News

Published: 08 June 2021

Reconciliation with our Indigenous fellow citizens is incredibly important to most of us, as we recall the suffering of many Indigenous families over the past two centuries or more.

Here at FamilyVoice Australia we have a deep concern to reach out to the Indigenous community, and regularly give encouragement to Aboriginal children and adults.

But as Sydney Presbyterian pastor Mark Powell said in a recent Quadrant article, “Reconciliation starts with telling the truth.”

Mark has a degree in anthropology. He has studied several primary sources detailing Indigenous culture from the late 18^th century, such as those summarised by noted anthropologist A.P. Elkin.

Mark says it’s difficult to see how true reconciliation can occur when falsehoods – such as claims that Aboriginal people lived in peace and harmony until the Europeans came – continue to be perpetrated.

So what were the actual beliefs and practices of Indigenous peoples living in Australia, especially since Europeans arrived?

In his classic account published in 1964, The Australian Aborigines: How To Understand Them, Elkin describes how Indigenous communities treated their women. They were considered chattels, or worse. Some examples:

• Before a revenge expedition sets out on its dangerous enterprise, its members temporarily exchange wives, thus expressing their unity and friendship to one another.
• The final making of peace between two groups may always include the temporary exchange of wives, and on such occasions, all the usual tribal marriage laws (except those concerned with incest within the family) may be and are usually broken.
• Very often at times of great excitement during ceremonies, the men go aside to prearranged places and there have sexual intercourse with the women, and once again, the usual rules governing the intercourse of the sexes are ignored.
• These occasions are communal in nature, but there is another – the lending of a wife to a visitor.

Robert Hughes AO wrote the early history of British penal settlement in Australia, The Fatal Shore. He sought to provide an unvarnished snapshot of the cultural standards of that time, such as:

 …the unalterable fact of [Indigenous] tribal life was that women had no rights at all and could choose nothing. A girl was usually given away as soon as she was born. She was the absolute property of her kin until marriage, whereupon she became the equally helpless possession of her husband. Before and after [marriage], she was merely a root-grubbing, shell-gathering chattel, whose social assets were wiry arms, prehensile toes and a vagina…

As a mark of hospitality, wives were lent to visitors whom the Iora tribesmen wanted to honour…. If a woman showed the least reluctance to be used for any of these purposes, if she seemed lazy or gave her lord and master any other cause for dissatisfaction, she would be furiously beaten or even speared.

There are many other accounts, such as one by escaped convict William Buckley. He lived for over 30 years among different Aboriginal groups, mostly in Victoria. In his story published in 1852, he reported that “violence, treachery, and killings” were common, almost everyday occurrences.

In many cases the conflicts began over sexual jealousy and abduction of women who, according to Buckley, were the “source of almost all the mischief in which the men engaged”.

Female Aboriginal skulls and bone fragments, uncovered and recorded by archaeologists and dated thousands of years old, had many more massive bone lacerations and scars compared with those in male skulls in the same burial site.

None of this evidence justifies the appalling treatment of Indigenous people by some white settlers.

But Australia’s Indigenous culture was far from idyllic before 1788. As Mark Powell says, true reconciliation cannot be achieved while historical falsehoods continue.

Peter Downie - National Director

FamilyVoice Australia

Published: 04 June 2021

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Published: 04 June 2021

MPs across Australia must “get their act together” to protect more young people from the harms of gender intervention, argues FamilyVoice Australia.

“In response to a growing number of confused children and teenagers receiving puberty suppression or cross sex hormone intervention in various States, we respectfully urge MPs to get their act together and protect young people at risk from the harmful consequences of so-called gender identity treatment,” said FamilyVoice Australia spokesman David d’Lima.

Answers to questions recently raised in the West Australian Parliament by Hon Nick Goiran show a rapid increase in the number of confused young people receiving hormonal intervention in response to gender confusion.

“We commend Nick Goiran, but we need many more MPs to speak up and protect young people from life-long damage in the West and beyond,” David d’Lima said.

FamilyVoice also has applauded recent concerns raised in the New South Wales Parliament by Hon Fred Nile on the issue of gender intervention.

“Questions raised by Rev Nile have confirmed that the NSW Coalition Government supports experimental gender intervention on children that may produce life-long infertility and other irreversible consequences,” David d’Lima said.

“MPs who would not want such radical responses to harm their own young kids or grandchildren cannot sit back and allow confusion to somehow justify high risk prescriptions for young people in the mainstream community.

“The way forward is clarity about biology, and the sensitive encouragement of young people who are struggling with gender identity - but not to prescribe dangerous chemical intervention,” he said.

“MPs must also put a stop to the propaganda and misinformation about gender that is driving the confusion in the first place.”

Published: 01 June 2021

These days, men and boys are in trouble.

Baptist pastor Murray Campbell recently wrote about one example close to his home. As he explained in the Eternity online newspaper, students at the co-ed Parkdale Secondary College were shocked by what happened a few weeks ago.

A female youth worker from the local city council had been invited to give a presentation as part of a “diversity and inclusion” program. According to eyewitness accounts, year 11 boys were “ordered to stand up in class”. What followed was anything but diverse and inclusive.

The Herald Sun reported that the boys were then “slammed by a council youth worker for being white, male and Christian ‘oppressors’”.

If the students were “white”, “male” and “Christian”, they were made to stand and face public humiliation as the youth worker “told them they were responsible for being ‘privileged’ and ‘oppressors’”.

A 16-year-old student said: “It was so messed up, we thought for a moment it was a joke, but then we realised it wasn’t and we were so upset and angry by it all.

“The youth worker basically said straight, white, Christian males were oppressors and they held all the power and privilege in society. The male students felt shamed and targeted.

“It was quite difficult to say anything because she was also talking about LGBTQI+. If you spoke out against that you feared you’d be called homophobic,” the student said.

Murray Campbell said such attitudes and ideas, deriding boys, heterosexuality and Christianity, are not new. “’Safe Schools and Healthy Relationships’ are now part of the curriculum in every Victorian government school and many private schools,” he said.

He could have added that parts of the Safe Schools program are still being taught in other states, including NSW and SA where it is officially banned.

Parkdale Secondary College is only the tip of the iceberg. There is a war against men being waged across the Western world, including Australia and the US, where the photo below was taken.

Feminist message above a mirror in a male bathroom

But social commentator Bettina Arndt has cited extensive research showing that in violent homes it’s not just the dad who is aggressive. Mothers are just as likely to be violent.

“Look at this important study from the Australian Institute of Criminology, which asked young people whether they’d ever witnessed their dads bashing their mums, or the other way around,” Bettina says.

“While the author, David Indermauer, trumpets the finding that almost a quarter of the kids had witnessed their fathers attack their mothers, he totally buries the most important result: almost the same percentage had seen their mothers attacking fathers.”

We are grateful to NSW Upper House MP Mark Latham, who has introduced a Parents’ Rights Bill to give parents a greater say in the moral values taught to their children. We believe all states should pass similar legislation.

And we also believe that Australian students deserve to know the truth – that neither women nor men are naturally peaceful and non-violent. Both sexes need self-control and respect for others.

As the Apostle Paul put it: “All have sinned.”

Peter Downie - National Director

FamilyVoice Australia