News

Published: 07 October 2020

On September 4^th the Andrews’ government narrowly passed the Public Health and Wellbeing Amendment (State of Emergency Extension and Other Matters) Bill 2020 with the help of three cross benchers - Greens, Reason Party and Animal Justice Party.

The bill extended the government’s emergency powers for a further six months and allows a state of emergency to be declared in rolling four-week blocks.

The Coalition, most cross benchers, and many thousands of concerned Victorians, including FamilyVoice supporters, opposed the extension of powers.

The Herald Sun (25th August 20) stated, “State of emergency powers allow our democratically elected governments to, for a limited time, impose a level of authoritarian rule. These powers, by their nature and ambit, are in essence the opposite of our cherished, democratic freedoms. If left open-ended, such extraordinary powers invite abuse and result in an incremental move towards authoritarianism.”

Now the Andrews government is trying to push through another radical piece of legislation – what former Victoria Police chief commissioner Kel Glare calls a “dangerous grab for unfettered power.”

The Covid-19 Omnibus (Emergency Measures) and Other Acts Amendment Bill 2020 allows the ongoing operation of essential services like courts, local governments, support payments, permits, hearings and renewals etc.

Dangerously, however, the bill also gives authorised officers - anyone nominated by the Department of Health and Human Services - the right to detain, as long as necessary, those whom they deem to be a serious risk to public health.

Victorians would not even need to be diagnosed with COVID-19 to be subject to detention, but merely a "close contact" of someone with the virus - and authorised officers’ decisions would be difficult to contest.

Significant abuses of power and the disregarding of checks and balances have already occurred during the state government’s mishandling of the Covid-19 outbreak. The government should not be handed open-ended permission to trample the rights of Victorians.

The bill has already passed the state’s lower house. Please tell upper house MPs that you are not happy with the Andrews governments power grab and that the ‘Omnibus’ bill must be amended.

Or use this link below to enter your address, then > region > view member. Send an email to the address provided, letting your representative politely know how you feel.

https://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/about/electorates

Victoria’s Upper House members of parliament by region

Eastern Metropolitan

Bruce Atkinson                                 bruce.atkinson@parliament.vic.gov.au;

Matthew Back                                   matthew.bach@parliament.vic.gov.au;

Rodney Barton                                  Rodney.Barton@parliament.vic.gov.au;

Shaun Leane                                      shaun.leane@parliament.vic.gov.au;

Sonja Terpstra                                   Sonja.Terpstra@parliament.vic.gov.au;

Eastern Victoria

Melina Bath                                        melina.bath@parliament.vic.gov.au;

Jeff Bourman                                     jeff.bourman@parliament.vic.gov.au;

Jane Garrett                                       jane.garrett@parliament.vic.gov.au;

Harriet Shing                                      harriet.shing@parliament.vic.gov.au;

Edward O’Donohue                        Edward.ODonohue@parliament.vic.gov.au;

Southern Metropolitan

Georgie Crozier                                 georgie.crozier@parliament.vic.gov.au;

David Davis                                         david.davis@parliament.vic.gov.au;

Enver Erdogan                                   enver.erdogan@parliament.vic.gov.au;

Clifford Hayes                                    Clifford.Hayes@parliament.vic.gov.au;

Nina Taylor                                         Nina.Taylor@parliament.vic.gov.au;

South East Metropolitan

Tien Kieu                                             Tien.Kieu@parliament.vic.gov.au;

David Limbrick                                   David.Limbrick@parliament.vic.gov.au;

Gordon Rich-Phillips                        gordon.rich-phillips@parliament.vic.gov.au;

Adam Somyurek                               adem.somyurek@parliament.vic.gov.au;

Lee Tarlamis                                       lee.tarlamis@parliament.vic.gov.au;

Western Metropolitan

Catherine Cumming                        Catherine.Cumming@parliament.vic.gov.au;

Bernie Finn                                         bernie.finn@parliament.vic.gov.au;

Cesar Melhem                                   cesar.melhem@parliament.vic.gov.au;

Ingrid Stitt                                           Ingrid.Stitt@parliament.vic.gov.au;

Kaushaliya Vaghela                         Kaushaliya.Vaghela@parliament.vic.gov.au;

Western Victoria

Stuart Grimley                                   Stuart.Grimley@parliament.vic.gov.au;

Bev McArthur                                    Beverley.McArthur@parliament.vic.gov.au;

Andy Meddick                                   Andy.Meddick@parliament.vic.gov.au;

Jaala Pulford                                      jaala.pulford@parliament.vic.gov.au;

Gayle Tierney                                    gayle.tierney@parliament.vic.gov.au;

Northern Metropolitan

Nazih Elasmar                                    nazih.elasmar@parliament.vic.gov.au;

Craig Ondarchie                                craig.ondarchie@parliament.vic.gov.au;

Fiona Patten                                      fiona.patten@parliament.vic.gov.au;

Samantha Ratnam                           samantha.ratnam@parliament.vic.gov.au;

Northern Victoria

Mark Gepp                                         mark.gepp@parliament.vic.gov.au;

Jaclyn Symes                                      jaclyn.symes@parliament.vic.gov.au;

Wendy Lovell                                     wendy.lovell@parliament.vic.gov.au;

Tania Maxwell                                   Tania.Maxwell@parliament.vic.gov.au;

Tim Quilty                                           Tim.Quilty@parliament.vic.gov.au;

Published: 07 October 2020

Catholic bishops in Queensland have issued a pastoral letter warning against the legalisation of euthanasia in Queensland.

The move comes as Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk visited the state’s Governor to mark the official beginning of the election campaign.

Palaszczuk’s Labor Government supports euthanasia and has delayed disclosure of a planned bill until after the election.

But Palaszczuk’s Labor Government may now regret its push for euthanasia with the Catholic bishops making it an election issue.

Two Australian states, Victoria and Western Australia, have legalised euthanasia.

In their letter the three Catholic bishops write that:

“The Catholic Church is opposed to voluntary assisted dying. However, the Church strongly supports high-quality palliative care, respect for patient autonomy, preservation of personal dignity and a peaceful end to life. Nobody is morally compelled to suffer unbearable pain, nobody should feel like a burden, and nobody should feel that their life is worthless.”

The bishops write that research shows that many people do not understand the Church’s position on end-of-life care.

“Misunderstandings may lead people to support voluntary assisted dying (VAD) legislation on mistaken assumptions about what dying entails and how the Catholic Church teaches one should respond to it.

“There is confusion about the right to refuse or end treatment, about the moral legitimacy of advance care planning, about the use of pain-relieving medications, and about when hastening death may be morally acceptable.

“Moreover, many people struggle to see the potential implications for society as a whole of legalising intentional killing of another person, even in strictly limited circumstances.

 The bishops say that societies in which life is cheap suffer from many maladies and injustices.

“But where the meaningfulness and purposefulness of life are held sacred from cradle to the grave, for the just and the wicked, for rich and for poor, in short, for all, a society can genuinely care for the common good. Because in such a society there is always the opportunity for a change of heart, for a conversion of the mind, for love and mercy to shine through.

The bishops also highlight remarks by Pope Francis, saying that he “has encouraged Catholic people everywhere to resist euthanasia and to ensure that the elderly, the young and the vulnerable are not cast aside in what he has called a ‘throw-away culture’”.

“Instead, the Pope calls us as Catholics to follow Jesus Christ by accompanying people at the end of their life with all the skill of palliative medicine and all the compassion of the human heart, since true palliative care embraces the whole person, physically, emotionally, psychologically and spiritually. That is the ‘care-first’ approach which the Church supports being made available on a statewide basis – an alternative path to that of assisted dying legislation.”

The bishops say that they are investigating the development of a training program within Catholic communities to help people better understand what choices they already have and what pathways already exist to ensure a dignified and peaceful death.

“The aim is to train facilitators who can guide people to the experts they need and who can provide opportunities for those experts to interact with people in their particular contexts from time to time in a formative way, ”they say.

FamilyVoice has previously warned the Palaszczuk Government not to open the door to state-sanctioned killing and that it is appalling that there is a push for euthanasia during a time when many Australians are experiencing severe anxiety during the corona pandemic.

Published: 02 October 2020

A Wisconsin court has placed on hold a district school policy that enables students to transition to another gender identity at school while keeping parents in the dark.

The court issued an injunction blocking the Madison Metropolitan School District policy on Monday.

The policy allows parents to be deceived as students can live at home as their real gender but be considered the opposite at school, including taking on a new name.

Under the policy, teachers are forbidden from revealing the child’s “new” gender or name to the child’s very own parents.

The court injunction stops the district from applying or enforcing any practice “allows or requires District staff to conceal information or to answer untruthfully in response to any question that parents ask about their child at school”.

Legal group Alliance Defending Freedom, which launched the legal action on behalf of parents, welcomed the move:

“It should go without saying that school district staff should be honest with parents, especially when it comes to critical matters concerning their children, but we are pleased that the court has issued an order now requiring it,” said ADF senior counsel Roger Brooks

“As this case moves forward, we will continue to argue for our clients’ legitimate concern over the Madison Metropolitan School District’s policy of deceiving parents and excluding them from profound decisions involving the wellbeing of their own children,” Brooks said.

In Australia, the ACT Government recently passed laws against “conversion therapy”.

As FamilyVoice reported at the time:

“Conversion therapy” is a red-herring term designed to conjure up images of shock therapy. Instead, the bill attacks people who offer evidence-based spiritual or clinical therapy to help people struggling with gender dysphoria and unwanted same-sex attraction.

The law is so extreme parents counselling their male child that he is a boy, when he wants to be a girl, may be subject to criminal proceedings. And yet affirming a child’s desire to live as the opposite sex is permissible.

Published: 01 October 2020

You may have been among the many who watched our FamilyVoice webinar with Bernard Gaynor, hosted by Greg Bondar and David d’Lima on 21 September.

Bernard’s story is compelling. 

He is a committed Christian and conservative Catholic who has more courage than most of us. Speaking up for the values Aussie soldiers fought for in two world wars has cost him his Army Reserve job and his house, but he has not given up.

Bernard served fulltime in the Australian Army from 1999 to 2012, when he joined the Army Reserve with the rank of Major.

He was deployed three times to Iraq, where he worked in military intelligence using his extensive knowledge of Arabic language and culture. He was awarded the United States Meritorious Service Medal for his Iraq service.

He is also a married father of eight children. He is an advocate for:

• family values that work; 
• the protection of children and all life; and 
• the preservation of Australian society from those who would replace its Christian heritage.

One of the first things Bernard did during the September webinar was to express his appreciation for FamilyVoice Australia, who stood by him during his trials and persecution that began in 2013. 

“FamilyVoice is one of the few conservative associations in Australia to publicly support me,” he said.

“What has been happening in this country – the home of the ANZACs – is insane. It is madness, spiralling out of control, to think that people are being dragged into court merely for opposing same-sex marriage.

“But I bring a message of hope,” he said. “God exists and God is good. There is deep happiness that comes from helping others to do the right thing. Never lose hope that God and goodness will prevail.

“Bernard Gaynor is weak. If it were up to me, I would have fallen at the first hurdle. But like the Apostle Paul, I glory in my weakness because it shows God’s power,” he said.

This short video of Bernard and his wife Elle was filmed in 2017, before the postal vote on same-sex marriage. It explains why Bernard, a respected member of the Australian Defence Force, had been sacked. Not because he was incompetent – he had performed well. Not for breaching orders, policies or disciplinary requirements – he had at all times acted respectfully with other members of the Defence Force.

But a letter from the Chief of the Defence Force informed him that despite his excellent service, he was being dismissed from the Army because of his views on marriage and family. Even though they were expressed in Bernard’s own time and in a private capacity, his views – including how he wanted his children educated – were “contrary to cultural change within the Defence Force”.

“I had expressed concern that Defence had marched publicly in the Gay Mardi Gras,” Bernard said, “along with groups campaigning for same-sex marriage.

“I pointed out that this was contrary to orders prohibiting uniformed attendance at events of a political nature, and policies against religious vilification. That’s why I was sacked.

“Along the way, I was told I could not even speak about things like the Safe Schools program.”

Bernard’s dismissal was only the beginning of his troubles. Despite living in Brisbane, he has been the subject of no fewer than 37 complaints by Sydney homosexual activist Garry Burns. 

No complaint has been substantiated, but the cost of proving his innocence meant he had to sell his home in 2017 to pay for $500,000 in legal bills.

The High Court found that the NSW Anti-Discrimination Board had no power to deal with complaints against people from interstate – whereupon the NSW government promptly changed the law.

Bernard will need to go back to the High Court, but the good news is that Garry Burns is now bankrupt. Moreover, NSW One Nation MP Mark Latham – former federal Labor leader – has defended Bernard in the NSW parliament.

Bernard is grateful for the prayers and financial help he has received from many Christians and others who support freedom of speech.

You can find out more about him on his website.

Above all, he would value your prayers.

Peter Downie - National Director

FamilyVoice Australia