A few weeks ago, Rebels Motorcycle Club established a new chapter in Mildura.

Its president told local media that Mildura was chosen for its quiet, casual lifestyle, legitimate business opportunities, and weather:

“It’s a good place to raise a family. Many of us have friends in Mildura. We’re regular people who pay taxes – we’re no different to anyone else.” (Sunraysia Daily, 10/7/10)

Translated into English, he’s saying they have to leave Adelaide, where the South Australian Police and Attorney-General’s Department have moved to make Rebels a “declared” organisation under Organised Crime laws.

According to Mildura’s local paper, the Rebels leader has a history of involvement in gang-related shootings — being twice  jailed for gun-related offences in SA.

“His departure to Mildura has been welcomed by SA Police”. (Sunraysia Daily, 26/7/10)

* * *

Having shifted to Victoria, they need to stay far from Melbourne where Deputy Police Commissioner, Sir Ken Jones, recently warned that criminal bikie gangs are being “closely monitored”.

Especially since Hells Angels members created a disturbance at the funeral of murdered Melbourne gangland figure, Macchour Chaouk.

Sir Ken Jones has talked to the State Government about outlawing crime-related bikie gangs.

Mr Brumby has been non-committal — but Opposition leader, Ted Baillieu, says he’s all for it.

Needing to leave SA, yet keeping as far from Melbourne as possible – no wonder  Mildura (550 km away) looks good to them.

* * *

But Mildura’s BIG attraction — making Mildura almost HEAVEN ON EARTH for them — is the prospect of a Casino opening there.

Any serious lawbreaking group needs a Casino nearby, where takings from drug deals etc. can be laundered.

* * *

If Mildura gets a Casino, the danger of its becoming a focal point for organised crime is real.

Criminal elements will be drawn there like iron filings to a magnet — like blowflies to a dead rat.

Mildura will become a most UNATTRACTIVE place for normal families to live in – or even to visit.

This blog recently recommended readers to consider voting DLP. * 

Many people did. Throw in a bit of apparent good luck with preferences — and it happened.

Now John Madigan is a Senator-elect.

What is the Democratic Labor Party all about?

* * *

(1) History

Those interested in Labor Party history know that a good case can be made for considering the DLP the genuine continuing Australian Labor Party.

The present so-called ALP being a (big) splinter-group that split off and took over through a series of dirty deeds at, and following, the party’s 1955 National Conference in Hobart.

On that occasion, a number of anti-Communist ALP members, mainly Catholics, were expelled from the party in a manner contrary to the ALP constitution.

The DLP was formed by those excluded — with policies of anti-Communism, more government funding for Catholic schools, increased defence spending, non-recognition of Communist China etc.

At its peak, the DLP got as many as 11 percent of the primary Senate vote.

But by the late 70s, the DLP hardly existed.

Recently there has been a come-back. Last Saturday the DLP obtained between 2 and 3 percent of the primary vote in Victoria.

* * *

(2) Policies

The DLP is a pro-family party. It supports the freedom of families to decide their own pattern of early care of children and of the education they receive. This means freedom from financial punishment against stay-at-home full-time mums – and against those sending children to non-government schools, or home-schooling.

The DLP opposes abortion and euthanasia.

As the name suggests, the DLP advocates actual democracy – as opposed to today’s fake pseudo-democracy. This includes the setting up of a “Citizens Initiated Referendum” system, applying to all levels of government (federal, state and local).

The DLP supports re-establishing a Federal Development Bank, diversifying and resurrecting our export industries, encouraging import-replacing industries, building new dams for secure water supply and flood control etc.

Read more at their website at: www.dlp.org.au/index.php?page=alias

* * *

Don’t these sound like more sensible policies than those of the big two (or big three) parties?

(* See: www.marymackillop.org/a-spectre-is-haunting-australia-the-spectre-of-the-greens-party)

In June 2010, New South Wales MP, Clover Moore, introduced a bill to legalise adoption by homosexual couples.

One adoption agency, Anglicare, threatens to withdraw its adoption services if such laws are introduced – and has written to MPs urging them to vote against the bill.

Anglicare’s chief executive, Peter Kell, says adoption is not a “gay rights” issue — but must be based, first and foremost, on the interests of the child.

“Men and women complement each other, and the optimal care for children really consists of being in a family with both a mother and a father” he said.

* * *

Now NSW Cabinet looks like “exempting” both Anglicare and Catholic Agency, Centacare, from the legislation.

Community Services Minister, Linda Burney, says Cabinet will discuss amending the bill to allow these agencies to refuse involvement in adoptions by homosexual couples

She said, “I think the exemption is sensible, and I think it’s important that it’s there.”

* * *

The word “exemption” is, of course, very out of place in this debate.

The child’s interests come first.

Those seeking to protect helpless children from inappropriate placement are not seeking an “exemption” for themselves . . . .

No, they are seeking to assert the rights of the child – and the rights of God.

The State has no business trampling on those rights

Governments who disregard this understanding must be defied, disobeyed and undermined.

* * *

Adults’ perceived “rights” must never trump those of the child. 

Discrimination isn’t always bad.

In the context of adoption, discriminating in favour of traditional married couples is good.

Mr Joe Hockey, Australia’s Federal Shadow Treasurer, said yesterday that a Coalition government would abandon the present government’s mandatory internet filter plan and instead go back to the Howard government policy of offering free end-user filters to parents.

Shadow Minister for Communications, Tony Smith, added that a mandatory ISP-level filter scheme “would not be workable or effective”. 

A well-heeled lobby has been spreading myths about how:

(1) ISP-filtering would unacceptably slow broadband reception

(2) ISP-filtering would convert Australia into a police state where freedom of speech will disappear.

Many experts say that myth number (1) simply isn’t true.

Myth (2) could only apply if we stupidly let it happen.

* * *

The above arguments are, in fact, not the point.

The point is that if porn, advocacy of violence, crime, suicide etc. endangers vulnerable net users, including children, we must use ALL possible methods to eliminate it.

The Coalition arguments insult our intelligence.

Government policy is not merely to filter at ISP level, but also to encourage parents to do their bit, plus additional funding for Police to intercept peer-to-peer exchange of illegal material and to apprehend offenders, plus extending filtering to offshore-sourced content as well as domestically-hosted content.

* * *

The Coalition is turning a blind eye to reality.

Australia’s children are increasingly not safe — they face increasingly the likelihood of being exterminated or sexually exploited or recruited into perverse lifestyles . . . .

The Australian Crime Commission reports escalating sexual exploitation of little children by older children.

The Greens Party advocates putting adoptable children in the care of pairs of homosexual men.

Greens (and many Labor MPs) favour late-term abortion — children old enough to be born alive, needing only to be delivered intact, dismembered in the mother’s birth canal.

* * *

The ALP is showing common sense on the internet-filter issue.

The Coalition merits only our disgust.

Many thinking voters are looking out for morally-OK independents to vote for and — in the Senate — will perhaps support smaller parties such as the DLP, Christian Democratic or Family First.

Dear Kiddies, Mr Abbott said yesterday that if he becomes Australia’s Prime Minister, families will receive $300 a year per child as part of reintroducing indexation for the child-care rebate.

Mrs Abbott was with him. She works in what they call an occasional child-care centre.

Dear Kiddies, the adults are getting this child-care issue all wrong.

*  Occasional child-care is a GOOD thing. It provides somewhere for us to be looked after if Mummy gets sick or for some reason suddenly needs a break.

*  Ordinary child-care (child-care-in-cold-blood, as you might say) is very different and is a BAD thing. It means Mummy not caring for us — not because something cropped up to make it impossible — but because she herself decided that instead of looking after us she would go out to work, leaving us with a paid carer.

* * *

Mr Swan, who belongs to the other party, criticised Mr Abbott’s family policies.

So he should, you say.

Not really, dear Lambkins, Mr Swan has no more idea of what we kiddies want than the other bloke.

His comments were about an alleged connection between Coalition policies and what Coles will charge for groceries.

Did Mr Swan mention that Mr Abbott’s child-care scheme is wrong because kids hate it?

Or because kids want their Mum at home?

Or because kids want all child-care centres bulldozed tomorrow (except perhaps the “occasional” type mentioned above)?

He did not.

* * *

Dear Kiddies, every time a clear-cut, black-and-white moral issue affecting us kids comes up, the adult experts start shouting at each other about money.

Is money all they are interested in?

What about more basic questions?

Like, what is a baby?

Is it — he or she – you or me –merely a lifestyle-accessory for the Mum?

These big people (big bodies, not necessarily big intelligences) think it’s normal to have a child and then start looking around for somebody else to care for it (preferably at taxpayers’ expense) while they toddle off and do something else.

Don’t they know that parenthood is the greatest privilege that God offers them?

A poll published this week reveals that 46 percent of Australian women — compared with 41 percent of men — report feeling “very stressed” in their everyday lives.

The poll, commissioned by Lifeline Australia, interviewed 1200 men and women.

Similar findings in American women were published in 2009 by authors Stevenson and Wolfers. They noted how recent declines in female happiness “have eroded a gender gap in happiness in which women in the 1970s reported higher subjective well-being than did men . . . a new gender gap is emerging—one with higher subjective well-being for men.”  (American Economic Journal: 2009 )

* * *

Did something happen just before the 1970s to affect women so as to reduce their happiness?

The Contraceptive Pill was introduced in the early 1960s. Women’s well-being has deteriorated ever since. Could that be cause and effect?

Why would the Pill make women less happy?

There are about 100 reasons. Here are a few:

* when busy in the home, looking after 3, 4, 5, or more children, pre-Pill women had plenty to do — too busy to ask themselves, how stressed am I today?

* they had the joy and happiness of knowing they were doing something they were cut out for. Their husband couldn’t give birth to a child, breast feed, or do the many things that come naturally to mothers.

* they didn’t feel the insecurity of a 50 percent chance of ending up divorced

* they felt less pressure to go out into the so-called “workforce” – being already busy with work to which they were ideally suited. No need to go out anywhere.

* not being in an office, factory or whatever, they escaped the stress of bosses and workmates eyeing them off and discussing whether they were “hot” or not.

* * *

So what about women going out to jobs?

Pope Pius XI discussed the so-called “emancipation” of working women, as long ago as 1930:

“This, however, is not the true emancipation of women, nor that rational and exalted liberty which belongs to the noble office of a Christian woman and wife; it is rather the debasing of the womanly character and the dignity of motherhood, and indeed of the whole family . . . .”  (Encyclical on Christian Marriage, Casti Connubii)

Some things don’t change.