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Collision Course
Bob Day
Australian Financial Review
16 November 2012

In 1969 (former SA Federal MP) Bert Kelly was sacked as Minister for the Navy following the collision of HMAS Melbourne and USS Frank E Evans.

It appears we are once again on a collision course with the US, this time over big cuts to our defence spending. It’s been suggested we’re not pulling our weight reverting to our old ways of relying on ‘great and powerful friends’. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is here to discuss the matter.

Investing in nuclear powered submarines would certainly alleviate her concerns however instead of immediately trying to politicise the issue, it might be more helpful if SA Premier Jay Weatherill took a leaf out of Bert Kelly’s book and took a more bi-partisanship approach. Real debate, Bert used to say, was party-neutral.

Opportunities abound in this area. The UK for example has just announced a massive new investment in submarine construction. Why couldn’t Australia consider a joint venture with the UK to build our first submarines in the UK with inclusion of our own (SA) labour force on a rotational basis?

The opportunity to lower cost, ensure the latest technology and build our domestic skills capacity so we could eventually build them here would all be enhanced by a joint venture. This would benefit both Australia and the UK (or US if that was the preferred option).

Further, given its strategic importance and role, it should be asked whether this proposed new submarine warfare capability should remain within the Royal Australian Navy or become a fourth Service in our defence force.

This is all too important for political point-scoring.

Bob Day AO is Chairman of The Bert Kelly Research Centre

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Nuclear submarines
Bob Day
The Advertiser
15 October 2014

THE current submarine construction furore is largely focused on whether the Government will stick to its 2013 commitment to continue building submarines in South Australia or buy an ‘‘off-the-shelf’’ model from Japan.

On this subject, one thing is not in contention: if Australia is to be a significant regional presence in the South Pacific and Indian Oceans, it needs a submarine fleet that is respected by our allies and (potential) enemies alike.

The reality and universal thinking for Australia’s future defence needs is that we need 12 submarines – six conventional diesel-powered submarines and six nuclear-powered vessels (nuclear-powered, not nuclear-armed) to replace the current fleet of six Collins Class submarines.

Australia is a huge continent and the range, speed and capability of nuclear submarines is extremely potent.

So it is very disappointing that the Federal Government has decided that it does not want to talk about nuclear submarines, despite a number of our G20 national colleagues having full nuclear enrichment capabilities.

The short-term, next election thinking that has prevailed in Australian politics – and has done so as far back as when SA was paralysed on the question of mining uranium until the late Norm Foster crossed the floor to support it – does our nation a great disservice.

Foster supported the development of SA’s uranium resources against the wishes of his ALP caucus colleagues and was summarily expelled from the party. Today, of course, he is hailed as a party hero and the former Federal Labor government began negotiations on a uranium export deal with India.

As so often happens, after your death they build a monument to you with the stones they threw at you when you were alive.

Now I know Premier Jay Weatherill called me ‘‘an enemy of the state’’ because I criticised his health funding policy. But on this subject I suggest he take a leaf out of the book of former minister for the navy and my mentor and hero Bert Kelly, and take a bipartisan approach.

“Real debate”, Bert used to say, was “party-neutral”. Defence is all too important for political point-scoring.

The current Federal Government needs to show the same sort of courage and sensible thinking displayed by Norm Foster by putting all legitimate options on the table. That is why I am urging it to consider nuclear submarines.

The UK’s Astute class submarines cost about $2 billion each. They are equipped with Tomahawk cruise missiles and torpedoes and have long mission operation duration. The UK is investing significantly in submarine construction, and through recent treaty enhancements with Australia we could be a primary beneficiary of the construction of the new subs.

We could rotate our engineers and workforce through the UK to learn from them with a view to eventually building those submarines here. The opportunity to lower cost, ensure the latest technology and build our domestic skills capacity would all be enhanced by a joint venture.

Further, ‘‘nuclear culture’’ and submarine capability are so important I believe the Government should be considering a fourth arm of the defence forces, separate from the navy. That is, should the Royal Australian Submarine Corps be established?

Bob Day is a South Australian Senator

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Further details about Australian Family Party’s policies on defence are here.

Above the Courts of Justice in London stands a statue of Jesus. It is there to signify the Common Law’s origins in Christianity. When the Queen is presented with the Bible, the words, “To keep your Majesty ever mindful of the law and the Gospel of God, …. we present you with this Book, the most valuable thing this world affords. Here is wisdom; this is the royal law; these are the lively oracles of God”, are spoken. Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury (1207-1228) helped write the Magna Carta, the world’s pre-eminent document on human rights which forms the basis of so many of our laws.

Today is September 11, the 20^th anniversary of the terrorist attack on New York’s World Trade Centre. The Al Qaida terrorists who brought down the Twin Towers were based in Afghanistan which was under the control of the Sunni Muslim Taliban. As of last week, Afghanistan is again under Taliban control.

When the system of government we call democracy is being questioned, it is timely to consider some of the world’s alternatives. Writer Evan Thompson provides a useful summary:

• Theocracy. A form of government in which a specific religious ideology determines the leadership, laws and customs of the country. Iran is the world’s largest theocracy in which the Ayatollahs — Shiite religious leaders — rule the country and implement Islamic Sharia law. Iran has immense influence on countries such as Lebanon, Iraq and Syria.
• Military Dictatorships. Rule by a single authority with absolute power and no democratic process. Installed by the nation’s armed forces, military dictators dismiss due process, civil liberties, and political freedoms. Dissent or political opposition is banned by the ruling military junta. Examples include Myanmar, Sudan, Chad and Mali.
• Monarchy. Not to be confused with Constitutional Monarchies like our own, ruling monarchies have a person as head of state for life, a position passed down through a succession line related to one’s bloodline and birth order within a ruling royal family. Today’s monarchs include Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Oman.
• Communism.  A centralized form of government headed by a single authoritarian political party. Total control of the economy and of production, labour, goods, property and natural resources. Communist countries include China, Cuba, Laos and Vietnam.
• Totalitarianism. A form of government in which the ruling party sets no limitations whatsoever on its power. Its citizens are completely subservient to the state. A single figure often holds power and maintains authority through widespread surveillance, control of the media, intimidating demonstrations of military or police power, and suppression of protest, activism, or political opposition. North Korea is an example of a totalitarian state. Any criticism of the supreme leader is punishable by death.
• Authoritarianism – a lesser form of totalitarianism in which an authoritarian government rejects political plurality and uses strong central power to preserve the status quo. Authoritarianism pays little regard to the rule of law, the separation of powers between parliament and the courts, or democratic voting. Much of Central and Eastern Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean falls into this category.

Of the 193 countries in the world, 153 of them are governed by one of these systems. Barely 40 countries in the world are proper functioning democracies. Of those 40, 36 have Judeo-Christian heritage and the other 4 (India, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan) had strong Christian/Western influence that led them to democracy.

The link between Christianity and stable democracy is obvious and sometimes we need to remind ourselves of Christianity’s great contributions to the world. Most of the world’s languages for example were put into writing by Christian missionaries.  More schools and universities were started by Christians than by any other group. Motivated by a sense of concern for others, Christians established hospitals, aged care organisations and welfare agencies. The elevation of women was a Christian achievement, as was the abolition of slavery, cannibalism, child sacrifice and widow burning. Before Christianity came along, almost every civilisation and culture practised slavery and human sacrifice. Countries which today enjoy the greatest civil liberties are generally those places where the Christian gospel has penetrated the most.

There is a Chinese proverb, “The tears of strangers are only water”. When there is famine or genocide in Africa for example, Christianity says, “Those people are human like us, we need to help them”. Other cultures say, “Yes, it’s a problem but it’s not our problem”.

The ‘equality of human beings’ is a Christian idea which led to the abolition of slavery and international human rights. US Founding Father Thomas Jefferson said, “That all men are created equal is self-evident”. Most cultures throughout history reject this. ‘Inequality’ is what is self-evident they say – height, weight, strength, intelligence, truthfulness, talent etc. What Jefferson was referring to of course was ‘moral equality’. Each life is as valuable as any other.

Closer to home, the Reverend John Flynn founded the Flying Doctor Service and the Australian Inland Mission. His Presbyterian Ministers were known as ‘the boundary riders of the bush’ and were responsible for establishing communication through the inland pedal wireless.  Early colonial Governors Macquarie, Hunter and Brisbane were committed Christians. Governor Macquarie personally promoted the British and Foreign Bible Society and the Sunday School Movement. And Australia’s Constitution begins with the phrase, “…. humbly relying on the blessing of Almighty God ….”.

The late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks said, “To defend a country you need an army. But to defend a free society you need families, schools and an educational system in which ideals are passed on from one generation to the next, and never lost, or despaired of, or obscured. It is not difficult to gain liberty, but to sustain it is the work of a hundred generations. Forget it and you lose it.”

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

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

With around 4 million students in Australia, that adds up to nearly $70 billion pa. A lot of taxpayers’ money. In a previous post I mentioned federal government bureaucracy in education. This post is about cost and choice.

Considering non-government schools consistently outperform government schools in overall student performance, why can’t the government simply offer every family $8,000 – the difference between government and non-government funding – giving parents the option of sending their child to a non-government school if they wish?

Given the majority of non-government schools charge less than $8,000 pa in school fees, parents could send their children to a non-government school and pay no fees. For those schools which charge more than $8,000 parents who make sacrifices in order to send their children to higher cost schools would be $8,000 better off.

This would be ‘funding the user’ of the service (the family), not ‘funding the provider’ (the school). It allows the family to choose what is best for them – starting with education. It also reinforces the primacy of parents in the education of their children.

Feeding, clothing and educating children are some of the key necessities the family provides. We don’t tax people in order to set up government supermarkets to feed our children or government clothing stores to clothe them, so why do we do it with education? Walk into any supermarket and see the incredible range of food and other essential goods available at prices that continue to fall, not rise, relative to the CPI (consumer price index). Or clothing … or motor cars. The same would happen with education. The quality and range would increase.

Speaking of motor cars, over 90% of all journeys in Australia are by motor car. Less than 10% are on public transport. The true cost of providing public transport is approximately $20 per person per journey which the government gives to the ‘provider’ of the public transport service – the bus/tram/train company/agency. Again, this runs into billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money. The passengers however, the ‘users’ of the service, pay on average only $2 per journey. Taxpayers pick up the tab for the other $18. Without reducing opportunities for people to travel, if passengers were given the $18 to add to the $2 they already pay and were told, “You’ve now got $20, go buy yourself a bus/tram/train ticket” – which could be hundreds of dollars per week for some people – they may well choose to walk or ride a bike and pocket the money. By funding the ‘provider’ of the service instead of the ‘user’, we can never know what is the best value for both passenger and taxpayer.

All this is important as families pay enormous amounts of tax in the form of GST, stamp duties, registrations, and numerous other levies and taxes hidden in water and power costs which are then handed to the ‘providers’.

When state governments privatise water and power utilities, they do deals with purchasers allowing the new purchaser to push up power and water charges in exchange for a higher purchase price of the utility. A state government-owned electricity trust, for example, would offer the utility for sale. Potential purchasers would respond with various offers depending on what changes to legislation the state government would be prepared to make to allow future increases in power prices and supply charges thereby increasing the purchase price. This results in state governments receiving much more than the original valuation. It is just taxation by another name as consumers pay more for their power and water.  On top of that, utilities like SA Water, pay ‘dividends’ to the SA state government. More taxation under a different guise.

Private companies that base their business models on providing services to consumers but are either paid by the government or are able to persuade governments to prevent or limit competition are called rent-seekers. Aged care, child care, disability care, energy, housing, superannuation, pharmaceuticals, education, public transport and many others are a huge burden on taxpayers and cost families a fortune. It is a form of taxation that low-income families cannot avoid and cannot afford.

The answer is ‘fund the family’, not the racket.

Covid and Climate seem to be trying to outdo each other at the moment. This week, the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) turned up the dial a few notches with a ‘code red for humanity’:

‘Sea levels rising at twice the expected rate; drought and catastrophic bushfires with drastic consequences for health, agriculture and biodiversity; more frequent and intense heatwaves that will kill more people; more intense winter storms that will lead to localised flooding, damage and deaths’. The projections make for some pretty scary reading.

CSIRO’s Climate Science Centre has told us to think of it ‘like the planet hurtling down a slippery slope at great speed with no end in sight’ and ‘there’s no end to how much damage we can create’. Words and phrases like extinction, tipping point, existential threat and emergency are sprinkled liberally throughout media reports.

Over the past few years, no sooner do we have to deal with one threat than another appears – only more deadly this time. Judgement Day is always just around the corner. The Doomsday Clock has been set at one minute to midnight for as long as I can remember.

Then there’s the ubiquitous ‘time bomb’. Population time bombs, climate time bombs, fertility time bombs, cultural time bombs, racial time bombs, health time bombs. All designed to instil fear in people. The time bomb explosion is never far away. Like the movies’ race-against-time narrative designed to create a heightened sense of anxiety.

Remember Y2K? The Year 2000 computer bug that threatened global chaos with planes falling out of the sky, power grids shutting down and a complete meltdown of computer programs? None of it happened.

Factory-like, the media churns out these apocalyptic stories one after another. And it’s never ‘if this or that will happen’ but ‘when it will happen’.

And of course we are encouraged not only to fear what might happen, but ‘fear the worst’. The worst-case scenario is the only scenario. The latest IPCC Report, for example, lists a number of scenarios for the next 100 years from mild to worst case. So which does everyone focus on? The worst case scenario of course (RCP8.5). The ‘precautionary principle’ must rule. Always ‘err on the side of caution’.

Fear is a powerful political motivator. Fear makes people do things they wouldn’t otherwise do. Whereas the Enlightenment encouraged public debate and reason, Machiavelli saw the political advantages in using fear to control the masses.

My late father used to say, “Don’t meet trouble before it comes”. The two-fold reasoning behind this pearl of wisdom is 1) most impending dangers never eventuate and 2) when they do, they are either not as bad as you thought they’d be or if they are you are more than capable of handling them.

‘Confidence is the opposite of fear’, quipped Aristotle. We need to start replacing fear with reason, with judgment, with courage, with meaning and with hope. And we need to teach children not to be fragile. The Swedes have a saying, ‘There’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing’.

The world will never be totally safe. Nothing is ever risk-free. But through family, in particular, we have the capacity to deal with adversity.

As for current events? These too will pass.

In his brilliant book ‘How Fear Works’, Frank Furedi advises: “The most effective way to counter the perspective of fear is through acquainting society with values that offer people the meaning and hope they need to effectively engage with uncertainty. The problem is not fear as such but society’s difficulty in cultivating values that can guide it to manage uncertainty and the threats it faces.”

Irish poet Seamus Heaney’s last words were Noli timere – “Be not afraid”.

UK Bishop N.T. (Tom) Wright commented on these same words: “Do you know what the most frequent command in the Bible is? What instruction is given, again and again, by God, by angels, by Jesus, by prophets and by the apostles? Is it ‘be good’? ‘Is it be holy’? Is it ‘don’t sin’? No, the most frequent command in the Bible is, ‘Don’t be afraid’.”

We are not passive or helpless observers in a world beyond our control. We are not vulnerable. We do not have to live on Fear Street.

Former Prime Minister Bob Hawke once said, “We’re all Australians, whether we’re from Melbourne or Sydney”. Those from the ‘outlying States’ (as Paul Keating called them), naturally felt a bit left out.

The confusing power structures between the States and the Federal Government – and between individual States – has been exposed during Covid with many calling for the abolition of State Governments and the formation of one national government.

As Covid has revealed, the Federal Government doesn’t have the power it thought it had. The States have the power. The Feds have the money.

When Australia came together as a nation in 1901 – as a federation of six individual British colonies – it did so after much debate. During the first of the convention debates in 1891, Sir Samuel Griffith, who would later become the first Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia, nailed it by saying:

“We must not lose sight of the essential condition that this is to be a federation of states and not a single government of Australia. The separate states are to continue as autonomous bodies, surrendering only so much of their power as is necessary for the establishment of a general government to do for them collectively what they cannot do individually for themselves.”

The powers given to the Federal Government by the States in 1901 included trade and commerce, corporations, currency, banking, pensions, taxation, foreign affairs, quarantine, and defence.

Not surprisingly, the first area where the boundaries between State and Federal Governments were tested related to tax. The fight over money began.

In 1942, all income taxing power was handed to the Federal Government for the duration of World War II under the ‘defence’ power of the Constitution. This was intended to be temporary and was to last until the end of the war. But as predictable as the sunrise, when the war ended the Feds did not relinquish their income tax collector role.

Since then, the tax revenue balance has continued to move away from the States and towards the Feds. The imbalance that now exists is known as ‘vertical fiscal imbalance’.

Australia has the highest level of vertical fiscal imbalance of any federal country in the world. The Federal government raises over 70% of all government revenues – much more than is required to fund its own operations – while the States don’t raise anywhere near enough to fund theirs. The Feds then make up the States’ shortfall through Commonwealth grants.

This creates a perpetual blame game. Failures at the State level are blamed on the Feds’ lack of funding, and failures at the Federal level are blamed on the States’ poor service delivery.

We cannot go on like this. The States and the Feds should only collect taxes for their own purposes, and taxpayers and consumers should be fully informed as to what is a State tax and what is a Federal tax. Those who spend the money should bear the responsibility of raising it.

Former Premier of Western Australia, Richard Court once said, “All the things that the States do best are under attack from the empire builders in Canberra. The bureaucracy running the Federal education system is large but it doesn’t teach any students. There is an equally large health bureaucracy which doesn’t treat any patients.”

Many of the most stable and productive nations on earth are federations of individual States. This is because as a principle not only of government, but also of life, the best decisions are made when the parties involved in the decision-making know and understand the issues intimately. Allowing States to make decisions on local matters is infinitely better than centralised decision-making thousands of kilometres away. It is by far the best way to govern a large and diverse country like Australia. Western Australia is very different to Tasmania. Who best then to make decisions affecting Broome or Burnie? Locals or Canberra-based bureaucrats?

Different States take different approaches to solving problems and achieving goals. This is far better than one big, central government making decisions for everyone.

Those who framed our Constitution certainly understood this.

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Special note:

‘Family First’. You may have heard this week of the formation of a new political party called Family First. It is being set up by former Labor Party MPs Jack Snelling and Tom Kenyon. So you are aware, neither of them approached or informed anyone at the Australian Family Party before the news broke. As the former Chairman of what was once Family First, I always welcomed the opportunity to work constructively with like-minded Parties in the political arena – the DLP (I sat with the late John Madigan in the Senate from 2014 – 2016), Australian Christians, Rise Up Australia, Fred Nile’s Christian Democratic Party and others. The Australian Family Party trusts it can come to similar arrangements with this new party.

It’s been said running a business is really quite simple, you just have to sell something for more than you pay for it. Plus a few million details.

Politics is the same – you just have to register a political party and get your candidates elected – plus a few million details.

Like any industry or profession, politics is not for everyone. But political parties are essential to a properly functioning democratic society. Accordingly, the Australian Family Party is seeking expressions of interest from people interested in learning more about how the world of politics operates.

From the essential understanding of how the ‘political wing’ and ‘organisational wing’ of a political party collaborate to get candidates elected, through to the various levels of government – Federal, State & Local – the Australian Family Party is exploring the development of a ‘Basic Training Course’ for those who either feel called to run as a candidate or have a particular interest in how the world of politics works – or in some cases doesn’t work.

The online Course will cover subjects like voter behaviour, policy development, marginal seat campaigning, preferencing, data base management, fundraising, messaging, media relations, major/minor/micro parties and independents, party governance and compliance, speech writing, lobbyists and lobby groups, opinion piece writing and more.

A strong emphasis on the proper functioning of a political party will run through the Course. Like any successful sporting club or theatre company, there are the ‘on-field players and performers’ and the ‘off-field, behind the scenes, personnel’ who ensure the club or organisation runs smoothly. And whereas it often seems like the ‘on-field players get all the credit and the off-field personnel do all the work’, each needs the other for the organisation to succeed. This will be a key aspect of developing a collaborative culture within a political party.

If you know what you believe, and want help in being able to defend it and communicate it in the political world and are interested in the philosophical underpinnings of a political movement, please register your interest now. You can contact us here.

Update (30 July 2021)

Thank you to all those who expressed an interest in the Australian Family Party’s proposed ‘Basic Training Course’ in politics. We are currently assessing the responses and will advise of further developments in due course. Our post on Federal/State relations will be one of the topics covered in the Course. Please note however, at this stage the Course is for members only

In his excellent book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell presents ‘the 10,000 hours rule’.

For a person to master a particular profession or skill, he says, they need to spend at least 10,000 hours in that skill set.

More about that shortly.

Whilst many Australians are rightly concerned at the shift towards leftist social policies – euthanasia, abortion, gender fluidity, distorting Australia’s history, the undermining of faith-based organisations – and just this week more liberalisation of prostitution laws – they feel powerless to do anything about it. And with both major parties heading in the same direction, waiting until election day to mark a ballot paper doesn’t offer much hope.

Some have suggested ‘getting involved in politics’ and joining one of the major political parties to influence them from within in areas like policy formulation and candidate pre-selection as the solution. This is naïve.

The professionals who run Australia’s major political parties have a lot more than 10,000 hours under their belts and would have no trouble thwarting any attempts by even large numbers of enthusiastic amateurs joining their parties in the forlorn hope they can change them. These outsiders, who have other interests – politics not being one of them – quickly find the tedium of branch meetings and voting procedures are definitely not for them and even the most tenacious eventually give up. The professional power brokers know how to win those battles.

In the minds of reasonable people, being ‘inside the tent’ always seems like a reasonable strategy. Sadly it doesn’t work. Being ‘outside the tent’ throwing rocks however, does.

Politics can be a brutal business at times. But like our police and defence forces we acknowledge the need for them because as George Orwell observed, “People sleep peacefully in their beds at night because rough men stand ready to protect them.”

Regrettably, there is only one language of politics these days – numbers. Numbers of seats in particular. By getting Upper House Members of Parliament elected and influencing key Lower House seats through preferencing, the Australian Family Party does the rough work necessary to keep the major parties ‘honest’. It stands on the middle of the see-saw – if one side of politics gets too radical, it can shift its weight to the other side and vice versa.

Joining an organisation controlled by people who do not share your values? Or supporting like-minded people who will do the rough work on your behalf? That is the choice.

With elections looming, time is of the essence. Regrettably, we don’t have 10,000 hours to decide.

In ‘Star Trek V: The Final Frontier’, a self-styled guru hijacks the Starship Enterprise and starts brainwashing the crew by ‘taking away their (emotional) pain’. He then approaches Captain Kirk and says, “Captain, let me take away your pain”. “I don’t want you to take away my pain,” Kirk replies, “My pain is part of who I am.”

Those who seek power seduce people with claims they can solve society’s problems and relieve people of responsibility for either their (poor) decisions or the random events and vicissitudes of life. People want to believe them. They want to believe the authoritarians who say – with very appealing rhetoric – that they will ‘take away your pain’ – if you would just give them the power. It’s what was at the heart of three of history’s great revolutions – the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution and the American War of Independence.

The French and the Russians said the state must override all; the more powerful the state, the more control it has over people, the better things will become – liberté, égalité, fraternité (‘liberty, equality, fraternity’) and the Marxist ‘from each according to his ability, to each according to his need’. What the people disregarded was the inability of human beings to prevent the abuse of power and position once it was attained.

The American founding fathers on the other hand, in establishing their republic acknowledged the inherent malevolence in man and therefore adopted the devolution and separation of powers doctrine – power devolved into hundreds, thousands of checks and balances, the most important of these being family and faith. Keeping a check on human nature through family and faith provided the best environment for freedom.

One of those founding fathers, John Adams, America’s 2^nd President said at the time, “Our Constitution is made for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to govern any other.”

Australia’s Constitution was similarly based, “ …. humbly relying on the blessing of Almighty God ….”. Take away family and faith and the structure collapses. As does freedom.

Proverbs and axioms like ‘Actions speak louder than words’ and ‘I can’t believe what you say, because I see what you do’ reinforced the bond between personal and public morality. You simply couldn’t get away with saying one thing and doing another. Sadly, that rule no longer applies.

It was also the case that truth was established through facts, figures, logic and reason. Again, not anymore. It’s now all about the narrative – ‘What is the overall message we want to promote’ is all that is important. And the current narrative is one that is moving away from personal responsibility and personal freedom and towards collective, state-based control. But as the French and Russians found out after their revolutions, the dictators soon take over (Napoleon, Stalin) and instead of taking away the pain, the pain just gets a whole lot worse.

Euthanasia legislation – Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill 2020, passed the SA Parliament this week. Whilst it was introduced by a Labor Member of Parliament, it was essentially a Liberal Government Bill.

On 5AA radio on Thursday morning, Matthew Abraham, who has been covering SA politics for what seems like a hundred years, said he could see no ideological differences between Liberal and Labor. “Steven Marshall is now essentially a Labor premier”, he said. In 2017, Christopher Pyne, leader of the Liberal Party’s left-leaning progressive faction and mentor to Steven Marshall said the Liberal progressives were winning the internal battle against the Party’s conservatives. “We’re in the winning circle”, he said. There’s no doubt about that.

Over the past 25 years, euthanasia legislation has been introduced into the SA parliament 16 times – the last occasion was in 2016. All failed. This week, on the 17^th attempt, it got through. It’s what happens when there isn’t a Christian/Conservative Party in the Parliament to take seats in the Upper House and direct preferences in the Lower House.

At the Federal level, in 2016 the Liberals joined forces with the Greens to amend the Commonwealth Electoral Act and abolish Senate Group Voting Tickets. Group Voting Tickets allowed voters to simply put a 1 above-the-line and delegate to their party of choice the distribution of preferences. Whilst minor parties differed widely on policy matters, the one thing they had in common was their dislike of the Greens. Using Group Voting Tickets, minor parties came to arrangements with each other to combine their votes to get ahead of them. The Liberal-Greens deal ended that. Former Liberal Prime Minister John Howard warned the Liberals at the time that the Coalition’s deal with the Greens could backfire on them. “The principal beneficiary of these changes will be the Australian Greens,” he said.

He was right. The Greens won six senate seats at the 2019 election (one from each state) and will almost certainly repeat this result at the next election giving them a total of 12 senators and the balance of power, enough to join forces with Labor to pass or block legislation.

‘The Long March of the Left’

“As Abraham Lincoln said: “The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of the government in the next”. Arguably, there is nothing so significant to the future of a nation as the formation of its children. How we teach children about our history, our national identity, and the principles of western liberal democracy by which we live is therefore the concern of all Australians.”

The above quotation is from a new booklet titled, ‘Activism via Education: 7 ways the new Australian Curriculum will impact your kids’. In the booklet, the authors highlight how hostile to Christianity Australia’s new national curriculum is. It is also highly critical of Western civilisation.

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

If you want to help stop the long march of the left, please join us here.

This week I received a very unsettling email from the National Director of Family Voice, Peter Downie. I was so troubled by this email that I have decided, with Peter’s permission, to share it with members and supporters of the Australian Family Party verbatim. The contents are not pleasant but demand our attention. Rest assured, the Australian Family Party is committed to addressing this most distressing situation.

Dear Bob

Last week, Brisbane’s Courier Mail published a disturbing article by Melinda Tankard Reist of Collective Shout.

“Barely a day goes by,” she said, “that a parent doesn’t contact me to tell me of the devastation and trauma caused as a result of their child being exposed to porn:
‘My 6-year-old was shown porn by an older boy at school.’
‘My daughter was on a kids’ games site and a porn pop-up appeared.’
‘My child googled an innocent term, and it took him straight to a porn site.’
‘My son was shown porn on the school bus on the way home.’
‘My 7-year-old saw porn at the school camp.’”
My own Downie children were largely home-schooled – protected to some degree from pornography thrust under their nose by other kids.
But these days, internet-connected devices are required for all types of school subjects. Some of the horror stories Melinda mentions can happen to any child or grandchild – yours or mine.
“Some of these children now suffer insomnia, nightmares, anxiety,” Melinda went on. “In the worst cases, they are medicated due to the level of disturbance caused by exposure to violent porn.

“It surprises many parents to learn there is nothing to prevent their child being exposed to porn. No barriers – such as proof-of-age requirements – to stop them entering rape, sadism, torture porn and incest websites. All before their first kiss.
“We have allowed a never-before-seen experiment on the sexual development of our kids,” Melinda says. “And we’re now seeing the results.”
And what are those results?

Melinda relays reports from deeply worried parents and grandparents:
“My 10-year-old granddaughter was approached by a boy while waiting for the school bus and asked, ‘Do you do arse?’
“My 8-year-old found a note in her school bag which read, ‘Ready for sex?”
“An 8-year-old old boy told my 8-year-old girl he wanted to ‘f**k you hard’.”
Melinda points out that no boy is born this way – it is learned behaviour. Pornography has become the world’s biggest department of education. It’s a sex ed handbook that links sex with aggression, and the word “consent” is never mentioned.

It is child abuse on a massive scale.

So what can we do about it?

Peter Stevens, Director of FamilyVoice Victoria, is also our Coordinator for Child Internet Safety.
In 2019 he sent a detailed submission to a federal parliamentary inquiry into online gambling and pornography, urging compulsory age verification for these websites in order to protect children.
The inquiry report, Protecting the Age of Innocence, was released in February 2020. It agreed with Peter Stevens and many others, recommending mandated age verification for pornographic and other harmful websites. This would not be a “silver bullet” – but would be a big step forward.
Now more than a year has gone by. The federal government has not responded.
Peter Stevens has met with an adviser to the federal communications minister Paul Fletcher to ask what is going on.
The adviser assured him that the government’s response is complete, but the Covid pandemic has delayed its tabling in parliament.

That was weeks ago. Still nothing has happened.

That is why we are ramping up our Protect Children campaign.

For family, faith and freedom,

Peter Downie
National Director