News

parent child reading 
 
I take my hat off to Sunday School teachers. They provide an important service, especially to those children whose parents are uncertain how to teach them about the Christian faith, including God’s word in the Bible.

But the teachers’ task is much more difficult if some of their pupils cannot read.
 
One former Sunday School teacher encouraged her nine and ten-year-old pupils to read Bible verses related to the lesson every week.
 
“But several of them simply couldn’t do it,” she said. “They knew some common words by sight, but had no idea about how to tackle more complex ones. 

“They were intelligent, but they hated reading. There was no way they would go home and read the Bible on their own,” she said.
 
Since the 1970s, significant numbers of students have been graduating from primary and high school with few or no reading skills.
 
Studies have shown that more than a third of Australian adults can only read a few words.  They cannot read a map, or a recipe, or instructions on a medicine bottle – let alone a newspaper or the Bible. 

The Australian newspaper recently featured an article by literacy expert Jennifer Buckingham:  

At the start of the year (2020), 17,000 12- and 13-year-olds walked into high school classrooms all across the country unable to read even at a minimal level... A further 35,000 students achieved only the minimum standard, in which they can barely find basic information in simple written text.

Dr Buckingham explained the reason: most of these children have never been taught systematic phonics – how to blend letter sounds into words. 

Instead, their teachers have told them to remember the “look” of words, using pictures, context or first letter clues to help. Sadly, children without good visual memories often guess wrongly.

When FamilyVoice first became aware of the problem in 1991, they held a seminar led by US phonics expert Sam Blumenfeld. It was so popular they had to turn people away. 

Sam was born a Jew, but later became a follower of Christ. His parents had fled to New York from Hitler’s Germany. Sam, along with all the other immigrant five-year-olds in his crowded classroom, learned to read in English – by phonics.
 

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Sam Blumenfed teaches Sam Findlay (3) after our FamilyVoice seminar

So Sam did some research – later producing his best-selling book, Alpha-Phonics. It has not only helped the children of Sam’s boss, but many thousands since.

Alpha-Phonics is a workbook that parents can use, spending just ten minutes a day. The first lessons blend short vowels with simple consonants. Gradually more letter combinations are added until the child can decode any word by the end of the book.

If children you know have problems reading the Bible – or any other book – you may like to check out this or other phonics systems. Our office secretary Hannah still has a few copies of Alpha-Phonics, or you can buy it online.
 
Peter Downie - National Director 
 

Mark Latham Photo2 Copy

Back in 2004, Mark Latham was the leader of Australia’s federal Labor Party. He’s now on a very different path, leading Pauline Hanson’s One Nation in the NSW upper house of parliament. 

There’s no love lost between Mark Latham and his former party. In March last year, Labor put him last on its list of preferences for the NSW state election.

But that didn’t worry him. He won enough votes to elect not only himself, but his running mate Rod Roberts as well. 

And this week Mark Latham has shown once again why he’s a force to be reckoned with.

Mark Latham took aim at the NSW education system and the secret return of the controversial “Safe Schools” program, an issue he alluded to in our webinar last week. 

You may be among the many – including me – who thought “Safe Schools” was dead. From 2010, FamilyVoice campaigned long and hard to have it removed from schools. We were very thankful when most state governments did so.

But Mark Latham has discovered that all is not what it seems. His new post is headed: 

SAFE SCHOOLS BY THE BACK DOOR: The Ongoing Sexualisation of Young Children.

He goes on: “In 2017 the NSW Government ended the teaching of the Safe Schools program. But what if teachers are now being trained to teach gender fluidity (boys becoming girls and girls becoming boys) by other means, as a regular part of their classroom practice?

“While the formal stand-alone program might have been abolished, Safe Schools has actually become more dangerous, as it has been adopted as a regular part of teacher professional development (PD) and pedagogy in NSW.” 

Mark continues: “The NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) accredits organisations for teacher PD and training. One such accredited body is ‘Multiverse’, run by someone named Red Ruby Scarlet (who changed her name from Miriam Giugni).

“In August 2017 she came to prominence campaigning to rename Father’s Day as ‘Special Person’s Day’, so as not to upset children without dads.

“Scarlet now runs NESA-accredited school-teacher training courses, and also accredited courses for preschool/childcare staff through the Australian Education and Care Workforce professional body. 
… One of her course offerings is ‘My Friend has Two Mums: Gender and Sexuality in Early Childhood’.

“It has modules in ‘Queer Thinking in Early Childhood’, ‘Queer Pedagogies’, ‘Intersex Identities’, ‘Living Non-Binary’ and ‘Aboriginal Queerness and Queeness’. This is for teaching children as young as three years old.”

If this information disturbs you, you are not alone. As Mark Latham said in his maiden speech last year: 

“With few exceptions, people are born either male or female. We shouldn’t be confusing young people and risking their mental health by pushing gender fluidity upon them.

“We shouldn’t be taking away from parents their essential role as the primary carers of their children – in matters personal and sexual.

“We shouldn’t be changing the purpose of our education system: transforming schools from places of skill and academic attainment into gender fluidity factories. Most of all, we shouldn’t be losing sight of the interests of mainstream, majority Australia.

I say, “Amen!”

We are thankful that Mark Latham has put this issue on the public record. We will be taking it further. Please pray!

Peter Downie - National Director

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There was a time when everyone knew that boys grew up to be men and girls became women.

Now, skyrocketing numbers of children are suddenly wanting to change their birth sex. They seek to “transition” to the opposite sex with risky puberty-blocking drugs, cross-sex hormones and later irreversible surgery.

Some 260 Australian doctors, concerned about this development, supported a call in September last year by professor of paediatrics and child health, John Whitehall, for a formal parliamentary inquiry.

FamilyVoice backed this call for an inquiry into “the rapid rise of childhood gender dysphoria in Australia and the lack of scientific basis for current medical treatment.”

Then we waited.  Month after month there was no reply from federal Health Minister Greg Hunt. Seven months later, in April this year, The Age reported that the minister opposed an inquiry, claiming that more media and public attention “might harm” vulnerable transgender youth.

This issue could affect us all.  Our children or grandchildren could be pressured to start “transitioning” only to suffer serious regret years later.  A decade after sex-reassignment surgery the suicide rate is 20 times that of comparable peers.

FamilyVoice encouraged people to email Mr Hunt stressing the seriousness of the situation and the need for an inquiry. You may have been one of the thousands who sent emails – thank you!

Then a leading authority on autism, Dr Tony Attwood, reported a huge rate of gender dysphoria among autistic children. In a group of female teens seeking to “transition”, a massive 45 per cent showed autism features. This is vastly more than the 3 per cent of autistic people in the general community. Something is clearly wrong.

Last week something happened! Minister Hunt called for state health ministers to investigate why there is such an over-representation of teenage patients with autism being treated at state gender clinics.

Mr Hunt also said he would ask state and territory health ministers to examine more cautious treatment advice and warnings for gender dysphoric children and their parents, now being adopted by Britain’s National Health System. 

Moreover, Queensland LNP Senator Amanda Stoker has written to say she shares our concerns and will raise them with her colleagues in parliament and the media. 

We are thankful for these positive developments, but we mustn’t relax. We need to keep pressing state and federal governments to recognise that over 80 per cent of gender-confused children mature to accept their birth sex.  We need to protect children from a medical invasion of their childhood.

Peter Downie - National Director

Like millions of others, I was deeply disturbed by the tragic death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police on 25 May. Not only America but Britain and Australia have erupted in mass mayhem, led by the Black Lives Matter movement founded in 2013.
 

Floyd was 1.93 m tall and weighed 100 kg. His friends called him a “gentle giant”. He was a keen basketballer and rapper, using the stage name “Big Floyd”.  After a stint in jail for armed robbery and home invasion his life changed – he became involved in the Christian ministry Resurrection Houston.  He was known for decades as a mentor to a generation of young men and a “person of peace” – but things seemed to have gone wrong during the COVID pandemic. His autopsy showed the presence of drugs.

Floyd’s death follows another tragic death at the hands of Minneapolis police. The Australian-born woman Justine Damond was fatally shot on 15 July 2017 by a Somali-American police officer. She had phoned the police to report the possible assault on a woman in an alley behind her house.
 

Why did the killing of a black man by a white cop provoke protests and riots, when the killing of a white woman by a black cop didn’t?  The answer, of course, is the widespread belief that blacks are unfairly targeted by police due to racial hatred.  But what are the facts?

US homicide records show that, in the general population, there are more murders of whites by blacks than the reverse.  In 2016, for example, over twice as many whites (533) were killed by blacks as blacks (243) killed by whites.  

A recent study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found no racial differences in the use of lethal force by US police. It said: “On the most extreme use of force – officer-involved shootings – we find no racial differences in either the raw data or when contextual factors are taken into account.”

However, there are big differences in crime rates between the white and black US subcultures.  In 2016, African-Americans became murder victims at the rate of 71 per million, compared with 15 whites per million. That is, blacks were 4.7 times as likely to be killed as whites. But most of these killings occur within the racial groups. Whites were killed by other whites in 82% of cases and blacks were killed by blacks in 90% of cases.

The Black Lives Matter campaign is motivated by a common myth, that police unfairly target blacks. But the situation is far more complex. 

US attorney and radio host Larry Elder believes the underlying cause of much crime is fatherlessness.  A large proportion of African-Americans are raised in fatherless homes. Lacking male role models who are strong yet caring and protective, boys often turn to crime gang leaders to provide their missing father figures.

These days, those who promote stable marriage and families are mocked in the media, or worse. But out of love for our neighbours, we in FamilyVoice intend to keep on doing it.
 
Peter Downie - National Director

floyd protest photo

“You must not blaspheme God or curse a ruler of your people.” Exodus 22:28

​As violent protests and hatred for police spillover from the USA to the Western world, many hidden agitators are seeking to violently overthrow governments.

They claim that destruction of property, and many lives taken, are necessary to awaken the world to ‘systemic racism’ that supposedly disregards that “blacks lives matter”.

It appears that several officers have been charged in connection to George Floyd’s alleged murder in police custody. Since his death, over 4000 Americans have been arrested, hundreds are injured and dozens killed or murdered.

Peaceful protests in Australia openly flouted COVID-19 fines that shut down businesses and churches, citing deaths in custody.

According to the Australian Institute of Criminology, indigenous people represent 28% of 43,000 prisoners, and yet 18.5% of the 1829 deaths in custody (from 1979-2018) were indigenous people, which indicates that police are more watchful of indigenous prisoners.

Few Americans are reflecting on the consequences of 60% of African-American children growing up without a father. This cultural shift to majority fatherless homes starting in the 1960s led to generational disadvantage, according to African-American talk radio host Larry Elder.

It is ironic that socialist agitators want to tear apart the Christian-founded structures of the very countries that millions of ethnically-diverse immigrants have flocked to, searching for a life free from corruption and conflict.

Celebrities and the Western press, including ABC Australia, have encouraged donations to ‘The Bail Project’ that bails out violent protestors, and have published uncritical ‘analysis’ of violent rhetoric from terrorist group ANTIFA.

Sadly, those behind these riots seek to sweep aside the Western world’s Christian-based self-sacrificial love, generosity, honesty, and impartiality — only to replace it with a fictional utopian society based on non-Christian principles.

​What makes us human and enables us to live at peace is how much we reflect the nature of our Heavenly Father who made us.

God showers love and blessing on our world and has paid for the reconciliation of all people to Himself through Jesus. He offers His life and forgiveness as a free gift to all, including evil kings.

Our striving as Christians is to reveal “God’s image” by the Holy Spirit — His nature to “love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who cure you, pray for those who mistreat you”. In doing so, we are being “sons of your Father in heaven” (see Matthew 5).

Regardless of the moral fibre of the Queen, the Prime Minister’s Cabinet, the President, state governors or premiers, God’s word asks us to present prayer and thanks on behalf of kings and all in authority (1 Timothy 2:2).

As Australia approaches the Queen’s birthday on June 8, it is perhaps timely to thank God for the Christian Christmas proclamations that Queen Elizabeth has made to Commonwealth nations.

In regard to your parents, your teachers, your boss, and your Prime Minister, God asks us to respect and honour their God-delegated authority.

“Show proper respect to everyone, love the family of believers, fear God, honour the king​” and we should “commend those who do right “ (see 1 Peter 2 & Romans 13).

In democratic societies, God asks us to respect our leaders, while keeping them accountable through constructive rebuke.

Let us take up Paul’s challenge to Timothy to “pray on behalf of all people”, including all political leaders “since God wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4).

Let us work tirelessly to strengthen our institutions through prayer and action, to punish evildoers and praise those who do right.

We must not forget that the Enemy wants to steal, kill and destroy and remake society in his image.