Ant reported earlier on Andrew Bolt’s ejaculative response to John Howard’s Irving Kristol lecture in the USA. Since then Bolta has added a few updates to his text, closing his second update with this sentence.

Missing him already.

Get a room, you two.

I’ve been having a read of the full text of Howard’s speech and it’s quite interesting to see how much hubris and arrogance this man has despite spending eleven years in office telling us he has none of either. Oh, and he’s still a dickhead.

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Steve Fielding’s latest Uncle Arthur-style home movie is up on his website, and its good to have a new dose of his folksy, self-shot stupidness to focus our minds a week out from the election.

In this installment of Uncle Steve’s home movies we meet a mother holding a baby who has been doorknocked by Fielding in suburban Melbourne and, magically, agrees with everything he says. Reduction in petrol tax? Yep. Increase in baby bonus for third child? Yep. You see, it’s all about “families”, or “for the little one’s future” as the doorknockee says.

However, I can’t help but wonder what the poor lady would’ve said if Steve was upfront about Family First’s real policy agenda. Total abolition of women’s right to choose to have an abortion? Ummm. Ostracism of homosexual people? Ummm. Creationism taught in schools? Ummm. Total alignment of Australian public policy with the values of the Pentecostal Church? Ummm.

I can’t tell you how much I hope Steve knocks on my door next week.

The location choice for yesterday’s Family First campaign launch has been explained.

Senator Fielding launched Family First’s campaign from an abandoned petrol station at Lower Templestowe yesterday to emphasise the party’s key election policy of a 10-cent cut in petrol taxes.

(I still fail to see the connection between an abandoned service station and the cost of petrol tax, but anyway…)

Fielding reckons that the Pentecostal Church party’s policy of a 10c per litre reduction in petrol tax to ease the “burden” on families would cost $2.8 billion.

In a completely unrelated statement, Steve Fielding called The Greens “economically reckless.”

The Democratic Labor Party sez: Put 1 in the DLP box

GrodsCorp sez: Why bother? Put 1 in the ALP box above the line and let dirty Labor preferences elect unrepresentative nutcases from loopy organisations such as Family First and the DLP.

The Democratic Labor Party sez:

GrodsCorp sez: Not even the DLP webmaster would’ve believed that claim when he typed it into Microsoft Frontpage.

Blissfully ignorant of any DLP policy before 4pm this afternoon I have spent some time navigating through their Lachlan Connor style website. I’ve now come to suspect that the DLP is actually a front for the Extreme Family First and may be directly connected to Steve Fielding and the Pentecostal Church. Check out these DLP policies:

* An end to radical-feminist affirmative action policies whose primary social and economic effect is the disemployment of male breadwinners and the youth. Freedom of occupational choice for full-time homemakers and removal of the tax penalty on one-wage families that virtually conscripts the homemakers into outside employment, consigns their infants to be minded by strangers and deprives their school-age children of the parental care and supervision they need in the after-school hours. (Women belong in the kitchen. End of story.)

* Abolition of the dishonestly named Family Court of Australia, exposure of its destructive ideology and its harm done to children through easy divorce and the court-instigated break-up of their families and recision of all court rulings that serve to undermine marriage or degrade it by conferring on homosexual, lesbian and transsexual pairings equivalent standing with marriage. (Poofs aren’t allowed to belong to families.)

* Statutory recognition of the principle that no child should be conceived to be borne and reared deliberately deprived of a father as in the cases of single women and lesbians accessing artificial reproduction technologies including IVF. (And they’re not allowed to start one either.)

* An acknowledgement in all legislation affecting families of the need to preserve and protect the institution of marriage and of the need to maintain the moral, social, legal and economic support of the traditional family unit as the most effective (including cost-effective) means to safeguard children from the harm of exploitation, violence, pornography, drugs and crime. (Because no child raised in a nuclear family has ever been in a fistfight, read Playboy, smoked a joint, or burgled a store.)

* Establishment of an Australian Family Theatre Company to promote alternative avenues for artistic training and expression and provide opportunity for sponsorship and promotion of quality family entertainment. (There’ll be queues around the block for that.)

* All free-to-air television programming until 10.30pm to come within classifications suited for family viewing. (I belong to a family and I want to watch South Park at 8:30pm. I will defend this right to my death.)

What about these DLP principles:

* The sacredness of human life, from its inception until natural death, as the fundamental basis for all human rights. (Anti-abortion.)

* The historical indispensability of the family as the primary guardian of personal freedoms. (Family, family, family. Blah, blah, blah.)

And these DLP objectives:

* To establish, under Almighty God, the political, legal, social and economic foundations for a just, free and democratic society and for a self-reliant and secure Australia. (But we’re not a religious party, we promise. Oh, and that bit about freedom only applies to people who want to do things we plan to let them do. Forget the freedom to be in charge of one’s own body by having an abortion.)

* To advance the rights, welfare and status of the natural family, founded in traditional marriage, as the primary provider in the nurturing, rearing and educating of the young and in the care of the infirm and the aged. (Pay particular to that bit about “natural” families. That means none of you filthy poofs.)

And finally, this small policy snippet is particularly ironic right now:

* Fair elections with proportional representation at all levels of government.

Of course they support proportional representation. It’s the only way they could possibly have been elected. Oh, and with the help of the ALP, of course.

Lower house:

Upper house:

Forgetting to ask themselves “what would Jesus do?”, Family First operatives have unethically flooded the radio talkback airwaves this morning in a last minute attempt to discredit The Greens.

At a few minutes past 9am on Jon Faine’s ABC774 program, caller Michelle spoke practically verbatim from this (PDF) Family First press release. She started by saying (I’m paraphrasing) “John, I’m disillusioned with the major parties and I was thinking about voting Green until I heard their candidate say something that I found really offensive to families.” She then read aloud the three-year-old quote from Greg Barber contained within the press release before crapping on about about how this anti-suburbs attitude is anti-family. Her speech was littered with the word “family” which was always emphasised. My suspicions about Michelle’s Family First connections were confirmed when she concluded her call by reading out the last paragraph of the press release almost word-for-word.

I can’t wait until my post-election blog on Sunday morning when I can crow about Family First being rejected wholesale by the electorate. I can see the headline now: Family First rejected by families.

Family First press release (PDF):

MEDIA RELEASE
19 November 2006

EXTREME GREENS REGARD ORDINARY FAMILIES WITH CONTEMPT

The extreme Greens insult ordinary Victorian families while FAMILY FIRST proudly represents them – the families of the outer suburbs and regional and country Victoria.

Victorian Greens leader Greg Barber, who was raised in Glen Waverley, now insults the suburb he grew up in, saying in an article: “It’s not the end of the world, but you can see it from there.” (The Age, July 31, 2003)

The way the Greens see it, families in the outer suburbs – like Caroline Springs and Werribee, Melton and Fawkner, Thomastown and Epping, Frankston and Dandenong, Cranbourne and Mordialloc, Mitcham and Lilydale, Knox and Croydon, Ringwood and Ferntree Gully – are second-class citizens.

The extreme Greens do not understand ordinary Victorian families and do not care about them. They look down on them. In fact, the extreme Greens think living in the suburbs is a joke.

FAMILY FIRST wants to give a sense of hope and opportunity to these families yet the Greens message is they’ll never make it. The Greens are completely out of touch with the lives of ordinary Victorian families.

Raising a family is hard work and families need all the help and support they can get – not insults from the extreme Greens.

FAMILY FIRST promotes policies that will really help families, such as removing pokies, cheaper petrol, more doctors and police, improving our schools, supporting carers, helping families be more environmentally responsible and building new roads and new dams.

GrodsCorp press release:

EXTREME FAMILY FIRST REGARD ORDINARY FAMILIES WITH CONTEMPT

The extreme Family First insults ordinary Victorian families while The Greens acknowledge and represent all of them – the many types of families found in all corners of this state, not just the inner suburbs of Melbourne.

The extreme Family First believes that a family can only grow from “heterosexual relationships between men and women” who enjoy a “stable and loving relationship and are faithful to each other.” So bad luck if you’re in a loving homosexual relationship, or a loving de facto relationship, or having a few marital problems that you’re working through. And bad luck even if you’re a single parent because the extreme Family First demands that a child must have “both a mother and a father” before they are in a family.

The extreme Family First do not understand Victorian families that don’t fit their narrow world-view and do not care about them. They look down on them. In fact, the extreme Family First, believing that they are doing God’s work, think these families are living in sin and are heathens.

The Greens want to give a sense of hope and opportunity to all families yet the extreme Family First message is they’ll never make it. The extreme Family First are completely out of touch with the lives of ordinary Victorian families.

Raising a family is hard work and families need all the help and support they can get – not insults from the extreme Family First.

The Greens promote policies that will really help families, such as removing pokies, more doctors and police, improving our schools, supporting carers, and helping families be more environmentally responsible. The extreme Family First, in their narrow world-view and policy making from the hip pocket, want to price petrol below market cost and commit blindly to building more roads and dams.

In a stunning display of either ignorance or sycophancy, Steve (Mister 1.9%) Fielding has claimed as a “myth” the fact that media owners influence the views expressed by their media outlets. He did, however, provide a possible explanation for his astoundingly pathetic opinion, telling the Senate that the people who Family First represent aren’t aware of the media reform debate and do not buy newspapers. Great to see a high level of social and political engagement in Steve’s world. But as always, this “people who Family First represent” thing is a bit tricky. There are three possible definitions:

1) The 56,372 Victorians who voted for Family First
2) Every Australian “family”
3) The Pentecostal Church

My money’s with option three, although I can’t see how this latest stupidity is in the interests of any of them. But whichever way you look at it Steve Fielding is revealing himself every day as more and more of a total goose. He makes Lachlan Connor look like Bill Clinton. Here’s hoping Family First’s influence in Federal politics is short and inglorious, remembered as a footnote in Australian political history right next to One Nation.