A SPECTRE IS HAUNTING AUSTRALIA: the Spectre of the Greens Party.
According to last weekend’s Newspoll survey, support for Australia’s Labor government has nose-dived to a primary vote prediction of 35 percent only.
The Opposition Liberal/Nationals Coalition primary vote is about 41 percent.
Meanwhile the Greens Party recorded their highest-ever primary vote: 16 per cent, up four points from two weeks ago.
Sounds unlikely. Perhaps this poll got it wrong. But the Greens do seem to be on a roll . . . .
No wonder. The big party leaders dissipate all their energies with juvenile mutual name-calling. Greens leader Brown sits back and watches increasing numbers of fed-up TV-watchers fall like ripe fruit into his protest-vote-come-donkey-vote trash-can.
Dr Brown says mainly sweet nothings in earnest tones and manages to sound less of a ratbag than the other two — an impression arguably false. Very false.
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Australia obviously does need a third party as an alternative to the big two.
What they do NOT need is the Greens Party.
The Greens want to stop prayers at the opening of Parliamentary sessions.
The Greens want to abolish the understanding of marriage being, by definition, between one man and one woman.
The Greens want to promote adoption by homosexual couples.
The Greens want drug use to be legal.
They want euthanasia of your grandmother to be legal.
The Greens want preventive fuel-reduction burning in forests reduced to levels certain to do no good.
The Greens would damage both our family-based community and our economy worse than the others are doing.
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Where is there a party for which a thinking person could vote?
The Nationals? No, they sold out their genuinely independent existence long ago.
Family First? Probably not to be trusted. Probably soon extinct.
The so-called Christian Democratic Party? No, not really.
The Democratic Labor Party? Yes. They would be OK in a lot of ways.
But they are very small . . . .
Check their website at: http://www.dlp.org.au/
As President of the DLP in Qieensland I recognise taht the Christian Democrats and rthe DLP have some policies in common. Where I think they differ is that the DLP is a distributive party which supports government intervetion in the economy to achieve social goals where as I think the amjority of the Christian Demoicrats are far more hostile to the Liberals economically to the Coalition.
As an Anglican I find nothing to be ashanmed of in being protestant but being a member of a party which has at least historically been predominantly Roman Catholic I have no problem with my menmbers Catholicism. In Quweensland the current executive is made up predominantly of Anglicans with a minirity of Roman Catholics and a couple of protestants. THere is no religious test for membership but if you do not at least support the principles of Judaeo-Chrisytian Religion then it is likely that the DLP is not your home.
The major parties would prefer that religion would go away whuilst I suspoect that the Greens are closer to paganism than ro Christianity.
IT is true that the DLP are very small but this does not mean that their influence is very small. From my observations and discussions with members of all political parties, both in and out of Parliament, the great majority of the population support the DLP position on most political issues but do not know that they do.
There are Labor members of both State and Federal Parliaments who support the DLP over the privatisation of assets. They just do not have the internal fortitude to recognise that they “no longer regard Labor as a viable force for social justice in this country” (not my words but the words of Mark Latham (The Latham Diaries, p.5)
In the next election it matters little if Rudd or Abbott become PM; the real power will be decided by the voters who chose between the DLP and the Greens for the sixth Senate position in each state.
The Greens are an extremist minority of inner city urban yuppies who contribuute nothing of value to the economy and do their level best to ensure that anyone who does contribute to the economy is denigrated. They are aided and abetted by a cabal of journalists and media proprieters who ensure that alternatives to the flowerpot men in the ALP and LNP and the
Greens get 99% of all reporting.
Tony Zegenhagen, lead Senate candidate for the DLP, has issued daily press releases for months explaining DLP policy only to have a few Fairfax Provincial papers pick up the stories.
If you are really interested in politics and want to see the whole story, view the DLP website at http://www.dlp.org.au.
Andrew Jackson
DLP State President Queensland
apjackson@hotkey.net.au
I would have thought the Christian Democratic Party would be the logical choice for Christians. I would be interested to know why you don’t think so.
Dear Peter,
Thanks for your comment. Your point is a thought-provoking one.
I once belonged to the CDP and even stood for the Senate under their banner. I got about as many votes as you would expect.
Perhaps in my post I was too dismissive. The people I met in the CDP were OK people. You could probably safely buy a used car from most of them. But I got the feeling that with all their varied personal opinions the one thing that kept them together was that they were Protestants.
I think the CDP is not a place for a Catholic to be. Having said that, I concede that there is a lot of good in their policies on moral issues. I would put this down to there being a fair bit of residual Catholic instinct left in lots of Protestants — even if they would deny such an explanation of where they come from.
To quote the CDP “National Charter”:
(1) About the Bible they say, “We believe the Holy Bible to be the inspired, inerrant, written Word of God and the final authority above all man’s laws and government . . . .”
And further on they go, “We believe that decision-making processes by civil government must not contravene Biblical ethics concerning the family, marriage, morality, etc.”
The Bible is a Catholic book or collection of books. Historically it was in the 390s AD that the Catholic Church, through its Pope and Councils, determined what books were and what were not to be included in the canon.
It is an important point that to understand the Bible we need to be humbly looking to the Church to tell us what the Bible means in terms of today’s application.
If we don’t, we will get the crazy situations of tens of thousands of “churches” sprouting up and contradicting each other in California and all over the world.
(2) The CDP Charter also says,
“We believe that the Church is a God ordained body of believers charged to proclaim God’s truth and to set an example both inwardly and outwardly of Godly living before the world.”
To which one must likewise reply, what Church? How many “churches” did our Lord establish?
I could go on.
This reply is hastily thrown together and you can criticise it no doubt.
I thank you again for your interest.
Yours sincerely
Arnold Jago.