News

Published: 10 June 2021

Voted for the euthanasia bill:

David Basham, Finnis (Lib)
Frances Bedford, Florey (Ind)
Troy Bell, Mount Gambier (Ind)
Zoe Bettison, Ramsay (ALP)
Vickie Chapman, Bragg (Lib)
Matt Cowdrey, Colton (Lib)
Jon Gee, Taylor (ALP)
Eddie Hughes, Giles (ALP)
Steven Marshall, Dunstan (Lib)
Lee Odenwalder, Elizabeth (ALP)
David Pisoni, Unley (Lib)
Jayne Stinson, Badcoe (ALP)
Tim Whetstone, Chaffey (Lib)
Leon Bignell, Mawson (ALP)
Susan Close, Port Adelaide (ALP)
Fraser Ellis, Narungga (Ind)
Richard Harvey, Newland (Lib)
Paula Luethen, King (Lib)
Nick McBride, MacKillop (Lib)
Stephen Patterson, Morphett (Lib)
Carolyn Power, Elder (Lib)
Joe Szakacs, Cheltenham (ALP)
Corey Wingard, Gibson (Lib)
Blair Boyer, Wright (ALP)
Nat Cook, Hurtle Vale (ALP)
John Gardner Morialta (LIb)
Katrine Hildyard, Reynell (ALP)
Peter Malinauskas, Croydon (ALP)
Stephen Mullighan, Lee (ALP)
Chris Picton, Kaurna (ALP)
Rachel Sanderson, Adelaide (Lib)
Peter Treloar, Flinders (Lib)
Dana Wortley, Torrens (ALP)

*Geoff Brock, Frome (IND) - Did not vote but granted a pair in support of the bill.

Voted against the bill:

Dan Cregan, Kavel (Lib)
Tom Koutsantonis, West Torrens (ALP)
Adrian Pederick, Hammond (Lib)
Vincent Tarzia, Hartley (Lib)
Sam Duluk, Waite (Ind)
Andrea Michaels, Enfield (ALP)
Tony Piccolo, Light (ALP)
Dan van Holst Pellekaan
Stephan Knoll, Schubert (Lib)
Steve Murray, Davenport (Lib)
David Speirs, Black (Lib)

*Michael Brown, Playford (ALP) - Did not vote but granted a pair against the bill.

Other

Note: Speaker Josh Teague (Heyson - Lib) did not vote.

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

Click here to listen.

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.”