"It must have been 1:30 p.m when there arose, at the exact spot where the children were, a column of smoke, thin, fine and bluish, which extended up to perhaps two meters above their heads, and evaporated at that height. This phenomenon, perfectly visible to the naked eye, lasted for a few seconds.
Not having noted how long it had lasted, I cannot say whether it was more or less than a minute. The smoke dissipated abruptly, and after some time, it came back to occur a second time, then a third time.
"The sky, which had been overcast all day, suddenly cleared; the rain stopped and it looked as if the sun were about to fill with light the countryside that the wintery morning had made so gloomy. I was looking at the spot of the apparitions in a serene, if cold, expectation of something happening and with diminishing curiosity because a long time had passed without anything to excite my attention. The sun, a few moments before, had broken through the thick layer of clouds which hid it and now shone clearly and intensely.
"Suddenly I heard the uproar of thousands of voices, and I saw the whole multitude spread out in that vast space at my feet...turn their backs to that spot where, until then, all their expectations had been focused, and look at the sun on the other side. I turned around, too, toward the point commanding their gaze and I could see the sun, like a very clear disc, with its sharp edge, which gleamed without hurting the sight. It could not be confused with the sun seen through a fog (there was no fog at that moment), for it was neither veiled nor dim. At Fatima, it kept its light and heat, and stood out clearly in the sky, with a sharp edge, like a large gaming table. The most astonishing thing was to be able to stare at the solar disc for a long time, brilliant with light and heat, without hurting the eyes or damaging the retina. [During this time], the sun's disc did not remain immobile, it had a giddy motion, [but] not like the twinkling of a star in all its brilliance for it spun round upon itself in a mad whirl.
"During the solar phenomenon, which I have just described, there were also changes of color in the atmosphere. Looking at the sun, I noticed that everything was becoming darkened. I looked first at the nearest objects and then extended my glance further afield as far as the horizon. I saw everything had assumed an amethyst color. Objects around me, the sky and the atmosphere, were of the same color. Everything both near and far had changed, taking on the color of old yellow damask. People looked as if they were suffering from jaundice and I recall a sensation of amusement at seeing them look so ugly and unattractive. My own hand was the same color.
"Then, suddenly, one heard a clamor, a cry of anguish breaking from all the people. The sun, whirling wildly, seemed all at once to loosen itself from the firmament and, blood red, advance threateningly upon the earth as if to crush us with its huge and fiery weight. The sensation during those moments was truly terrible.
"All the phenomena which I have described were observed by me in a calm and serene state of mind without any emotional disturbance. It is for others to interpret and explain them. Finally, I must declare that never, before or after October 13 [1917], have I observed similar atmospheric or solar phenomena." ….
Professor Almeida Garrett's full account may be found in Novos Documentos de Fatima (Loyala editions, San Paulo, 1984)
“After all, even Copernicus' own system was by his own admission (read his original,
i.e. the first edition of De revolutionibus orbium coelestium) nothing more than a synoptic rehash of the already-existing diverse (part geocentric, part heliocentric, fire centric,
animal centric...) ideas of men like Hicetas, Ecphantus, Heraclides and Aristarchus”.
Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive! --Sir Walter Scott
Throughout ancient times it was obvious that the moon went around the earth. This is still accepted today. But in the past it was just as obvious that the sun went around the earth as well. This was not because men in those days lacked fantasy and forgot to imagine non-existent movements of themselves and their surroundings. It is because they did their homework and examined all the evidence before them, that they came to the understanding that the earth was a firm, motionless sphere, neither in rotation around itself nor wandering through space around another body.
This geostatic and geocentric nature of the earth was repeatedly tested and verified as being factual for a quite some time (going back thousands of years) by knowledgeable, civilized, free people of all stripes, i.e. those who were supposed to know, like astronomers, natural philosophers (a.k.a. scientists), explorers, teachers, traders, seamen, navigators and various other free and educated men (as opposed to schooled, wage enslaved, homogenized, "experts" of modern times who wouldn't dare bite the hand that feeds them).
Then, all of a sudden, just 400 plus years ago, a band of court astrologers started pushing this idea that the earth was orbiting the sun this time, and that the sun was standing still at the center (hence the claim of the system being a 'solar' system). Nevertheless this new claim was not accompanied by any new proof. It was simply invoked and declarations were made that the fixed nature of earth needed to be disapproved.
Then, various kinds of earth movements were claimed to have existence and, subsequently abstract calculations were made of the speed and other attributes of these imaginary movements - presenting the results as if they have measured an actual motion. The major and in fact the only reason that was brought up for advancing this whole idea was that the then mainstream Ptolemaic model of the universe was deemed inconvenient in explaining and predicting the movements of the planets as they appear in the sky (especially one particular kind of movement: the retrograde motion of the planets in the sky).
But all along it was (and still is) a fact that a stationary earth, situated at the center of the universe also accounts for those retrograde motions, as shown by astronomer Tycho Brahe for example. And, although Ptolemy's epicyclical system was the long established one, it did not have exclusive monopoly. There were many ideas and models in circulation - like those of Pythagoras, Philolaus, Jean Buridan, Martianus Capella, Nicholas of Cusa and René Descartes to name a few.
After all, even Copernicus' own system was by his own admission (read his original, i.e. the first edition of De revolutionibus orbium coelestium) nothing more than a synoptic rehash of the already-existing diverse (part geocentric, part heliocentric, fire centric, animal centric...) ideas of men like Hicetas, Ecphantus, Heraclides and Aristarchus. So then, all those years - and right up to now - nobody has ever succeeded in showing or even detecting any movement of the earth in space.
However this complete lack of scientific evidence is not admitted. Instead a smokescreen of hearsays, popular opinions, organizational rulings, majority votes, superficial analogies, "expert" testimonies, personal convictions and such other means of persuasion (none of which qualify as scientific proof) are proposed and presented in order to support the heliocentric theory.
Heliocentricity is not a logically plausible (let alone irrefutable) theory that is based on scientific data but is actually, purely based on a series of assumptions that were built-up over the last 200 years. For example many (but not all) of the assertions regarding astronomical distances between celestial bodies are based on the necessary assumption that the earth must be revolving around the sun.
But at the same time, these assumed distances have another function whereby they are deployed as some sort of supportive argument for the "trueness" of the heliocentric hypothesis.
For example we are told that sun is too big to revolve around the earth, despite the fact that the sun's size was determined in the first place by assuming how big it must have to be in order to allow a heliocentric premise! Go figure. Other needed assumptions include:
■ the bendover earth (alleged 'tilt' of the earth's axis - a desperately needed heliocentric variable that has no basis in the physical world where the sun simply spirals from the Tropic of Cancer to the Tropic of Capricorn annually. Both of these tropic latitude lines are not tilted - they are at a 0° angle (= parallel) to the equator. The word "tropic" itself comes from the Greek term tropos, meaning turn, referring to the fact that the sun "turns back" at these lines that aren't tilted in any way,
■ the earth supposedly jittering around the sun at various speed levels (it orbits at a faster speed at one time, and then it goes relatively slower at another - then back faster again) but somehow, all this alleged speed-change remains unnoticeable),
■ the moon also being dragged along exactly at those same speed levels (100% complete synchronization with the wobbly earth despite being hundreds of thousands of miles away from it(!) Now how about that?,
■ even atmospheric gas (the air) being attached to the earth's surface (again completely synchronized but somehow (simultaneously) free-flowing enough to blow in every direction). These are just samples of the never shown, never detected, never scientifically observed absurdities that are required to save the appearances of the heliocentric model.
Facts are facts
Heliocentrists have been known to point to certain geophysical and astronomical features as arguments which they claim supports their sun-centered view. For example they claim that the Cape Canaveral area in Florida is chosen as a site for NASA's rocket launch center because it is one of the more southern points on the U.S. mainland and therefore closest to the equator. The same argument comes up regarding the reason why Europe's rocket launch center is located in French Guyana (in South America). There is supposed to be an advantage to being close to the equator when the goal is to get a vehicle into orbit: the "rotating" earth supposedly creates a centrifugal force that supposedly "lifts" the missiles. Well, the truth is that there is no real advantage: China's Jiuquan space center is found all the way up in the far north of the country (Inner Mongolia province). Why did the Chinese choose this site, when they have vast territory much further south which is closer to the equator? In fact, portions of southern China are closer to the equator than to the northern cosmodrome, from where they toss their taikonauts into orbit. The Russians are also reported to be developing a new space launch facility, which will be located much north of the current Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. This all means that a rocket launched tangentially from the Earth's equator doesn't really provide a more advantageous escape-velocity!
Getting closer to the supposed existence of an "equatorial centrifugal force" on the surface of the "rotating" earth (and other bogus heliocentric claims) is like getting closer and closer to an apparent pool of water in the desert: it dissolves and disappears right before your eyes in a spectacular fashion! Another bogus argument that some solar system advocates bring up from time to time is inertia and momentum. What is it that the moving-earth theorists believe is the substance (or the vector field) that supposedly exerts a huge gravitational force on air molecules which prevents the atmosphere around the earth from trailing behind the allegedly speeding earth (as is the case for comets)? Their answer?: Nothing. Instead, heliocentrists usually propose a fraudulent analogy of how the earth's motion is comparable with some person walking inside a moving train.
They claim that since the walker inside the train feels more or less the same as he or she feels when walking on the ground that somehow is supposed to reassure us that the earth could also be moving without we feeling it.
The problem with this analogy is of course the fact that once the person inside the train opens a window and faces the elements, he or she will feel it soon enough what the real speed is that the train is traveling at! Therefore the only correct analogy for someone walking on the ground of earth is someone walking in an open train or better yet - on the roof of a moving train. What will [happen] … then?
Well, the person will instantly encounter a force that is proportional and in opposite direction to the moving train. But why? Isn't the surrounding air supposed to be following the train, just as we are told the atmosphere is allegedly doing so by keeping-up with the supposedly faster-than-bullet rotating earth? Looks like heliocentrists have decided to suspend the laws of physics (aerodynamics) just for this case of a badly needed moving earth theory!
But still somehow, this law of motion is supposed to apply in all other cases of moving things in the universe?! This contradiction is quietly adopted in order to hide the fact that there is a force that is causing an air drag or friction that wasn't there before the train arrived. The friction with the earth's surface wasn't there because, unlike the train, the earth didn't move!
Getting to the top (and bottom) of it
The star whose location is closest to the point vertically above north pole (= celestial pole) is Polaris, a.k.a. the North Star, around which all the other stars appear to rotate (as visible during the night). Now, why is it that only one single star is a pole star throughout the whole year? All kinds of other stars should have taken turn to become pole stars if the earth was slinging around the sun. But since that is not the case and Polaris remains the most northerly of the stars all year round, as seen on photographs of star-trails (see below), it can only mean that the earth is not orbiting the sun. Moreover, a moving and orbiting earth would have caused the paths of stars to appear as (spiral) lines instead of fully circular tracks that we observe night after night, and consequently the shapes of the constellations would have changed considerably over the course of a single year. So what we're looking at is what is real - WYSIWYG: stars orbiting the Earth once a sidereal day, i.e. the time it takes for a celestial object to rotate 360°. For the stars around the Earth this is: 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4.091 seconds.
Truth has a way of being indestructible. It may or may not be popular at any given time, it may even be barely noticeable, but it is always there. And it turns out that the truth actually gets in the way of "science"! Modern theoretical (non-applied a.k.a 'pure') physics is not really science-driven but agenda-driven. It is populated with heavily politicized academia. It has become nothing much more than a sham propaganda-exercise of empty eloquence with false authority. The inventor of the electric world we live in, Nikola Tesla was spot-on when he remarked that modern non-applied science has become nothing more than manipulative indulgence in fancy "thought experiments" and abstract, fuzzy math which have no relation to reality. Instead of the theories being made to fit reality, what we have is the opposite: reality being adjusted or in fact completely overthrown, in order to fit agenda-driven theories and models. ….
Scott Morrison Won Australia’s
Election Against All Odds. It Shouldn’t Have Come as a Surprise.
The Australian Labor Party made
the same mistakes that have led to failure for center-left leaders across the
globe—and the right is reaping the benefits.
Understanding Australia’s shock election last
weekend, in which the right-wing coalition of incumbent Prime Minister Scott
Morrison unexpectedly won, requires looking to an unlikely source: a
conservative Christian rugby star.
The pundits didn’t
see it coming, but they don’t spend too much time in church pews.
Israel Folau, one of the most
outstanding athletes of his generation, has become a lightning rod for debate
about freedom of religion in Australia.
Folau had his contract with Rugby Australia
terminated after he posted a social media message six weeks ago that said,
among other things, that gay people were sinners doomed for hell unless they
repented and accepted Jesus Christ as their savior. He has been accused of hate
speech, causing offense to the LGBTQ community, and breaching the game’s code
of conduct.
What was a heated sports issue spilled over into
politics in the final week of election campaigning. Morrison shares a similar
Pentecostal Christian faith with Folau, and he was asked by journalists if he
agreed with the rugby legend and also condemned gay Australians. Morrison
replied as politicians do: He said he separated his politics and his faith. But
within hours, Bill Shorten, the leader of the opposition progressive Labor
Party, seized on the remark, seeing a chance to damage the prime minister. But
playing politics with faith was a misstep—perhaps a fatal one.
Shorten’s move raised red flags in the minds of
many voters. Just what did he stand for? Did he value the rights of the LGBTQ
community not to be offended over the rights of someone to publicly profess
their religious beliefs? It came in the same week that Shorten had given a
rousing speech pledging to “change the nation forever.”
But did Australians really want their country
changed? Shorten had already outlined an agenda of social change: an ambitious
plan for indigenous rights, making Australia a republic (something that had
been put to the Australian people and rejected in 1999), as well as higher
taxes on what Shorten called “the big end of town.”
It was old-style class politics, and it spooked
some Australians. Retirees, middle-class parents, and those dependent on the
mining industry for their livelihoods all felt they were in the firing line.
Christian leaders now say that religious freedom was a sleeper issue that
turned votes in critical marginal seats.
This was the so-called unlosable election for
Shorten, who lost to Morrison’s predecessor in the 2016 federal election;
opinion polls stretching back more than two years said the conservative
government was doomed. It was wracked with division, having dumped two prime
ministers in internal party coups. They went into the election light on policy
but led by a new leader big on faith. Within hours of the vote count, it was
clear the polls had been hopelessly wrong.
Grand narratives are often foolhardy, and
something as complex as an election can’t be so tidily explained. But there is
a realignment taking place. The
wave that has broken across liberal democracies in the West has washed up in
Australia. The conservatives have been in power for six years, and after
this victory some analysts are predicting at least another six more.
Throughout the world, long-silent voices are
making themselves heard and it is shaking up politics as usual. In the United
States, Donald Trump tapped into the frustration of those who felt left behind
and promised to make their country great again; Viktor Orban in Hungary has
entrenched his leadership by toughening the borders and stopping refugees; in
France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Italy, far-right parties are increasing
their popularity.
At its worst, there are fears of resurgent
fascism—certainly nationalism is back. People are saying they want to belong
and they want their leaders to put them first. On immigration, trade, climate
change policy, and more, countries are putting themselves first amid a blowback
against multilateralism and globalization. After two decades marked by Middle
East wars, the financial meltdown, and the Great Recession of 2008, whatever
consensus had held around the free movement of goods and people and pooled
sovereignty is looking frayed.
[End of article]
‘Australians are
dumb’: Celebs’ fury at Scott Morrison federal election win
Celebrities
and TV personalities furious at Scott Morrison’s shock election victory have
vented their anger, calling Australians “dumb”.
Scott
Morrison has claimed victory in a shocking election result
TV
personality Meshel Laurie has tweeted that ‘Australians are dumb’ after her
disappointment at Scott Morrison’s shock election victory. Picture: Julie
Kiriacoudis.Source:News Corp Australia
Celebrities
and commentators angry at Scott Morrison’s election win have tweeted
“Australians are dumb” and vowed on social media to move to New Zealand.
Television
personality and sometime The Project panellist Meshel Laurie unleashed on
Twitter, posting “Australians are dumb”, which she followed up with “Dumb.
Mean-spirited, Greedy”.
And
when a Twitter poster replied with “Labor got greedy with too much tax” and
“nobody likes” Shorten, Laurie responded.
“Tax
pays for everything outside your house genius. It pays for hospital you’ll die
in one day.”
Laurie
also tweeted, in an obvious reference to a wish for the re-elected PM to fail
during his coming term, “the only thing to look forward to in … AUSTRALIA is
Shadenfreude”.
…
author
and social commentator Jane Caro tweeted right after the win on Saturday night
that if the Coalition won, it meant Australia “decided to be a backward looking
country”.
“I wish I
was a New Zealander,” she tweeted.
When one
poster agreed with her sentiments, she replied, “I feel sick too, but am ok. We
will soldier on.”
….
However
on Sunday morning, Caro had received some messages via her Twitter account
lambasting her sentiments and calling her “an absolute bitch who should leave
the country”.
She
tweeted: “I guess this is Australia right now. Like so many others, I despair.
Trump, Brexit, Scomo - while the planet disintegrates”.
ABC Late
Night Live presenter Phillip Adams tweeted the result was “an act of collective
madness”.
“Australia
has given its malevolent, ignorant and corrupt version of the Trump
administration a third term,” he tweeted.
Controversial
broadcaster Yassmin Abdel-Magied posted that “it’s going to be a long three
years in Australia” after Antony Green declared Scott Morrison had been
re-elected.
“Also - a
warning to the progressive US counterparts, that even if things look good, ppl
may surprise you (again),” Abdel-Magied tweeted on Saturday evening. ….
Labor learned last night that hell hath no
fury like older Australians at risk of losing their franking credits.
Labor insiders admitted the policy to remove
generous share tax refunds — paid mostly to retirees — was “killing us” in
Queensland and New South Wales.
It was the unlosable election and Bill
Shorten and his band of merry, progressive men and women fluffed it.
It was the US presidential race of 2016 and
‘Billary Shorten’ blew it.
It was Game of Thrones and Sussex Street is
now a smouldering King’s Landing.
Labor won every single Newspoll since the
last election. So why is ScoMo the Arya Stark of Australian politics?
Surely now, after the landslide victory of Mr
Morrison and the Liberal party, pundits and political pedestrians alike can see
opinion polls, all polls, not just the faux ones circulated in WA, are fake and
useless.
Labor’s Brendan O’Connor said he was
disappointed.
Disappointed the people of Australia didn’t
want better for themselves and blamed Clive Palmer’s $50 million advertising
splurges which attacked Labor.
Those ads also smashed up the Coalition.
In headquarters around the country Labor
strategists had nothing. Other than an urge to drown their sorrows.
“In Joel 3: 11-17, details of a major conflict in the Valley of
Jehoshaphat are given.
This account runs parallel to that battle of Armageddon recorded in
Revelation 16:14-18”.
biblefocus.net
That the Kidron Valley to the east of Jerusalem is the same as the
Valley of Jehoshaphat is apparent from this statement by Dr. Ernest L. Martin,
in his article “Updated Information
on the Crucifixion of Jesus” (1992):http://www.askelm.com/doctrine/d920401.htm
There are numerous historical reasons for selecting
Olivet as the place of Jesus’ crucifixion. In the recently translated Temple
Scroll, Yadin pointed out that all people bearing religious defilements which
prevented them from entering the holy city or the Temple were directed to stay east
of the ideal Sanctuary region mentioned in the scroll (Yadin 177). Evil and
defiled people (sinners) were kept east of Jerusalem in order to prevent
any "winds of evil" from flowing over the holy city from the west.
This is one of the reasons the sin offering of the Red Heifer and those of the
Day of Atonement (which were to atone for sins) were burnt to ashes in this eastern
area "outside the camp" (Leviticus 4:21; 16:27). Yadin suggested that
a part of this eastern region which had been put aside for defiled persons was
even referred to in the New Testament (e.g. Mark 14:3).
Since all sin offerings were sacrificed (or "executed")
east of the Holy Place of the Temple, and the most important ones were
sacrificed further east at the Red Heifer altar on Olivet, this easterly
region of the Temple became known as the place where God dealt with sin --
where all the sins of the world will be judged. This is one reason why the
Kidron Valley separating the Temple from the Mount of Olives became known as
the Valley of Jehoshaphat (the valley where "God judges"). Even to
this day Jews, Muslims and Christians consider the summit and western slope of
Olivet as the ordained place where God will judge all people in the world for
their sins. Charles Warren in Hasting’s Dictionary of the Bible listed
over fourteen [Christian] … authorities (from the deaux Pilgrim onward) who
attested to this belief (II.562). This is why it was important, from the
Christian point of view, that Jesus died in this eastern region which
was reckoned the judgment place for all mankind. For Jesus to be judged as
dying for the sins of all mankind, Christians thought he had to be judged in
the place where all mankind were designed to be judged for their sins.
Even Muslims (who inherited many traditional
beliefs from the Jews and Christians) firmly believe that the summit and the
western slope of the Mount of Olives is the judgment area for mankind. The Encyclopaedia
Judaica has an interesting excerpt about this. "All the dead will
congregate on the Mount of Olives and the angel Gabriel will move paradise to
the right of Allah’s Throne and hell to its left. All mankind will cross a long
bridge suspended from the Mount of Olives to the Temple Mount, which will be
narrower than a hair, sharper than a sword, and darker than night. Along this
bridge there will be seven arches and at each arch man will be asked to account
for his actions" (IX col.1576). This is the Muslim account.
It is easy to see that this traditional Muslim
belief is based on the geography of the Temple and the Red Heifer arched bridge
over the Kidron Valley that existed in Jesus’ time. Indeed, the Hebrew word for
the altar where the Red Heifer was burnt to ashes is miphkad (see
Ezekiel 43:21)…..
[End of quote]
Armageddon, or “Hill of Megiddo”, does not refer to the famous site of Megiddo
about 90 km north of Jerusalem. For one thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armageddon
“Mount"
Tel
Megiddo is not actually a mountain, but a tell (a hill created by many generations of
people living and rebuilding on the same spot)[4] on
which ancient forts were built to guard the Via Maris,
an ancient trade route linking Egypt with the
northern empires of Syria,
Anatolia
and Mesopotamia.
Joel links Armageddon with the Valley of Jehoshaphat (or Kidron):
The reference to Armageddon in Rev 16:16, “And he gathered them together
into a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon” is very closely linked to
Joel 3:14, “Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision (or
threshing).”This link can be related to the battle that will take place when
Yahshua returns to set up God’s kingdom on earth. The connection is established
by the meaning of the word Armageddon, which as already shown signifies, “a
heap of sheaves in a valley for judgement.”
In relation to the Valley of Jehoshaphat in Joel 3, it is recorded, “I
will also gather all nations, and will bring them down into the Valley of
Jehoshaphat,” (verse 2) and “let the heathen be wakened and come up to the
valley of Jehoshaphat: for there will I sit to judge round about.” (verse 12)
Titus now decided upon a
show of strength, and staged an army parade, which lasted for four days.
Meanwhile, his adviser Flavius Josephus was to talk to the men on the walls,
trying to induce them to surrender. The Jewish leaders were not impressed by
the arguments of the turncoat, and on the fifth day, the Roman soldiers renewed
the struggle: they started to build four large siege dams, aimed at the Antonia
fortress. (It was to be taken by force, because it had large stores and two
great cisterns.) The Roman attack was no success: John's sappers undermined one
of the dams and managed to raise a fire on a second one, and Simon's soldiers
destroyed the remaining dams two days later.
The Roman commanders now
knew that their enemies would fight for every inch of their city, and
understood that the siege of Jerusalem would take a long time. Therefore, Titus
changed his plans. There were signs that the supplies of Jerusalem were giving
out: some Jews had left the city, hoping to find food in the valleys in front
of the walls. Many of them had been caught and crucified - some five hundred
every day. (The soldiers had amused themselves by nailing their victims in
different postures.) The Romans decided to starve the enemies into surrender.
In three days, Jerusalem was surrounded with an eight kilometer long palisade.
All trees within fifteen kilometres of the city were cut down. The camps of the
legions V Macedonica, XII Fulminata and XV Apollinaris were demolished; these
troops were billeted on Bezetha.
The death rate among the
besieged increased. Soon, the Kidron valley and the Valley of Hinnom were
filled with corpses. One defector told Titus that their number was estimated at
115,880. Desperate people tried to leave Jerusalem. When they had succeeded in
passing their own lines and had not been killed by Roman patrols, they reached
the palisade. Here they surrendered: as prisoners, they were at last entitled
to some bread. Some of them ate so much, that they could not stomach it and
died. In that case, their oedemaous bodies were cut open by the Syrian and
Arab warders, who knew that some of these people had swallowed coins
before they started their ill fated expedition. Titus refrained from punishing
these violators when he discovered that there were too many. One of the
defectors was the famous teacher Yohanan ben Zakkai, who escaped in a coffin
and saved his life by predicting Titus that he, too, would be an emperor. ….
Mark Latham has delivered his maiden speech to New South Wales
Parliament. Alan Jones, radio veteran and former speechwriter in the office of
Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser, said it was the “Most
outstanding political speech I’ve ever read“.
You can read it in full below.
Mr President, Not far from where you sit, some 10 metres from
the entrance to this old chamber, there’s a wonderfully imposing canvas.
It depicts the decisive moment in Australian history: the landing of the First
Fleet at Sydney Cove on 26th January 1788.
The painting by Algernon Talmage is called the Founding of
Australia, a founding marked by the arrival of Western civilisation on this
continent.
It’s an appropriate entrance statement for this place, the
mother of legislative power and progress in Australia.
Despite attempts by both sides of politics to either abolish it or silence it,
for nearly two centuries the Legislative Council has, by and large, been a
civilising force in New South Wales.
Over the years, the ALP has expelled more of its MLCs for
failing to vote for the Council’s abolition than are here representing Labor
today.
Among conservatives, George Reid in 1895 dissolved the
parliament on the single issue of Legislative Council obstruction, pledging (he
said) to “clear the fossils” from a “rotten and corrupt” chamber.
And he hadn’t even met Eddie Obeid.
Crooks and scoundrels aside, this place has been true to
Talmage’s painting.
It has honoured the founding principles of our nation: that
progress is possible through parliamentary debate and deliberation; that in a
land of hard work and meritocracy, every citizen can and should receive a fair
go.
For all its pitfalls and failings, the Legislative Council has
always redeemed itself in wanting to extend the reach of Western civilisation
and advancement in Australia.
Until now.
Like so many parts of our politics that have changed quickly in
recent times, there are voices here who do not believe in the virtues of the
West, who do not acknowledge the nation-building achievements of our culture
and our country.
It’s like a scene from The Life of Brian, a case of: What has
Western civilisation done for us?
Only advanced healthcare and education; architecture,
engineering, information technology, free speech and the rule of law.
In fact: this chamber, this parliament, in this city, all our
public institutions and the material comforts we take for granted – none of
them could exist without the greatness of the West.
Without the advances that began with the Enlightenment and
Industrial Revolution and continue to this day.
Yet still, among the Leftist elites, among the social engineers
and cultural dietians, sneering at our civilisation and its achievements has
become their new pastime.
They preach diversity but practice a suffocating cultural
conformity, wanting everyone to be just like them.
They argue for inclusion but as soon as a Christian, a
conservative, a libertarian, a nationalist, a working class larrikin, an
outsider from the vast suburbs and regions of our nation disagrees with them,
they crank up their PC-outrage machine to exclude them from society.
They are tolerant of everything except dissenting values and
opinions – meaning, of course, they are tolerant of nothing that matters, only
themselves.
This is the Leftist curse through the ages: the recurring
history of those who so badly crave control over others, they lose control over
themselves.
In their lust for authority, they lose their respect for the
rights of others.
Like a scene from Orwell’s Animal Farm, the Green-Labor-Left has
become the thing it originally opposed: elitist, would-be dictators taking away
from working class communities the things these battlers value:
The right to speak their mind.
To say they love their country and want Australia Day to stay.
To practice their Christianity, openly and freely.
To send their children to school without the garbage of Safe
Schools, Wear-It-Purple days, ‘HeadRest’ indoctrination and the other crackpot
theories making some NSW classrooms more like a Hare Krishna meeting than
actual education.
And when they go to work, the chance to do their job without
being bombarded by employment quotas, ‘unconscious bias’ training and a long
list of unspeakable, taboo words – scary, scary stuff, like ‘guys’ and ‘mums
and dads’.
The New Left are the new primitives of our time: junking the
importance of evidence, of recorded history, of biological science, to pretend
that all parts of our lives (especially race, gender and sexuality) can be
fluid, that everything we know and feel around us is, in fact, ‘socially
constructed’.
Mr President, they’re peddling Fake News.
We haven’t been brainwashed by ‘capitalist hegemony’ as the
post-modernists argue.
People know and understand the things they see and feel in their
lives.
It’s called evidence.
Our personal characteristics and identities are fixed, not
fluid.
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.
In the last national census, for instance, 13 hundred
Australians identified as transgender.
But to listen to the political and media coverage of this issue,
you would think there were 13 million.
Mr President, Everywhere I travel, parents and grandparents,
workers and communities, tell me how concerned they are about Australia’s
direction.
They ask me, ‘What’s happened to our country; where has this
nonsense come from?’
The answer is clear.
The Leftist project, then and now, is about control.
Having, with the fall of the Berlin Wall, lost the struggle for economic
control, the Left got smarter.
It shifted from the Cold War to a culture war.
It moved from pursuing economic Marxism to pushing cultural
Marxism.
Instead of trying to socialise the means of production, it’s now
trying to socialise the means of individual expression and belief – our
language, our values, our behaviour.
Instead of seeking revolution at the top of government, it has
marched instead through our institutions – a tactic that’s harder to combat.
The elites have been remarkably successful in this cultural
invasion.
Our abiding national traditions of free speech, merit selection,
resilience and love of country are being lost, not just in the public sector –
in schools, universities, public broadcasters, major political parties and
government agencies – but also in large parts of corporate Australia and the
commercial media.
The rest of us are the Resistance to this national takeover.
Our chief ally is evidence.
Evidence and human nature.
Through the power of reason and enlightenment, people want to
have a say about the things that are important to them.
They want free speech.
They want freedom of religion and belief.
Australians are also a tough yet fair-minded people.
It comes from our origins in colonial times, the things depicted
in Talmage’s painting.
The Australian story in settling a harsh and sometimes hostile
continent on the other side of the world is one of the most remarkable in human
history.
Leaders like Arthur Phillip and Lachlan Macquarie, in little
more than a generation, turned a penal colony into a civilisation – building
what has now become the best nation on Earth.
It was achieved through resilience and mateship – the Australian
habit of toughing it out and treating others as equals.
Jack is as good as his master.
It’s in our nature to treat people as we find them – to judge
them on their individual merit, their work ethic, their community contribution.
This is what makes identity politics – subdividing our people on
the basis of race, gender and sexuality – so foreign to the Australian way.
Just as the old Soviet Union fell over because human nature
wanted economic competition and individual wealth and excellence, I believe
these new mutant strains of social control – post-modernism and identity
politics – will also fail.
They run contrary to the nature and evidence of our lives.
Mr President, I ran for parliament to be part of the fightback for freedom and
fairness.
NSW One Nation took 34 detailed policies to the election,
including a detailed package for human rights reform.
We believe NSW needs new laws protecting freedom of speech,
especially on university campuses where so much of academic and student freedom
has been lost.
Sometimes we laugh at the absurdity of political correctness but
at its core, it’s an insidious movement, a handbrake on liberty.
If you control someone’s language, you control a big part of
their lives: how they interact with others, how they communicate in society,
their feeling of belonging.
Like every other Australian, I own my own words, I know what I
mean by them.
Like so many Australians, I refuse to allow my words to be
controlled by strangers: by the elites with their confected outrage and
PC-censorship.
In truth in society, offence is taken, not given.
It’s a personal choice, based on assumptions about what someone
meant by their words.
Yet only the person speaking those words truly knows what was
meant.
As the great John Cleese has pointed out, telling a joke about
someone doesn’t mean we hate them.
We love the people we joke about – the Irish, the blondes, the
gays, everyone – as they’ve helped to bring humour and joy into our lives.
The other problem with political correctness is in knowing
what’s genuine and what’s not.
So much of the offenderati, the outrage industry, involves the
fabrication of offence – saying that their feelings have been hurt solely for
the reason of closing down their political opponents.
PC is riddled with these internal contradictions.
Let me give an example from this parliament.
Labor MPs are not allowed to say two words – ‘white flight’ –
even though they are a truthful expression of what’s happening in Western
Sydney, having been identified by Luke Foley.
It’s a sad day for democracy when MPs can’t talk about the
evidence in their electorates.
Then last year in the Blue Mountains, when Michael Daley
launched a wrong-headed attack on Asians with PhDs, the two Labor MPs in the
room stood mute.
So the Labor leader who had it right – his words can’t be
repeated, while the one who had it wrong went unchecked, for months on end.
Go figure.
NSW needs freedom of speech laws, even for its own MPs.
And also new laws for the protection of religious freedom.
Mr President, as I’m sure you appreciate, many migrants came to Australia to
escape religious persecution.
Now they are saying the problems in their home country have followed them here.
I’m not a Christian but I recognise the vital contribution of
Christianity to our civilisation: its vast social and charitable work; its
teaching of right and wrong in civil society.
Mr President, I stand with Israel Folau.
In his own private time away from his job playing football, he’s
a preacher at his community church and naturally, he quotes the Bible.
He believes, as millions of people have believed for thousands
of years, that sinners go to Hell.
As per his valid religious faith, he loves the sinner but
condemns the sin.
Yet for his beliefs, his Christianity, he is not allowed to play
rugby, to chase the pigskin around the park.
How did our State and our nation ever come to this?
I was on Folau’s list of sinners, more than once actually.
But as I don’t believe in Hell, there was no way I could take offence.
Those claiming outrage have fabricated their position solely for
the purpose of censorship.
This is not an argument about diversity.
The Wallabies have no female players, no disabled, no elderly,
no middle aged.
They are selected from a tiny fraction of the young, fit,
athletic male population.
By excluding a committed Christian, they are making their game
less inclusive.
And as for Folau being a role model for young gay men, one only
needs to state this proposition to understand its absurdity.
Footballers are not role models for anyone, other than in
enjoying their sporting ability.
I say to any young person: if you are looking for guidance and
inspiration in life, study Churchill, Lincoln, Reagan and Roosevelt, not Todd
Carney.
By the way, that’s Ronald Reagan, not Reg Reagan.
Mr President, I believe that no Australian should live in fear
of the words they utter.
No Australian should be fearful of proclaiming four of the most
glorious words of our civilisation: I Am A Christian.
No one should be sacked by their employer for statements of
genuine belief and faith that have got nothing to do with their job.
The Folau case exposes the new serfdom in the Australian
workplace: how big companies, the corporate PC-elites are wanting to control
all aspects of their employees’ lives – their religious and political views,
how they speak and think, how they behave, even in their own time away from the
workplace.
This is a stunning intrusion on workers’ rights.
Yet far from condemning the new serfdom, Labor and the trade
unions have been cheering it on.
As per our One Nation election commitments, I will be moving
legislation for the protection of free speech, religious freedom and the
privacy rights of workers.
Mr President, The fightback for freedom is long overdue.
As is the fightback for fairness.
I mentioned earlier that for most people, identities of race,
gender and sexuality are fixed.
People are born a certain way and shouldn’t be judged by the
things in life they can’t change.
To do so is to practice the poison of identity politics.
It’s become the great obsession of Leftists everywhere; even though for normal
people, it’s not the way in which they live their lives.
No one wakes up in the morning and thinks ‘I’m male or female,
I’m black or white, I’m straight or gay’.
They start their day as workers, as parents, as family members,
as community contributors.
Not only is identity politics irrelevant to most people, it’s a
betrayal of social justice and social democracy.
In the 80s and 90s we were told to look through a person’s race,
gender and sexuality.
Things like skin colour were irrelevant to a person’s true
character – to their work ethic, to the way in which they care about others, to
the individuality of their existence.
There was no need to lump them into broad, unrepresentative
categories based on the primitive notion of how they look.
When I was first elected to Federal Parliament in 1994, if you
had asked me: Who typically is the neediest person in your electorate, the one
you are trying to help as a Labor MP; I would have said: A white working class
man living in one of Campbelltown’s public housing estates who had been
restructured out of manufacturing work in the ‘80s and now faces the indignity
of long-term unemployment and welfare dependency.
How silly of me.
How little did I know.
Now I’m told he was an example of White Male Privilege, that the
bum out of his pants was actually a rainbow shot up his backside.
Mr President, international studies have shown that Australia is
one of the most racially tolerant and fairest nations on Earth.
Through equal pay and employment opportunity laws, we have also
achieved large slabs of gender equality.
Australia now has more female than male university graduates,
lawyers, GP doctors, vets, teachers, office managers and public servants.
When the Prime Minister’s Department tested for evidence of ‘unconscious
bias’ in its 2017 BETA study of workforce recruitment practices, it found that
the only type of bias was against white men.
Women, ethnic groups and Aborigines enjoyed favouritism in the
workplace.
This is the truth about Australia and the fair-mindedness of our
people.
Mr President, Identity politics is a zero-sum game.
It uses employment quotas and other forms of institutionalised
bias to favour one hand-picked identity grouping over another, regardless of
personal need.
This causes enormous resentment among those who miss out because
they have the wrong skin colour, the wrong gender, the wrong sexuality – things
they can do nothing about.
Divisive identity politics subdivides our society, destroying its sense of
common good.
And it leaves the Rainbow Left impotent: they have no solution
for the white welfare dependent man in a public housing estate.
In fact, far from helping him, perversely and tragically, they
define him as part of the problem.
Imagine how he feels when he sees other identity categories
gaining special treatment.
Mr President, I have studied these things all my adult life and
I come to this chamber convinced there is only one way of running a fair
society and that’s through merit.
The best person for the job must get the job, regardless of
race, gender and sexuality.
This is why One Nation proposes to abolish employment quotas and
other identity-based forms of discrimination.
Let me say something about identity politics at the other end of the political
spectrum.
When Pauline Hanson approached me to run for One Nation, I
insisted on all discriminatory clauses and policies being purged from the
party’s platform.
When this happened, we were able to campaign as a pro-merit,
anti-discrimination party in the NSW election.
I was particularly pleased that the party ran its first Islamic candidate, Emma
Eros, in the seat of Hornsby.
In the social media storm that followed, some anti-Islamic
fundamentalists told me they couldn’t vote for us as long as a Muslim was
representing One Nation.
Privately, I thought “So be it”.
I oppose discrimination in all its forms, whether it’s the new
anti-white racism of the Left, or the flawed belief of some that all Muslims
are evil, inspired by the Koran to cut our throats when the Caliphate is
called.
Islam, like all religions, is diverse in its range and intensity
of belief.
It gains more public attention because, at one extreme, when
it’s bad, it’s barbaric, with the horror of radical Islamic terrorism.
At the other extreme, it has some great people, such as the
Indian Fijian community in South-West Sydney.
Kicked out of India for being Muslim and then kicked out of Fiji
for working too hard, they have come to Australia and set up businesses, with a
strong work and study ethic.
I know several of these families and I’m proud to call them
friends.
As I am for Emma Eros.
As a party, One Nation can’t go around calling on migrants to
integrate yet not support someone like Emma, who has.
A licensed plumber and businesswoman, she talks Western, dresses Western and
works hard Western-style, yet also practices a moderate, conservative strand of
Islam.
She’s a wonderful example of what multiculturalism should be: a
seamless blend of the best of our country and her traditional beliefs.
Whether we are talking about the extreme Left or extreme Right
of politics, the challenge – a work in perpetuity – is to overcome ignorance –
for people to cross racial and religious boundaries and get to know each other,
building a more trusting and cohesive society.
Mr President, The rise of identity politics has coincided with
Australia losing control of the scale of its immigration program.
Governments seem to think we owe the rest of the world easy
entry into our country when, in fact, immigration policy should be framed for
the benefit of the people who live here now.
Big Australia immigration has flooded the labour market, holding
down wages.
It has also flooded the housing market, driving up demand and
prices.
It’s fuelling Sydney’s congestion and over-development crisis.
This city cannot continue to grow at 100,000 per annum, at a severe cost to the
environment and residential lifestyle.
Whether someone is a longstanding resident or they recently came
to Australia and Sydney, we are all in the same circumstance: crawling along
car park roads, standing on crowded trains, trying to combat congestion and
urban sprawl.
For a government struggling to build a couple of tram tracks
down the main street, the promise of better planning is a hoax.
We know this problem well in Western Sydney.
For 40 years I’ve been arguing that jobs and services need to
come to our region before the people do.
It’s the reason I got into politics in the first place.
If anything, in this era of high immigration, the problem is
getting worse.
None of the lessons of the 1970s and 80s have been learned.
Look at the proposed Aerotropolis, surrounding the Badgerys Creek Airport site.
The government talks about it like it’s a cross between Silicon
Valley and Disneyland.
But it’s looming as just another excuse for urban sprawl and
under-servicing.
The government says it’s building a new city the size of
Adelaide, with 1.3 million people.
Yet remarkably, there are no plans for a new public hospital,
only a so-called ‘integrated health facility’ servicing less than 20 percent of
the proposed population.
Adelaide has four public hospitals.
The Aerotropolis: None.
I say to the government: fix this problem.
It’s a huge priority for One Nation.
You’re creating the youth capital of Australia between Penrith
and Camden.
It needs not only a new public hospital but also a specialist
children’s hospital to cope with rapid population growth.
Mr President, Earlier I asked where the attacks on our country
and our civilisation are coming from.
Here’s the problem: I’m not just talking about the usual
suspects from the Green-Labor-Left.
I’m talking about Liberal and National Parties that have been paralysed
on these issues, that haven’t stood up for freedom of speech, freedom of
religion and meritocracy.
Specifically in this place, I’m talking about a Coalition
Government that tried to abolish greyhound racing in NSW,
surrendering to a belief that animal rights are more important than human
rights.
I’m talking about a National Party that under Minister Adrian
Piccoli allowed the monstrosity of post-modernism, of fluidity theory, to run
through the NSW school curriculum.
The Nationals used to believe in the basics of school education.
Sure, they’re still committed to young people learning the
alphabet, but it’s the LGBTQIWTF version.
The rot set in under Piccoli, who amazingly, became a mouthpiece
for the Teachers Federation.
He broke the golden rule of sound education policy in this
State: when the Teachers Federation says something needs to be done, do the
opposite.
Through a loss of academic standards, testing and grading, NSW’s
school results are going backwards compared to other States and other countries.
There’s no one thing that’s gone wrong in the education system.
What we are experiencing is system failure: multiple problems
feeding off each other, a downward spiral in standards and outcomes.
Teacher quality has collapsed in many government schools, to the
point where it now resembles social work, more than academic instruction.
The curriculum has been infested with ideological content, with
high school English becoming a tutorial in identity-politics.
Student resilience is being lost, replaced by snowflake
schooling, where only half-an-excuse is needed to avoid testing and grading.
Useless fads, like ‘growth mindset’, ‘soft skills’ and
‘progression points’ are also clogging up the classroom.
The ‘All Must Have Prizes’ mentality is leveling out notions of
excellence and effort – like the old Soviet Union, no matter how students
perform, they all get the same result and recognition.
In disadvantaged communities, a ‘welfare school’ model has
emerged, whereby teachers pursue pastoral care and student happiness as their
primary goals, rather than results and career paths.
I must say, Mr President, these developments break my heart.
One of the best parts of my life was attending Hurlstone at Glenfield – by far
the best school in South-West Sydney, until Piccoli ripped it off us with his
hare-brained scheme for moving it to Richmond.
The tragedy of declining school results is that they hit
disadvantaged students hardest.
I can tell you, a good school is a poor kids passport to a
better life.
There’s a mountain of work to be done in restoring these
opportunities, in uplifting the standards of NSW education.
It’s all there in the One Nation policy platform.
Measurement is the key.
The old adage in public sector management applies: what gets
measured gets done.
And in NSW schools, we measure very little.
The repair job in education is massive: hours of discussion,
hundreds of questions to be asked and answered, scores of policy ideas and
reform proposals to be advanced.
And that’s what I’ll be doing throughout this term of parliament – my word I
will.
Mr President, I’m concerned for the future prosperity of our
State.
There are two clear and present dangers to the NSW economy: I’ve
mentioned one, in education.
The other is energy policy.
This involves a basic question of responsibility.
This government and this parliament has no greater duty of care
to the people of NSW than to keep the lights on: so our essential services can
continue to save lives, our households can continue to function and our
businesses can continue to grow.
History shows and commonsense confirms the best way of doing
this is through reliable, dispatchable baseload power.
To build the system on a strong foundation of fulltime, 24/7
power generation, on top of which intermittent, part-time sources can then play
a role.
When the peak demand hits (invariably in summer) and accidents
hit the system (again in summer), around-the-clock baseload power is our best
insurance policy against blackouts.
The two ways of achieving this are through nuclear power and
coal-fired stations.
Yet across the country, nuclear is banned, while coal is being
run out of the market through the subsidies, targets and special deals being
offered to renewable energy.
The Australian Energy Market Operator has said that in the
decade to 2025, the equivalent of 30 percent of NSW’s peak electricity demand
is being lost in power generation.
It’s being replaced by a patchwork system – a series of part-time power
sources, the effectiveness of which rely heavily on weather and environmental
conditions.
When the sun’s not shining, there’s no solar power.
When the wind’s not blowing, there’s no wind power.
When the water supply runs short, there’s no hydro.
Even gas power is limited, due to access and pricing issues in
NSW – meaning it’s best suited to peaking plants, rather than 24/7 baseload.
These are part-time sources of power.
Yes, it may be possible to cobble them together in a way that
meets full-time electricity demands.
But the risks are high.
We are talking about a privatised, vertically integrated market
where normal pricing signals don’t apply.
There are perverse incentives to short the market, as we have
seen with AGL.
In terms of green technology, there’s another leap of faith:
reliance on the rapid development of battery storage.
Good luck with that.
For all the PR hoopla about Elon Musk’s battery farm in South
Australia, it has a capacity for meeting the needs of the Tomago aluminum
smelter in the Hunter Valley for just 8 minutes.
In truth, the projections for energy production and peak energy
consumption in NSW are beginning to separate, in the wrong direction.
The State is losing its energy self-sufficiency.
The likely tipping point, a heightened risk of blackouts will
occur in the summer of 2022/23, following the closure of Liddell.
As a parliament, our responsibility, our duty of care to the
people of NSW is to make provision now, right now, for this contingency.
We have to stop sleepwalking into disaster.
Mr President, I’m not a climate denier.
I respect all forms of science.
But just as much, I don’t believe in running public policy
through the work of zealots.
And that’s what renewables have become – a new pagan religion,
whereby the Green-Left wants to hand over human control of our energy grid to
the vagaries of the weather, through wind and sun worship.
We are being asked to change the climate by relying on the
weather – a high-risk, paradoxical way of planning for the needs of a modern
economy.
There is a place for renewables in the system.
But it must be supplementary to baseload power, not the other
way around.
Currently the Federal Labor Shadow Minister for Energy, Mark
Butler, is promising the Australian people a new era of “dispatchable renewable
energy”.
Yet when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining,
there is nothing to dispatch.
Butler will end up being the Minister for Blackouts.
Mr President, our Asian economic competitors must be laughing
their heads off.
Australia is the world’s most resource-rich nation yet we have
some of the world’s highest electricity prices, and we’re shedding generation
capacity that would otherwise meet 30
percent of public demand during the hot summers of the nation’s largest State.
NSW should be a global energy super-power, with abundant
nuclear, coal-fired, gas and renewable energy.
How can this goal be achieved?
I have confidence in the new Energy Minister Matt Kean.
Under his policy leadership, it would be wise for the government to pivot away
from a renewables fetish and emphasise the importance of energy security and
affordability.
One Nation offers its cooperation in implementing 6 vital
changes:
1. Upgrading the capacity of our inter-state connectors,
especially into coal-rich Queensland;
2. Bundling up the State Government’s electricity consumption
and putting out to tender a supply contract exclusively for additional
coal-fired power;
3. Abolishing all targets, subsidies and special deals for
renewables – leveling the playing field on the production side of the market;
4. Abolishing the government’s Climate Change Fund, which has
become a slush fund for projects unrelated to climate change. This would cut
electricity prices for households and businesses;
5. Immediate approval of the Santos project at Narrabri to
overcome the State’s chronic deficiency in gas supply –
this is no longer an environmental or land use issue, but a question of keeping
the lights on;
6. In longer term planning for the State, lifting the ban on
uranium mining and nuclear power, as per the Deputy Premier’s policy. I can
advise the House that yesterday I gave notice of a Private Member’s Bill for
this purpose.
Mr President, I’ve had a fortunate life.
As a child, my parents told me to study hard at school and I
did.
As a young man I had the honour of being Labor Mayor of my
hometown, Liverpool, building facilities that should have been built 30 years
earlier.
Then I had the opportunity to serve in the House of
Representatives, doing what very few Australians ever have a chance to do:
running to run the country at a general election.
For the past 14 years I’ve had the greatest joy and
responsibility of my life: as a home dad, as a primary carer, giving support
and all my love to my wife Janine and our three children, Oliver, Isaac and
Siena.
When I left the Federal Parliament in 2005, the words of the
former Member for Bass, Warwick Smith, echoed in my ears: “Every day you spend
away from your children is a day you never get back.”
The days and years with my children have been the best of my
life but now they are so much older and, through them,
having seen what the government school system has become, it was time to come
here to do something about it.
On 23 March, among the minor parties on our side of politics, three MLCs were
elected – two from One Nation.
I congratulate my friend and colleague Rod Roberts on his
election and thank those who made it possible: our party leader Senator Pauline
Hanson, a committed patriot who would do anything for her country.
Our highly dedicated NSW One Nation officials Mick Jackson and
Amit Batish, all our candidates, party workers and volunteers.
I especially thank my campaign manager Corrine Barraclough, who
was magnificent in every respect.
I also thank Alan Jones, who at various times gave me a chance when no one else
would.
No one in Australian public life does more research or is more
thoroughly across his brief than Alan, making him not only a great broadcaster
but a great fighter for Australia.
Most of all, I thank the people of NSW who have given me a
second go at parliamentary service.
To top the personal vote, below-the-line, at the election
confirms a special responsibility.
Our supporters are a long way from the centre of political power
but they hold a powerful belief in what politics should be.
They are salt-of-the earth people without a parliamentary or
media megaphone of their own.
So they rely on parties like Pauline Hanson’s One Nation to
fight for the things they love about their country.
Mr President, For those of us who believe in the virtues of
Western civilisation, who treasure the advances and values of the
Enlightenment, who look at Talmage’s painting and marvel at its meaning, this
is the fight of our lives.
Our ethos, sir, is simple:
No surrender.
No surrender in any debate, in any institution, on any front.
No surrender in trying to take back our country,
That, Mr President, is why I’m here and what I’m fighting for.
