw the growth and development of SA identifying that one key element for successful growth – cheap land.

The support industries for SA’s new maritime sector will need two things – affordable land, and easy ‘MATS Plan’ style access to the shipyards. Do not underestimate the importance of transport access.

Adelaide’s north can provide the land, and a new world-class gateway bridge over the Port River can connect the naval precinct with the northern Adelaide plains. Such a bridge and road system – perhaps even a rail line down the middle – would provide essential access to housing, supply chains and tourism opportunities – not to mention a ten-minute drive from the Edinburgh military air base.

The cramped suburbs around Port Adelaide are already under unsustainable pressure. Grand Junction Road is at maximum capacity. More traffic congestion, air pollution, the destruction of bio-diversity (bulldozing tree-lined streets and low-density housing) or increasing pressure on electricity, water, sewerage, or stormwater infrastructure, in other words more urban densification, would be a disaster.

One thing is certain, the new naval industry will need support systems. We don’t want to be spending countless billions of dollars retrofitting like South Road or the Southern Expressway debacle.

The Federal Government has given South Australia a new multi-billion industry. The SA State Government now needs to respond by opening up Adelaide’s north to supply this industry. Over the next 30 years tens of thousands of direct and indirect jobs are there for the taking.

In 2013, I was elected to parliament on a platform of “every family, a job and a house”. If every family had a job and owned a house, I argued, the benefits to the state and the nation would be great indeed. Clearly, a lot of people agreed with me.

Adelaide as the new maritime defence industry capital of Australia has the opportunity to provide ‘every family with a job and a house’. Let’s not blow it.

Part 2

gateway-bridgeLast week in Part 1 of our MATS Plan Revisited report, we looked at connecting Adelaide’s new maritime defence precinct with the northern Adelaide plains via a new gateway bridge over the Port River. An industry sector this size we said was going to need a massive amount of defence procurement support, including manufacturing, commercial, retail, education, housing, health, and other professional services. In Part 2 of our proposal, we connect these support industries with long-haul freight infrastructure.

One thing is for sure – there will be a lot more freight and a lot more heavy vehicles on our roads as a result of this announcement.

“Fatal crash closes freeway”

This has become an all too familiar news headline in Adelaide.

Whether it’s taking children to school, taking farm produce to markets or long-haul interstate freight, road safety is paramount.

My first project when I began working at the SA Highways Dept in 1969 was the new SE Freeway. To be fair to the government of the day, when it designed the freeway, it did not expect the level of residential development to take place that has occurred since. The Adelaide Hills has become one of the fastest growing urban areas in the State and commuter traffic on the SE Freeway has increased exponentially. Long-haul freight transport has become incompatible with that level of commuter traffic. Truck drivers dislike the current SE Freeway situation as much as commuters.

A solution is available. A solution that takes trucks and semi-trailers off the freeway, off Portrush Road, off Hampstead Road, off Grand Junction Road and will get freight to the shipyards and new northern precinct quicker, safer and cheaper.

First let’s put things into perspective. Long-haul freight transport on the SE Freeway is mainly coming from Melbourne – a 740km journey. A new north-bound road from Murray Bridge, connecting to the existing Sturt Highway at the new $200m Truro by-pass would deliver freight to the northern Adelaide development precinct by-passing the SE Freeway and Adelaide’s suburban roads completely.

While adding approximately 70 kms to the overall journey – less than 10% of the distance from Melbourne – this non-stop route would not increase the journey-time. Adelaide’s suburban road congestion and approximately 30 sets of traffic lights between the Tollgate and Port Adelaide reduces freight transport to a snail’s pace.

According to the Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics (Report No 148), the cost of building new highways in Australia is approximately $5m per lane per kilometre. A new 90 km four-lane Murray Bridge – Truro highway would therefore cost around $2bn. The safety benefits of such a project however would be incalculable and the cost of building the road would be recouped through increased productivity, fewer accidents and less suburban road maintenance.

To summarise these two MATS Plan Revisited reports, the recent nuclear submarine announcement has changed everything.

This once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reset the State will deliver tens of thousands of direct and indirect jobs – significantly making up for the loss of Holden’s car manufacturing plant.

The new maritime defence project is a $100bn endeavour spread over the next 30+ years. Again, to put things into perspective, spending a small portion of that amount to ensure the project works properly makes good sense. A new gateway bridge and a new Murray Bridge to Truro connection, should be included in the overall cost of the maritime defence project.

As stated in Part 1 of this proposal, SA has been blessed with two great infrastructure visionaries in (former Premier) Tom Playford and (former Commissioner of Highways) Keith Johinke. Perhaps we could name the above infrastructure projects after each of them.

The Great Australian Dream

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great-australian-dreamWhen John D Rockefeller died in 1937 he was reputedly the richest man in the world. At his funeral were many of his employees as well as a large contingent from the press.

Spotting Rockefeller’s chief accountant in the crowd, a young journalist from The Washington Post approached the accountant after the funeral.

“Weren’t you Mr Rockefeller’s accountant?” enquired the journalist. “Yes, I was,” replied the accountant.

“Tell me,” whispered the journalist, “How much did he leave?”

“All of it,” whispered the accountant.

Benjamin Franklin said, “In this world nothing is certain except for death and taxes.” Will Rogers went on to say, “And the only difference between death and taxes is death doesn’t get worse every time parliament sits!”

Great friends, good job, nice car, see the world, live life to the fullest, save a few dollars, get married, buy a house, start a family, stay healthy.

This was the ‘Great Australian Dream’ for many young Australians.

It might still be the Great Australian Dream, but it’s getting harder by the minute.

Young people can’t afford to buy a house and start a family, and many are burdened with HECS debts.

Then there’s income tax, payroll tax, land tax, petrol tax, the goods & services tax (GST), stamp duty, power company dividends, water company dividends, the River Murray Levy, the Emergency Services Levy, the Regional Landscape Levy, the Solid Waste Levy, the Medicare Levy, Council Rates … local, state and federal governments tax us at every turn.

Not to mention, of course, pensioners who are unable to afford to heat their homes or water their gardens.

The Great Australian Dream and belief in ‘Family, Faith & Freedom’ need to be promoted and defended.

Which brings us to the results of the election.

In South Australia, the final 6th Senate seat went to the 3rd Liberal on the ticket – Kerrynne Liddle with 5.3% of the primary vote (total Liberal vote 33.9% minus 28.6% used for the 1st and 2nd Liberals, Simon Birmingham and Andrew McLachlan).

The ‘freedom’ parties of One Nation, Liberal Democrats, Australian Federation Party, UAP, Great Australian Party, IMOP and ourselves polled, between us, 10.9% of the primary vote – more than double the primary vote of the 3rd Liberal and enough to have secured that 6th spot.

Now whether a single ‘Family, Faith & Freedom’ Party would attract the same total is anyone’s guess – but it might. Especially considering that each of these areas will continue to be under attack over the next few years.

And whilst a combined 10.9% for the ‘freedom’ parties is a start, the reality is that nearly 90% of voters still voted for climate and covid/tax and control parties.

The new Labor government’s commitments – now with additional pressure from the Greens and Teals – to spend more on childcare, aged care, housing, the NDIS, PBS, and climate change, at a time of rising interest rates, high inflation, food prices, power prices, petrol prices and rent prices all going up, a mental health crisis among young people, volatile global events, and concerns over religious and personal freedoms do not bode well for the defenders of ‘Family, Faith & Freedom’. Recently tabled legislation in the ACT, for example – a sign of things to come perhaps? – further weakens protections for religious organisations. If passed, it will allow secular courts to intervene even in the internal workings of the church, including the ordination of ministers and who can, and who cannot, take communion.

So where to now for the Australian Family Party? How do we respond to all this?

As discussed in a previous post, the Party has a credible voter base, a solid membership list, a strong policy platform, a database of Newsletter recipients that runs into the thousands and we have just run two elections like clockwork. We have much to offer.

Two elections – State and Federal – hot on the heels of each other, has been quite an effort. Time now for some reflection on both. Your feedback would be most welcome here.

To our members and supporters who uphold us in so many ways, thank you for your support.

PS Thank you to all those who have contributed to our election budget. We’re nearly there, so any support to close the books on these two elections would be most welcome. Thank you.

No Books, No Wisdom, No Future

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no-booksThe ancient story is told of Tarquinius, the last of the seven legendary Kings of Rome.

When the pagan goddess Sibyl offered to sell Tarquinius the nine books containing all the world’s wisdom for a high price, Tarquinius refused.

Sibyl then promptly burnt three of the books in front of Tarquinius and offered to sell the remaining six books for the same price.

Refusing to bow to Sibyl’s demands, Tarquinius once again said ‘no’, so Sibyl promptly burnt another three of the books.

Rather than be left with no wisdom to guide him, Tarquinius relented and paid the full price for the remaining three books.

As we know, there are those who continually reject what is on offer and end up with nothing – Palestinian leaders, some Aboriginal groups, the Greens in 2009.

There’s an old business principle that says you can’t grow a business out of trouble – I know, I’ve tried it, it doesn’t work. If a business is in trouble, you have to shrink to viability and re-grow from there. You salvage what you can and build up from there. But you do need something to work with. No books, no wisdom, no future.

As we await the results of the Senate election and survey the battleground, what can we salvage? What are the three remaining books of wisdom we can draw on to re-build?

First, as we said last week, ‘The Centre Cannot Hold’. The world is polarising like never before. It was once the case that each side would acknowledge that the other side wanted the same outcome, it was only the means of getting there that was debatable.

A good example of this was an initiative called ‘Common Ground’, a housing-the-homeless program.

I was invited to the 2006 Adelaide launch of Common Ground which was initiated by then ‘Thinker in Residence’ Rosanne Haggerty and chaired by Social Inclusion Board Member Monsignor David Cappo.

I argued that the solution to the emerging housing crisis – it is a lot worse now than it was then – was releasing more cheap land on the urban fringe and building low-cost, low-density housing. Yes, there were some downsides – public transport infrastructure etc, but at least it’s a start. Low-income people – even those on unemployment benefits – would be able to own their own homes meeting Common Ground’s central aim – ‘housing first’.

Others at the meeting, however, said that government-sponsored, higher density social housing in and near the CBD was the solution.

They didn’t take up my suggestion, but no-one doubted the others’ motives. I didn’t question their genuine attempts to solve the problem and they didn’t question mine. (I still think I’m right but that’s another matter, see ‘Going … Going … Almost Gone’.)

Today, however, if you disagree with the other side’s solution, it means you either don’t care about the problem, or worse, you are complicit. You are part of the problem.

The centre is disappearing. Public policy is becoming like a gym barbell with weights on each end and a long bar between them.

There’s an old Yiddish proverb, “If God lived on earth, we would break his windows”.

It means people would be offended by their Creator’s presence among them. His actual presence would not, as you might imagine, cause them to repent and obey. Human beings might be capable of great charity but they’re also capable of great malevolence.

There’s another saying, “Where’s there’s light, there’s bugs”.

It seems you can’t have one without the other.

Baptists & Bootleggers

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baptists-bootleggersThe most conspicuous feature of this election was the presence of the powerful ‘Baptists & Bootleggers’ phenomenon.

The term ‘Baptists & Bootleggers’ was coined during the 1920s Prohibition era in America, when the makers of illegal liquor – ‘Bootleggers’ – found ways to finance the ‘Baptists’ campaign to have alcohol banned. The Baptists were successful, alcohol was severely restricted and the Bootleggers made a fortune. These days we might call those Bootleggers ‘rent-seekers’. Rent-seekers use the political process to extract money from taxpayers and consumers.

And they are everywhere – in energy, superannuation, pharmaceuticals, higher education, land development, indigenous groups, public transport, manufacturing – you name it. They are a scourge. They tarnish the political process, distort the market and in the case of so-called ‘renewable energy’, distort the entire economy. No matter what industry you are in, that pay-rise you thought you deserved has gone into the pockets of rent-seekers lurking in the corridors of parliament house.

One day the whole renewable energy racket will collapse under the weight of its own absurdity, and someone will write a book called ‘50 Years of Madness: How the World was Conned’.

Another fascinating feature of the election has been what I call ‘voter switch’.

Huge numbers of voters switched from the major parties to minor parties and independents. Labor voters switched to the Greens, and Liberal voters switched to the ‘Teals’ – independent candidates in wealthy electorates financed by renewable energy investors. Labor voters switched to the Liberals in Tasmania and Liberal voters switched to Labor in WA.

But by far the biggest switch has been the complete reversal of the traditional socio-economic paradigm. 15 of the 20 poorest electorates in Australia are now held by the Liberals, whilst 15 of the 20 wealthiest electorates are held by Labor, Teals and the Greens! And despite Labor winning the election with 32% of the vote (Labor under Kevin Rudd won with 42%), in the SA seat of Spence, the poorest electorate in the state, Labor suffered a 6% swing against it.  Go figure.

When nearly 70% of the electorate didn’t vote for the new government, you can bet it “won’t be easy for Albanese …”.

The under-30s, too, had a big impact on this election, by and large voting Greens.

But the most significant flow-on effect of the election was the Greens’ 30% increase in its Senate numbers. As we have been saying on this website for the past year, the 2016 Liberals/Greens deal to abolish Group Voting Tickets has seen the Greens pick up an extra three Senate seats, taking their number to 12. Again, the Liberals can rail all they like about the influence of the Greens, but they have only themselves to blame.

So why did Labor win the election – or more to the point – why did the Liberals lose? The Liberals’ Coalition partner, the Nationals, haven’t lost a seat in three elections.

During the pandemic, the government provided massive stimulus packages which kept thousands of workers in their jobs and thousands of businesses’ doors open. The unemployment rate was an incredibly low 3.9% and interest rates were at all-time lows. The government seems to have received no credit for this. There was also instability on the world stage – Russia and China in particular – all of which normally bode well for the Coalition.

So what happened?

Personally, I think as well as committing the nation to ‘Net Zero by 2050’ and racking up a one thousand billion dollar debt, the ‘Family, Faith and Freedom’ factor had something to do with it.

Family – cost of living was rated the No 1 issue of concern to voters. Faith – Scott Morrison failed to carry through on his promise to legislate protection of religious freedom. As a result, exemptions for faith-based schools in their hiring choices are now under threat. And Freedom – his appalling judgement in allowing State Premiers to introduce the most draconian, police-state lockdowns which confined people to their homes, closed schools, separated the elderly from their families, and coerced people into taking an unproven vaccine – all counted against the Prime Minister and his government.

As for what the outcome in the Senate will be, at this stage we have no idea whether I’ll be elected or not. It’s certainly not out of the question we could get a significant ‘below the line’ vote given that we didn’t have a party name above the line. As 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. No below-the-line votes have yet been counted, so we’re not giving up just yet …

But regardless of who wins that last Senate seat in SA – be it us, One Nation, the Liberal Democrats, or whomever – standing at the polling booths alongside six other like-minded, centre-right parties – One Nation, Lib Dems, UAP, Australian Federation Party, Great Australian Party and the Nationals – a total of seven minor parties – made me think that there has to be a better way. Whichever minor party wins that last seat, there has to be a good case for the other parties to fall in with it. A policy council comprising all seven parties under the banner of the party who wins must surely be considered.

Speaking of standing at polling booths, can I once again say ‘thank you’ to all our volunteers. Manning a polling booth – a number of members stood for ten hours straight – is no mean feat. Installing and removing all the campaign posters is also a challenge (if you see a stray campaign poster, please report it here.) Thank you.

And finally, as discussed in our ‘Sitting Ducks’ newsletter a fortnight ago, we have one last invoice to pay in the amount of $5,000 for the how-to-vote cards. So far, we have raised $2,700 towards it. We want to finish well – the campaign has gone like clockwork – we just have that final box to tick.

Dog Day Afternoon

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dog-dayA number of years ago I was building a house at Magill in Adelaide’s east when one of our bricklayers arrived on site with his bull terrier dog. Bricklayers always preferred bull terriers as pets because if a brick accidently fell on the dog’s head, the dog didn’t feel it and in fact thought it was a game and waited for more bricks to be dropped.

At the Magill site, the galvanised iron fence between the building site we were working on and the property next door had about a 75mm (3 inch) hole in it through which the neighbour’s spaniel would regularly insert its nose to investigate the new building activity.

When the bull terrier arrived on the scene, however, the spaniel was far from impressed and began barking violently at the impertinent interloper. The bull terrier nonchalantly responded with a swift head-butt to the fence which so startled the spaniel that it jumped backwards and cut off the end of its nose on the rough edge of the fence.

The spaniel was taken to a vet and 12 stitches were needed to repair the damage.

Being responsible for the site at the time, I found myself on the receiving end of an account for the vet’s fees from the spaniel’s owner plus an invoice for $100 for repairs to the fence caused by the bull terrier. I agreed to pay the vet’s fee but balked at paying for the fence.

dog-day-afternoonThis incident came back to me last Saturday afternoon when I was asked to look after a voter’s bull terrier dog while its owner went in to vote at the Munno Para early voting centre in Adelaide’s north. Long-standing Family Party member and volunteer Roger Potger snapped the accompanying photo and dubbed it ‘Dog Day Afternoon’.

Tightly holding on to the dog, I was nervously on the lookout for any local spaniels. Fortunately, none appeared and I successfully handed the dog back to its owner – who I trust voted for me! You never can tell. I remember after my first election – which needless to say I didn’t win – I bumped into a voter who proclaimed excitedly, “I voted for you!” “Ah, you’re the one,” I replied, “I’ve been looking for you”. The amused voter chuckled and walked off unsure if I was joking or not.

I’m hoping this time will be different.

Still on the subject of dogs, in ‘The Adventure of Silver Blaze’, one of the Sherlock Holmes short stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Holmes is sent to investigate the disappearance – on the eve of an important race – of a champion racehorse called Silver Blaze and the murder of its trainer John Straker. In what has become a famous exchange known as ‘the curious incident of the dog in the night-time’ between Scotland Yard’s Inspector Gregory and Sherlock Holmes, Gregory asks Holmes, “Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?” “Yes”, Holmes replied, “To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time”. “But the dog did nothing in the night-time”, said Gregory. “That was the curious incident”, Holmes replied.

That the dog didn’t bark told Holmes the person who took the racehorse was known to the dog. The thief was not a stranger. It was an inside job.

This exchange has become symbolic of the need to speak up or ‘bark’ when something is amiss. Rest assured, here at the Australian Family Party we will not hesitate to bark.

For this election we have done the hard yards, put in the work, listed all our policies in great detail here, traversed the state with our campaign posters, negotiated good preference arrangements and handed out how-to-vote cards at early voting centres. These are our ‘five loaves and two fishes’. Whether God chooses to perform a miracle or not is up to Him. We have peace about it.

Across the globe, however, there is little in the way of peace. In fact, there is havoc. Shakespeare’s ‘dogs of war’ are growling and Australia will not escape at least some of this havoc.

Tomorrow – Saturday 21st May – is election day. Without wanting to labour the point, we can’t let our country go to the dogs. Click here to see how to vote to help prevent that from happening.

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

Black Hawk Down!

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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

Sitting Ducks: News from the Campaign Trail

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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