The Australian Family Party believes the family should be the nation’s top priority. The Australian Family Party believes it is time to strengthen the family. It is time to protect the family, to fight for the family, your family is the one thing you’d take a bullet for.
Family has what is called ‘agency’. It can do things.
Family provides meaning, belonging and security. Strong family relationships reduce depression and anxiety disorders, strengthen the immune system and speed recovery from surgery.
We all know there is no model or perfect family. Every family is flawed because it is made up of flawed human beings. But the family is the place to cultivate the right way to view life and the world around us. These are indeed difficult times but we’ve known hardships before. They are the snakes and ladders of life and these too will pass.
Social ills caused by the rupturing of family relationships – divorce, de-facto relationships, fatherless households, single mothers bringing up children, high housing costs, lead to a breakdown in society. Family breakdown is costly.
Mental illness costs the economy $180bn a year. More than 3,000 Australians take their lives each year. More young men take their own lives than are killed in road accidents. Boys raised in father-absent environments are five times more likely to commit suicide, ten times more likely to abuse drugs, fourteen times more likely to commit rape, and twenty times more likely to end up in a correctional facility. Fatherless households are a dreadful problem.
As are divorce, domestic violence, loneliness and addiction to alcohol, gambling, drugs and pornography.
Suicide rates have increased. Rates of depression have sky-rocketed. Drug overdoses, the ICE scourge, something is very wrong.
There is a strong link between the health of the family and crime. It begins in the home.
This is no more clearly demonstrated than the collapse of the Aboriginal family.
The Australian Family Party believes it is futile looking to politicians, public sector bureaucrats and regulators to fix these social ills.
Prostitution, abortion, euthanasia, poker machines, higher taxes and more spending, these are all policies promoted by both Labor and Liberal politicians across the country.
Trust in politicians and bureaucrats has collapsed.
But there is hope. The family.
Domestic Violence and Child Abuse
The Australian Family Party stands firmly against domestic violence and child abuse. The Australian Family Party promotes love, honour and respect within the family. Where domestic violence or child abuse occurs, the victims must be able to escape to safety and the perpetrators must be brought to swift justice.
Caring for Carers
- Family members who care for their sick or disabled family members or friends are the essence of what it means to be a caring community.
- Regrettably, despite the importance of carers in enabling those they care for to lead their lives with dignity and the enormous cost savings they make for the community through their efforts, they receive too little support and are often left to do the best they can in difficult circumstances.
- The Australian Family Party is absolutely committed to support programs and initiatives that affirm the role of carers and assist them, both economically and emotionally, to fulfil their caring roles.
- At the Australian Family Party we see the primary caring role of family and friends as the normal and appropriate response of a caring community.
- Australia’s aged care system is costing billions and the horrific tales out of the Aged Care Royal Commission show it is a system that doesn’t work. Much more needs to be done to support families caring for aged parents and grandparents at home with the family.
Gambling addiction
Gambling addiction causes incredible harm to family life. Similarly, alcohol, tobacco and other drug addictions are destructive to both individuals and their families. Alcohol-fuelled violence and binge-drinking are a major national problem. The Australian Family Party believes alcohol and gambling advertising should be banned consistent with equivalent restrictions on tobacco advertising. ‘Plain packaging’ restrictions however would not apply and liquor outlets would otherwise continue to trade in accordance with state, federal and local laws.
Pornography
Pornography demeans women and has a negative effect on family relationships. The Australian Family Party believes that the current State ban on X-rated pornography should be extended to the ACT and NT. Families should also not have to put up with public billboard and news-stand advertising that is not G-rated. Unlike television – which can be switched off or the channel changed – when driving to school or waiting in a supermarket queue, a family cannot avoid the awkward, often offensive confrontation of advertisements that are sexual, graphic or violent in nature. Advertising standards for public displays must be upheld at a G-rated level to help our children be children.
Life is Precious
The Australian Family Party believes life is precious and is committed to the preservation and protection of human life, believing it to be sacred, precious and of inestimable value. We uphold the value and dignity of those within society who are unable to adequately advocate for themselves including unborn children, and some people who are elderly or have a disability. Without upholding their dignity, the scope for them to be manipulated, abused or harmed increases.
Abortion
We believe in the right to life and are distressed at the killing of 100,000 unborn babies in Australia each year. The Australian Family Party opposes Medicare funding for gender-selected abortion. We also support families having the opportunity to review information on coping with, support groups and other helpful material about alleged disabilities, genetic or life-threatening conditions diagnosed in an unborn child, before proceeding with a termination. Gender-selection and disability-based abortion do not respect:
- The inherent value in a life,
- The maternal and paternal bond,
- Respect or dignity for the disabled, and
- In gender cases, sets back the cause of gender equality.
The Australian Family Party has major reservations about genetic testing which might purport to identify non-life-threatening traits in children which might then be used as a basis for abortion.
In Victoria there is almost one late-term abortion each day, many of these for “psycho-social” reasons. The Consultative Council on Obstetric and Paediatric Mortality and Morbidity list the number of late-term abortions carried out each year – and the number of babies who survived the procedure and were left to die.
The Australian Family Party believes the lives of unborn children are precious and must be fought for. The unborn should be afforded all the rights of human beings, protected from terminations justified on economic, personal or psychological grounds.
The Australian Family Party supports fetal homicide legislation to criminalise acts that endanger or take the life of an unborn child.
The Australian Family Party supports legislative protection of the long-standing ethical guarantee to medical professionals that they have a right to conscientiously object to participating in, or referring patients to, abortion services without fear of losing their jobs or being ostracized by abortion providers.
Child rights
The Australian Family Party opposes surrogacy in both private and commercial cases, given its legal and emotional complexity for children and birth mothers. The Australian Family Party supports the children being born into the family of their birth mother and father, raised and cherished accordingly. Similarly, the Australian Family Party believes in adoption being exclusively offered to married couples consisting of a man and a woman. Properly vetted and counselled, these couples should be offered the opportunity to provide a child with the love, support and security that they deserve.
Euthanasia
The Australian Family Party rejects euthanasia. Euthanasia does not provide the dignity its advocates claim. Human beings are built to live and survive, and the deliberate ending of a life prematurely removes value and worth. Euthanasia is the wrong way to treat those who are old and sick. The Australian Family Party is committed to supporting of palliative care programs which enable people to live with dignity for the whole of their lives. Vulnerable patients dependent on medical professionals for their health should not be subject to proposals of premature death.
Supposed ‘safeguards’ for euthanasia legislation do not work. In Holland where euthanasia has been practiced since the 1990s, 1000 people per year are killed without their consent. The Dutch experience shows that so-called voluntary euthanasia quickly becomes non-voluntary euthanasia.
(See also the Senate speech on Euthanasia in Further Reading, below.)
Prostitution
The life of women is too precious to allow prostitution to flourish in Australia. Prostitution is harmful to women. The Australian Family Party opposes legalised prostitution, and supports efforts to prevent sex trafficking. Legalising prostitution only promotes Australia as a sex trafficking destination. The Australian Family Party supports the Nordic model of criminalizing the buying of sex, not the selling of sex, which has significantly reduced prostitution in the Nordic countries and affirmed women’s equality.
Suicide Prevention
The Australian Family Party laments the loss of life to suicide. Whilst accepting suicide is a modern global phenomenon, the Australian Family Party upholds policies which promote helpful discussions with people who have suicidal thoughts – discussions about the value of their own life, and the value that their own family holds their life to have.
Human cloning and embryonic stem cells
The Australian Family Party opposes human cloning and the use of embryonic stem cells for medical research. Far more viable treatments and cures have been developed from stem cells ethically derived from live patients, rather than human embryos.
Further Reading
International Organization for the Family ‘Verona Declaration’ – Adopted March 2019
The Destruction of the Family
[Simon P. Kennedy, Quadrant magazine.]
The Family and the Modern Welfare State
[Dr Alan Tapper, reproduced with permission. Note: the Charts mentioned in the text appear at the end of the PDF]
Common sense, not research, nurtures our kids
[Frank Furedi, The Australian]
Drug Free Australia – Position Statement
[Drug Free Australia, reproduced with permission.]