News

Published: 18 November 2020

You may have heard of Dr Jereth Kok.

He was a hard-working and much-loved Melbourne Christian family doctor with a wife and two children.

Then last year, the Medical Board of Australia suspended him indefinitely. Two people – not his patients and unknown to him – had made anonymous complaints about his social media posts, along with an article in the Christian newspaper Eternity.

The Board took three months to investigate, paying people to trawl through years of his online articles and comments, before giving him less than a week to prepare his response.

Following his suspension, he appealed to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT), but it upheld the Board’s decision.

His indefinite suspension means he cannot practise as a doctor. He has no income, and his patients must go elsewhere.

Last April, Toowoomba GP Dr David van Gend wrote about this extraordinary miscarriage of justice. Among other things, Dr Kok was accused of racism and “endorsing genocide” in a comment he posted on a Christian blog. In reality, he did the opposite.  Dr van Gend said (in part):

Free speech is one thing; incitement to violence is another. If Melbourne GP Jereth Kok has used social media to endorse genocide, then the decision by the Medical Board of Australia to suspend his registration is justified. If he has done no such thing, then the Board has acted disgracefully, wrongfully defaming Dr Kok and destroying his medical career.

We can judge for ourselves which is the guilty party.

Below is the only post in which Dr Kok refers to genocide. Context is everything.

Kok is commenting in 2012 on an article by Christian social commentator Bill Muehlenberg entitled, “When Aid Money becomes Killing Money”. Muehlenberg objected to the Australian Labor Government joining other Western governments in funding abortions in poor countries.

He argued that “what we really have is coercive utopians from the West working overtime to decimate the populations of poor overseas nations” and quoted a pro-life leader from the US characterising such policies as “population control aimed at poor dark-skinned women”.

The staunchly pro-life Dr Kok posted this bitterly ironic comment:

Thanks to “family planning”, developed nations (Europe, Japan, North America) are in steep decline and are facing an impending financial and economic crisis that comes with an aged population.

See for example what is happening in Japan: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-12296077

Soon, our civilisations will be vanquished, and the Earth will be overrun by Black people. The solution is clear: we must take “family planning” to poor countries and exterminate them before it is too late!

Jereth Kok

Anybody with a reading age above 12 can tell, in context, that this is irony – a rhetorical device by which Kok scorns the decadent West for exporting its culture of death to poor countries.

The Medical Board, however, asserts the exact opposite: that Dr Kok’s comment is an endorsement of genocide!

Incredibly, the VCAT agrees. Kok’s reputation and career are trashed.

The Medical Board of Australia has gravely defamed this GP and owes him an immediate apology.

Friends and church family have helped Dr Kok, but life is tough. He is facing trial on misconduct charges, and will need funds for legal expenses when that time comes.

Please pray for him – especially for guidance about other ways to support his family. And pray for others undergoing similar ordeals.

We are facing increasing persecution – but be strong and of good courage. God is still on the throne.

Peter Downie - National Director

FamilyVoice Australia

See also: Melbourne doctor speaks about Medical Board’s attack

Published: 12 November 2020

Legislation to exclude people from within 150 metres of abortion facilities has passed in South Australia, preventing pro-life ministry and threatening the freedom to silently pray.

Last week the upper house of State Parliament approved Exclusion zone legislation in South Australia.

FamilyVoice Australia is disappointed but not surprised by the passage of legislation.

“Not only will this prevent simply expressing care and concern, but the very freedom to pray silently is now in the balance,” said FamilyVoice spokesman David d’Lima.

“Incredibly, efforts in the lower house to explicitly allow silent prayer were not successful,” he said.

“If anyone prays silently within 150 metres they may be charged under the legislation, and if the matter goes to court, the judge may well conclude Parliament deliberately declined to allow silent prayer and therefore it is not lawful,” he said.

“How pathetic that the state would intrude upon the heart and mind of people concerned only for the welfare of our most vulnerable.” 

Hon Tammy Franks, who sponsored the bill’s passage in the upper house, claimed the legislation was needed in response to health workers and patients experiencing “harassment, intimidation, and threats while trying to access or provide abortion services”.

But in the absence of any significant problem, the legislation solves a problem that does not exist, David d’Lima said.

“Ms Franks is perhaps referring to the unease of conscience that occurs when staff or patients realise someone is praying for the unborn.”

“It is grossly hypocritical of MPs who commence each sitting day with prayer, but now deny that freedom to those seeking to promote life.

“Further, the legislation will prevent the provision of sensitive interaction with women and men attending abortion clinics.

“Without harassment, such life-affirming communication gives pause to a decision that may have been hastily considered, under pressure and in the absence of alternatives.”

Published: 12 November 2020

A new party promoting family values has been established by former Family First senator Bob Day.

Day served as a senator for South Australia from 2014 to 2016.

“The nation has social and economic problems that it wants to solve and social and economic goals it wants to achieve, however looking to politicians, bureaucrats and regulators to solve these problems and achieve these goals is not going to work”, said Day.

Day said the world is changing profoundly, especially technologically, such that politicians, public sector bureaucrats and regulators are hopelessly ill-equipped to manage it.

“The internet has become the new wild west with power concentrated in the hands of tech giants who destroy competition and privacy and misuse the information they collect. Any suggestion these behemoths can be trusted to ‘act fairly’ is laughable.

“We cannot rely on politicians and public sector bureaucrats to protect us. There is only one institution which can combat the lawlessness of the digital jungle and its predators and that is the family. The family is the best place to learn who to trust and who not to trust; who to communicate with and who not to communicate with.

“As for personal freedoms– free to speak, free to believe and free to work, I have been championing these causes all my life”.

The Australian Family Party opposes abortion, euthanasia and prostitution.

“We believe in the right to life and are distressed at the killing of 100,000 unborn babies in Australia each year,” reads its policy on abortion.

“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.”

Rejecting euthanasia, the party says that it “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 party says it is committed to supporting palliative care and “supposed ‘safeguards’ for euthanasia legislation do not work”.

While it also holds that “legalising prostitution only promotes Australia as a sex trafficking destination.

Published: 11 November 2020

SA Liberal MLC Michelle Lensink has upset many South Australians by requiring her controversial abortion bill to be fully debated on Remembrance Day, 11 November.^[i]

Australians have long revered Remembrance Day as a solemn time to remember those who have died in battle during wartime.  Debating, on this sacred day, a bill to allow the killing of unborn babies up to birth is unbelievably insensitive.

RSL State President Cheryl Cates said that planning to debate proposed abortion laws on Remembrance Day is “absolutely inappropriate”.

The practice of remembering members of the armed forces who have died in the line of duty was inaugurated by King George V in 1919.  He called for all activity to stop at the 11^th hour on the 11^th day of the 11^th month, for 2 minutes’ silence to be observed.  The silence would remind people throughout the British Empire of the silence that fell on the battlefields of Europe when the hostilities of the First World War ended when armistice with Germany was signed.

King George V on the first Remembrance Day, 11 November 1919

Initially called Armistice Day, it was renamed Remembrance Day after the Second World War. It is celebrated today in numerous Commonwealth countries, including Canada, India, New Zealand and South Africa, as well as the United Kingdom and Australia.  Similar observances are held in numerous other countries including France, Belgium, Denmark, Israel, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Russia and the United States.

In Poland it became Independence Day, when the Polish people again became self-governing after 123 years of occupation by Prussia, Austria and Russia.  Speaking in November 1918 of the challenges ahead, Polish Marshal Józef Piłsudski said, “only by making a joint effort can we decide on to what extent we will fortify our freedom, and how strongly we will stand on our own two feet”.^[ii]

The Poles remember at 11 am on 11 November - calling it Independence Day

King George V also spoke of freedom in a press statement released from the Palace on 7 November 1919.  He said (in part):

Tuesday next, 11 November, is the first anniversary of the armistice, which stayed the world-wide carnage of the four preceding years, and marked the victory of right and freedom.

I believe that my people in every part of the Empire fervently wish to perpetuate the memory of that great deliverance and of those who laid down their lives to achieve it.

To afford an opportunity for the universal expression of this feeling it is my desire and hope that at the hour when the Armistice came into force, the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, there may be for the brief space of two minutes a complete suspension of all our normal activities.

During that time, except in the rare cases where this may be impracticable, all work, all sound, and all locomotion should cease, so that, in perfect stillness, the thoughts of everyone may be concentrated on reverent remembrance of the glorious dead.^[iii]

Red poppies grow wild on the WW1 battlefields

We should remember tomorrow that the freedoms we enjoy in Australia are in part due to the men and women who have laid down their lives in sacrifice.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old; 
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. 
At the going down of the sun and in the morning 
We will remember them.^[iv]

Peter Downie - National Director

FamilyVoice Australia

^[i] Elizabeth Henson, "Abortion bill debate on Remembrance Day ‘inappropriate’: RSL State president Cheryl Cates", The Advertiser, 2 November 2020, https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/abortion-bill-debate-on-remembrance-day-inappropriate-rsl-state-president-cheryl-cates/news-story/fad2dfaff4f142145548eff3b110d977?from=htc_rss

^[ii] Dagmara Leszkowicz, "Day of freedom: when Poland regained its independence", The First News, 11 November 2019, https://www.thefirstnews.com/article/day-of-freedom-when-poland-regained-its-independence-3211

^[iii] Peter Street, "The great silence begins", The Times, 7 November 1919; quoted in "Two-minute silence", Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-minute_silence

^[iv] From “For the Fallen”, a poem by Laurence Binyon.