News

Published: 24 January 2023

This country is in a cultural war. Our traditional values and cultural icons are being not only challenged but replaced by a vastly inferior values system.  

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews decided not to hold an Australia Day parade in Melbourne last year and looks to be doing the same this year.  

Meanwhile statues of Captain Cook were splashed with red paint and a large crowd protested in the CBD with placards attacking the celebration of ”Invasion Day.” And the Federal Government paid $20 million so that now anybody can fly the Aboriginal flag without infringing copyright. 

This was on top of the disgraceful burning of the main doors at old Parliament House in Canberra.  

The left on the political spectrum are determined to undermine those values we have held dear as a nation over many decades.  Left leaning government when they have gained office at both state and federal levels, have poured copious amounts of taxpayers money into left wing causes.  Worse still is that conservative governments have kept being generous to these groups under various community gifts and grants and leave in place many social `reforms’ implemented by `progressive governments’ over the years. 

Vociferous minority groups receive all the attention and their priorities over time have replaced the priorities off the silent majority. To put it in perspective, the following were the norms when I was growing up but since then our cultural norms have been mostly disregarded. 

When I was growing up everyone was proud to be an Australian and celebrated Australia Day with parades and various social activities. We had one flag – not three. The roles of men and women were regarded as complementary and it was widely regarded as a man’s role to be the principal breadwinner for his family. A woman’s role was centred around the home, supporting her husband and raising her family. Marriage was seen as a union between a man and a woman, everyone saw this as natural and normative. Formal childcare was a rarity and only used by well off families. 

At this stage – Australia was self-sufficient and had a genuine full employment where unemployed rates were around 2% and not the 5% as claimed today. 

Fast forward forty years later and conservative values have been decimated and disregarded.  

It’s tempting to think that feminist, gay rights and Indigenous demands in their latest manifestations will collide with human nature and common sense once too often and then just go away. A collective cry of "enough" will arise and, magically, young women will no longer be made to feel foolish about wanting marriage and children.  And men will no longer have to worry about "offending" their dates and watching every word they utter, and freedom and rationality will return to everyday life.  

Alas, this hope might seem to be bolstered by the failure of egalitarian zealotry in Australia, Sweden and the USA to radically alter the basic structures of society.  Unfortunately, such hope is undermined by the extent to which pressure groups have already won the day in this country.   Today no teacher or public speaker dares use "he", “Chairman”, “policeman”, or “fireman”.  Critics must apologise before praising books, movies, or ideas that deviate from the politically correct line.

Left wing political correctness ideology now shapes to an unprecedented degree the rights and duties that govern institutional and social life. Once in place, inclusive language, acknowledging  Aboriginal land claims, hiring quotas for females in education and employment, textbook censorship, court jurisdiction over private association, and all the other travesties of liberalism to which Australians have become numb, are likely to stay in place long after they will have clearly have seen to have failed to achieve the unachievable. But this will not deter the left, they will press on regardless with their jihad until they crush the last vestiges of conservatism and the Christian life view.

Traditional values based on the Judeo-Christian life-view, the roles such as mother and father, husband and wife are not just arbitrary categories into which people are squeezed.  Rather they are broad patterns and principles of behaviour which define the optimum ways in which men and women can relate together, enjoy intimacy, and provide a context in which children can grow up healthy and strong. The traditional roles of men and women reflect a vital component in stabilising family life and protecting vulnerable children; these roles are the crucial pivot - the foundation - upon which both family and society revolve.  

It’s time governments, and the silent majority, stood up for traditional family values and stopped pampering to the destructive leftist agenda.

Peter Downie

National Director

FamilyVoice Australia

Published: 19 December 2022

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Published: 02 December 2022

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Published: 01 December 2022

Weeks before the November 2010 Victoria State Election, I stood on the steps of Parliament House, Spring Street, Melbourne, with a few FamilyVoice supporters.

In a broad phalanx around us was every member of Victoria’s Liberal/National Coalition, led by Ted Baillieu - and every MP held a copy of FamilyVoice Australia’s Open Letter calling for the restoration of religious organisations’ right to employ people of the same ethos – a privilege removed by Brumby’s Labor government.

That day, the Coalition declared that, if elected, they would amend Equal Opportunity laws and restore religious rights. Soon after, Ted Baillieu announced that the Coalition would preference the Greens last.

These two factors swung conservative voters and provided the Liberal/Nationals with a narrow election win.

Contrast Matthew Guy’s 2022 election campaign and the Liberal Party’s devastating loss (again) to Labor. It was the Liberals’ election to lose. Daniel Andrews’ government had overseen the longest Covid lockdowns in the world, Hotel Quarantine failure and the loss of 801 lives, a bigger debt than NSW, Queensland and Tasmania combined, partial collapse of the health system, the Suburban Rail Loop declared an “extravagant waste of public money,” and four matters under investigation by IBAC (Anti-Corruption Commission).

Labor had shocked Christian conservatives with extreme abortion laws, euthanasia, removed faith-based organisations’ right to employ according to ethos, introduced gender change on birth certificates, criminalized counselling or prayer for those seeking gender or sexual help, and pushed ahead with gender and sexual ideology curriculum from kinder to year 12.

Matthew Guy, following the imprudent example of other Liberal parties also suffering crushing defeats in Western Australia, South Australia and federally, deserted conservatives.

He promised funding for legal aid to the LGBTIQ lobby, banned Renee Heath from the party room for her Christian beliefs, suggested to Islamic groups that he would revisit Equal Opportunity laws but failed to make it a policy announcement, and ejected staunch conservative Bernie Finn from the party.

Guy failed to hit back at the relentless Labor push to impose its socialist ideology agenda, laws suppressing religious organisations and the church, the “climate emergency” debacle and soaring energy prices, and life issues.

Liberals around Australia have become “Labor-lite” in a fruitless endeavor to build their support base among left-wing voters, failing to realize that left wing voters will always choose the real thing – Labor or the Greens.

There is some good news in Victoria: Family First Party, led by fearless Christian Lyle Shelton polled better than all other minor parties, and at least five, perhaps more, of the Christian upper house candidates strongly promoted by FamilyVoice are on track to be elected, doubling, or tripling the number of Christians in parliament.

One can only hope that the new Victorian Liberal leader, and Liberal leaders around the country realize that the only hope the Coalition have, to ever govern is to move significantly to the right.

Peter Stevens is FamilyVoice Victoria State Director