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Voice to Parliament

The New Gulag

17/07/2023 by Australian Family Party

new-gulagIn his famous three-volume masterpiece, The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn described the frozen wastelands of Siberia where political prisoners and dissidents the Soviet state considered dangerous were held (for their speech, not their actions). A gulag was a Soviet prison; an archipelago is a string of islands; hence the term ‘gulag archipelago’ – a string of camps, prisons, transit centres, secret police, informers, spies and interrogators across Siberia.

Today, people are frozen out of society in more subtle ways. The authorities no longer bash down your door and haul you off to a gulag for espousing the ‘wrong views’; instead they silence you and freeze you out of existence in other ways.

No-one describes the current situation better than Scottish commentator Neil Oliver in his Essentials of Life video clip. More about that shortly.

Divide and conquer

As we know, the Left’s chief weapon is division. Unite the disaffected groups and those with grievances, and then ‘divide and conquer’ the rest of us. Divide along racial, generational, sexual, religious or economic lines. Any line will do.

What may have started as ‘the workers vs the bosses’ – ‘the proletariat vs the bourgeoisie’ – and ‘supporting the poor’, was just a ruse to gain power. Workers and the poor have long since been abandoned by the Left who now find other ways to divide and conquer.

In his excellent book, Democracy in a Divided Australia, Matthew Lesh writes:

‘Australia has a new political, cultural, and economic elite. The class divides of yesteryear have been replaced by new divisions between Inners and Outers. This divide is ripping apart our political parties, national debate, and social fabric.

Inners are highly educated inner-city progressive cosmopolitans who value change, diversity, and self-actualisation. Inners, despite being a minority, dominate politics on both sides, the bureaucracy, universities, civil society, corporates, and the media. They have created a society ruled by educated elites – that is, ruled by themselves.

Outers are the instinctive traditionalists who value stability, safety, and unity. Outers are politically, culturally, and economically marginalised in today’s graduate-dominated knowledge society era. Their voice is muzzled in public debate, driving disillusionment with the major parties, and record levels of frustration, disengagement, and pessimism.’

For over a hundred years, Australia fought to remove race from civic considerations. Yet now we are being asked to permanently divide the nation by entrenching an Indigenous Voice into our Constitution. By the ‘Inners’, of course.

In the workplace, politicians are still treating workplace behaviour like a game of football. Australia’s employers (‘the bosses’) are on one team, and Australia’s employees (‘the workers’) are on the other. The game is then overseen by a so-called ‘independent umpire’ called the Fair Work Commission. But of course, this is not how workplaces operate at all. The ‘game’, if you even want to call it that, is played not by two teams of employers and employees, but by hundreds, even thousands of different teams, competing against hundreds and thousands of other teams of employers and employees.

Mark Twain observed, “Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example”.

Here’s one – the infamous Dollar Sweets dispute where unions were picketing Fred Stauder’s confectionery business. Other confectionery businesses were approached to support Fred but were rebuffed saying, “Why should we care if Dollar Sweets goes down? It will mean more business for us.”  So much for ‘bosses vs workers’.

While paying lip service to free markets, property rights, personal responsibility, self-reliance, free speech, lower taxes, the rule of law, and smaller government, the Liberal Party in Australia has all but abandoned these ideals in practice. As has big business, which, truth be known, was never on the side of free markets. Corporations have always wanted markets they can dominate, and to eliminate the competition. If that means aligning with the Left or doing the government’s bidding, so be it.

Which includes – and here we return to our ‘new gulags’ theme – closing a person’s bank account, destroying them on social media or excluding them from employment. Business is right on board with this.

The Left will keep pushing its woke agenda until it is stopped. And it will not be stopped with facts, figures, logic, evidence or reason. It doesn’t care about any of that. It will only be stopped with political power.

Holding conferences, writing opinion pieces, producing podcasts and YouTube interviews in the hope of persuading people have, I’m afraid, had their day. The ‘Inners’ now rule.

Stopping the relentless march of the Left will require political power. Seats in parliament. Which means like-minded people and parties forming alliances and working strategically and tactically together to win seats.

In Neil Oliver’s video clip, he says, “When it comes to the state, that which it can do, it certainly will do” and “What can happen to anyone, will soon happen to everyone”.

So, if you belong to a think-tank, lobby group or centre-right political party, and want to stop the woke Left further ruining our country, then please encourage your organisation to place less emphasis on winning arguments and more emphasis on winning seats – as previously outlined here and here.

Filed Under: Australia's economic future, Australian Politics, Culture Wars, Family Policy, Freedom, Social policy, Voice to Parliament

It’s Time

29/04/2023 by Australian Family Party

its-timeIn 1911, French physician and psychologist Édouard Claparède published his observations of a female amnesiac patient. The woman was suffering from a debilitating form of amnesia which left her incapable of forming new memories. She had suffered localized brain damage that preserved her basic mechanical and reasoning skills, along with most of her older memories, but beyond the duration of a few minutes, the recent past was lost to her.

Claparède’s patient would have seemed straight out of a slapstick farce had her condition not been so tragic. Each day the doctor would greet her and run through a series of introductions. If he then left for 15 minutes, she would forget who he was, and the same introductions would happen all over again.

One day, Claparède decided to vary the routine. He introduced himself to the woman as usual, but when he reached out to shake her hand for the first time, he concealed a pin in his palm.

It wasn’t friendly, but Claparède was on to something. When he arrived the next day, his patient greeted him with the usual blank welcome and with no memory of the previous day’s activities – until Claparède extended his hand. Without being able to explain why, the woman refused to shake his hand. She was incapable of forming new memories, yet she had nevertheless remembered something – a subconscious sense of danger, a remembrance of past trauma. She failed to recognize the face and the voice she’d encountered every day for months, but somehow, buried in her mind, she remembered a threat.

I’m indebted to Gerry from Rants, Raves, Reviews & Reflections for his excellent summary of Claparède’s famous experiment.

It’s been said that ‘Those who ignore history, are destined to repeat it.’

How then do we help people to remember?

Last week, we repeated the phrase, ‘Lest we forget’.

What pins can we plant into public discourse to ensure that we do not repeat the disasters of the past?

For example, in 1972, Labor leader Gough Whitlam was elected on the back of a great campaign song called It’s Time. Some of the lyrics went like this:

It’s time for freedom,
It’s time for moving, It’s time to begin,
Yes It’s time.

It’s time for children,
It’s time to show them, Time to look ahead,
Yes It’s time.

Time for better,
Come together, Time, Time, Time,
Yes It’s time.

It’s Time became the most memorable song and slogan in Australia’s political history. It did more than sell a political message, it captured a mood, a vibe.

As a 20-year-old public servant at the time, naturally I voted for it!

It didn’t take long however, for Whitlam’s real agenda to leap out of the song’s Trojan Horse.

Once elected, Whitlam made the not-so-modest statement, “There are moments in history when the whole fate and future of nations can be decided by a single decision. This is such a time.”

What followed was massive social and economic policy upheaval.

Unemployment, inflation and a total failure to manage the economy led to Labor suffering a massive defeat in 1975.

We voted Whitlam in on the ‘vibe’. When we realised what we’d done, however, we quickly voted him out again.

But imagine for a moment that Whitlam’s policies had been inserted into our Constitution and not just into legislation.

Whitlam was temporary. The Voice will be permanent.

The Whitlam disaster is our Claparède pin.

It’s Time …

…. to Vote No.

Filed Under: Australia's economic future, Australian Character, Australian Politics, Culture Wars, Family Policy, Social policy, Voice to Parliament

Keystone Kops

01/04/2023 by Australian Family Party

Keystone-KopsA local police force was chasing a criminal who had fled into a large disused building. Their first thought was to surround the building, but they then realized that the building was so large and had so many doors and windows, they didn’t have enough police on the scene to cover all the exits. So instead, they surrounded the building next door which was smaller and had fewer exits.

Our nation is facing some serious economic problems – inflation, rising interest rates, high mortgages (forcing both parents out to work), high cost of living (educating and raising children, power prices, water prices) – and social ills caused by the rupturing of family relationships, addiction to alcohol, gambling, drugs and pornography, and suicide. Yet what does our government do? Like Keystone Kops, they surround other buildings – such as climate change, an indigenous voice, and distorting words and language. Denying one’s gender is now ‘gender-affirming’, free speech is now ‘hate speech’, abortion has become ‘reproductive health’, euthanasia or assisted suicide is now ‘dying with dignity’, and so on.

In the UK, they say everything is policed except crime. People are arrested for silently praying near an abortion clinic, while assaults and robberies go un-investigated.

How did it come to this?

In short, what we have now is a society and a culture that has banished God and the Bible and replaced it with a society which says, “We are now in charge. We will decide what is right and wrong. We will say what is good and bad.”

It goes right back to the beginning – “Eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and you will be like God.”

That is where Western culture is today.

Over the centuries, we’ve seen numerous tyrants, revolutionaries and despots take over whole societies. None more effective than Engels and Marx in the nineteenth century and Mao and Gramsci in the twentieth century with their ‘long march through all of society’s institutions’ – first and foremost being education and the indoctrination of the young. Then came the law, business, politics, health, the media, the military and finally, the church. Yes, the church.

It was once the case that the church sent its members into the world to convert the world to the church’s ways. What we’ve seen in recent times, however, is a reverse of that with the world sending its members into the church to convert the church to the world’s ways!

These corrupted institutions have shaped the culture. The culture then shapes politics, and politics shapes our laws.

It is world-wide and it is co-ordinated. It is a spiritual battle, and spiritual battles are fought with spiritual weapons.

In the famous story of David and Goliath, when David volunteered to fight Goliath, King Saul tried to put his armour on him, but David rejected it. You don’t fight spiritual battles with secular armour.

Like David compared to Goliath, we are also massively out-sized and out-numbered by our enemies.

But we are not to despair. God will choose who He wants to fight in this battle, and it will be those who put up their hand and say, “Here am I Lord, send me”.

Filed Under: Australia's economic future, Australian Character, Australian Politics, Culture Wars, Family Policy, Freedom, Social policy, Voice to Parliament

Remembering The Galatians Group

01/03/2023 by Australian Family Party

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

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

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

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

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

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

How did this happen?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Filed Under: Australia's economic future, Australian Character, Australian Politics, Culture Wars, Freedom, Social policy, Voice to Parliament

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Recent Posts

  • Oppenheimer
  • Israel
  • The New Gulag
  • Beam Me Up, Scotty
  • Remembering Andrew Evans
  • It’s Time
  • Keystone Kops
  • Remembering Frederick Douglass
  • Remembering The Galatians Group
  • The Shrinking Forest ­– Part 5
  • The Shrinking Forest – Part 4
  • The Shrinking Forest – Part 3
  • The Shrinking Forest – Part 2
  • The Shrinking Forest – Part 1

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