The big question arising from Donald Trump’s electrifying address to Congress today is why don’t our leaders have his courage?

Whatever one’s view of Trump the man, the narcissist etc - 90 per cent of what he said is common sense.

How hard is it to get biological males out of girls’ and women’s sports?

Fix the cost-of-living crisis by “drill, baby drilling” and getting out of the Paris climate accords?

Even former Prime Minister Tony Abbot says Australia should do what Trump is doing and declare an “energy emergency”.

Ban child gender transition?

Trump’s not afraid to take on the noisy LGBTQI+ lobby but Peter Dutton is petrified of them.

Restore freedom of speech?

Trump has banished cancel culture – the sort that has Family First National Director Lyle Shelton embroiled in a five-year legal battle against two drag queens who have weaponised the law in the service of their hurt feelings.

“We are getting wokeness out of our schools, out of our military,” Trump said.

“Wokeness is trouble, we don’t want it.”

Hear, hear!

Sadly, both Peter Dutton and Anthony Albanese are wedded to woke.

They are too scared to touch any of what Trump talked of today.

They are both going into this election pledged to net zero and forcing us to pay the Paris premium on our electricity.

Both refuse to change the Sex Discrimination Act to restore the definition of woman, leaving girls and women unsafe in their private spaces and sports.

For casual observers of politics, Trump’s war on woke might seem new.

But he’s simply implementing long-standing Family First policy.

Many of us thought the radical left was so ascendent that we may not see the tables turned in our life time.

But here we are on the right side of history.

Trump’s list of wasteful spending on US AID was comical.

“$8 million to promote LGBTQI+ in the African nation of Lesotho, which nobody has ever heard of,” Trump said about the landlocked 2-million-person country surrounded by South Africa.

“$8 million for making mice transgender — this is real,” Trump read.

“$1.5 billion for voter confidence in Liberia … $59 million for illegal alien hotel rooms in New York City … $14 million for improving public procurement in Serbia.”

The list went on.

Imagine what would be found if a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) set up shop in Canberra.

Trump chronicled the end of Diversity, Equality and Inclusion (DEI) programs and the teaching of critical race theory, which teaches children to hate America.

The woke mind virus, to use the phrase Elon Musk coined, has infected Australia equally.

Leadership in America is turning the tables on the radical left.

The Democrats sat indignantly. One held at sign saying “this is not normal”.

Weird from the same people who think taxpayers’ money should be spent on making mice transgender.

Democrat women wore pink in protest of Trump’ supposedly anti-women policies.

But 24 hours earlier they voted against getting males out of girls’ and women’s sports.

Nancy Pelosi looked like she was sucking on lemons.

Dutts and Albo are yet to get the message.

If you want common sense for Australia, vote 1 Family First.

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Both Labor’s Mark Butler and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton showed how out of touch they are on Australia’s red-hot gender debate this week.

While Donald Trump gets on with getting males out of girls’ sports and de-funding the child gender clinics, our politicians can’t work out whether they are Arthur or Martha.

Butler, who is Anthony Albanese’s Health Minister, was asked about biological males playing in girls and women’s sports.

“This is not an issue in Australia,” he foolishly said.

Kirralie Smith of the women’s and girl’s rights advocacy group Binary was in court last Friday fighting an Apprehended Violence Order brought against her by a male soccer player who identifies as a woman and plays in a women’s team.

Butler is a fool.

Sadly Peter Dutton, whom conservatives hoped would be conservative, inexplicably said yesterday that any inquiry into the harm of children through LGBTIQA+ child gender bending clinics was a “conscience vote” for his MPs.

Family First’s message to Mr Dutton is that it should not be a conscience vote to read the riot act to LGBTIQA+ gender clinics injecting children with puberty blockers without parental consent.

MEDIA RELEASE

Family First says LGBTIQA+ drag queens are not for kids and has pledged to de-fund councils who promote them to children.

Recent events, such as the "Drag Life Drawing Out West" held at Altona Beach by the Hobson’s Bay City Council on February 1, 2025, have raised concerns among parents and community members.

If elected, Family First’s Senate team will fight to withdraw Commonwealth grants from local councils that allocate public funds to promote LGBTIQA+ drag queen events.

This is to protect children from exposure to gender-fluid and sexualised role models, which are inappropriate, especially in public spaces such as beaches.

Our children deserve to be nurtured in environments that respect their innocence and promote clear, consistent values.

Using public money to fund events that blur these lines is irresponsible.

If elected, Family First will ensure that councils prioritising such activities will no longer receive Commonwealth grants.

Family First believes that such events, even when labelled as ‘family-friendly’, introduce children to harmful concepts of gender fluidity and expose them to sexualised role models.

The party asserts that public funds should not be used to support activities that may confuse or mislead children, which is clearly the intent of the LGBTIQA+ activists who have lobbied local councils such as the Hobson’s Bay.

The same policy would apply to councils who hold drag queen story time events in local libraries.

Lyle Shelton, who is also National Director of Family First, has previously highlighted the potential harms of exposing children to drag queen performances.

In an on-going landmark legal case, Shelton is defending his stance against drag queen story time events in council libraries, emphasising the need to protect children from early sexualisation and indoctrination into harmful gender-fluid concepts.

Family First urges local councils to cut any public funds allocated towards events featuring drag queens and to focus instead on initiatives that uphold mainstream family values and protect the well-being of children.

Whatever you think of Donald Trump, his actions in his first seven days in office to protect children from radical LGBTIQA+ gender ideology must be applauded.

An Executive Order issued last night cuts off taxpayer funding for sex change operations on children.

Family First has been highlighting this issue in Australia for years, with establishment political leaders either ignoring the harm or supporting it.

Trump’s Executive Order states:

“Across the country today, medical professionals are maiming and sterilising a growing number of impressionable children under the radical and false claim that adults can change a child’s sex through a series of irreversible medical interventions,” the order says.

“This dangerous trend will be a stain on our Nation’s history, and it must end.”

The order says children will “regret that they have been mutilated and begin to grasp the horrifying tragedy that they will never be able to conceive children of their own or nurture their children through breastfeeding.”

“Accordingly, it is the policy of the United States that it will not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called ‘transition’ of a child from one sex to another…and it (the government) will rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit these destructive and life-altering procedures.”

Family First is fighting for laws which ban sex change operations for minors, something which is Labor policy.

Similarly, Peter Dutton said last week he will do nothing to restore to Australia’s public policy the truth that there are only two genders, leaving girls, women and children vulnerable.

Read the executive order from the White House.

Senior Coalition figures continue to double down on their commitment to radical LGBTIQA+ ideology.

The latest was Senator Dave Sharma, who on Sunday night told the Danica & James show on Sky news that the Coalition would not amend the Sex Discrimination Act to restore the biological reality of two genders in Australian Law.

In 2013 both Labor and the Coalition amended the SDA to allow biological males to identify was women and vice versa and for it to be illegal to discriminate against someone based on their new gender.

Last week Donald Trump signed an Executive Order to say the US federal government now only recognised two genders.

Sharma told Danica and James he believed in protecting girls and women’s sports but would not support amending the SDA, which means it would remain illegal to protect girls from the encroachment of males in their sport.

Sadly Peter Dutton also said last week the Coalition had no plans to restore the definition of biological gender to law, leaving mainstream Australians and women’s groups gobsmacked.

Here’s the transcript of the interview with Dave Sharma:

JAMES MACPHERSON: I've got a very tricky question for you that politicians right around our country have been struggling with all week. I want to see how you go. The official policy of the US government is now that there are only two genders, male and female. So, I wanted to ask you, as a high-profile Liberal Party Senator three questions. How many genders are there? What are they? And will that be reflected in government policy should you win the election?

SENATOR SHARMA: Well, in my view, there are two genders, male and female. And in my view, the policy on this is settled. I mean, we've got our guidelines on this in the Australian government go back to 2013 when the Sex Discrimination Act was amended. My view is if it's not broke, don't try and fix it. I think, uh, you know, I'm watching what they're doing in the US with interest, but I don't have any proposals to change how we go about this in Australia.

JAMES MACPHERSON: So the coalition won't embrace the pro women's rights movement and push back against trans ideology?

SENATOR SHARMA: I think our priorities are addressing, you know, people's cost of living, uh, you know, power bills, grocery prices, electricity prices. I mean, fundamentally we think the most important duty of our government is to keep people safe, give them an opportunity to get ahead and that's what we'll be focused on.

JAMES MACPHERSON: Just before I let you go, I've got to push back slightly because there'd be a lot of ladies watching saying, well, our priority is the safety of our daughters, fairness in girls sport. Is that not a priority for at least half the population?

SENATOR SHARMA: Oh, I think, I think those are important issues. Uh, I think, you know, making sure that, you know, women are safe, whether they're playing sport or they're in correctional facilities or, uh, anywhere else is an important consideration. And I think we always need to make sure we keep that first and foremost, that people's freedom to identify how they want to in terms of their gender does not impinge upon the rights and safety of others. Now, that's always going to be a live issue, but I don't think we need to be headlining a policy area on this when I think Australia's under so many other pressures.

Sadly Labor, the Greens and the Coalition are on a unity ticket when it comes to defending the lie about gender that is baked into the Sex Discrimination Act.

Family First’s Senate team of Katie Lush (Qld), Lyle Shelton (NSW), Bernie Finn (Vic) and Christopher Brohier (SA) is fighting for a return to commonsense on gender.

MEDIA RELEASE

Family First welcomes the return of commonsense to America under President Donald Trump and will continue its fight for Australia to follow suit at the up-coming federal election.

Trump’s declaration in his second inaugural address today that “as of this day it will be the policy of the United States Government that there are only two genders” is a win for the safety of girls and women, Family First National Director Lyle Shelton said.

“How hard is it?” Mr Shelton asked.

“We have been calling for this for years yet Australian political leaders remained captured by Woke political correctness.

“Family First’s Senate candidates will not rest until Australia adopts the same policy.

“But it shouldn’t take pressure from a minor party for Liberal, Labor, Teals and Green to wake up to the commonsense of human biology and repudiate the crazy demands of LGBTIQA+ political activists.”

Mr Shelton said the same applied to the Paris Climate Accord with Trump today signing an executive order to leave what he described as a “rip off”.

Vice-President JD Vance said exiting Paris would save US taxpayers $1 trillion.

Mr Shelton said Australians struggling with our own home-grown cost-of-living crisis brought on in large part by Liberal and Labor Governments pursuing the Paris agenda should also be given relief which would come by withdrawing from the accord.

“The idea that so-called renewables provide cheaper and reliable electricity and save the planet is completely discredited,” Mr Shelton said.

“All we are doing by being in Paris is punishing working families.”

Family First has long called for commonsense on gender and net zero, but it has taken the re-election of Donald Trump to be a first mover.

Mr Shelton also noted Donald Trump would restore freedom of speech and religion.

“The new White House has adopted Family First’s key campaign objectives for the up-coming Australian federal election – cut power prices, protect parental rights to educate their kids and protect women and children from gender ideology.”

Mr Shelton noted that President Trump has also vowed to protect girls’ and women’s sports, get radical gender ideology and critical race theory out of schools.

“Family First is also campaigning for this and notes that the Liberal, Labor, Teal and Green political establishment are largely on a unity ticket on gender and Paris.”

On my run this morning I listed to the live audio feed direct from Donald Trump’s victory rally from the Capital One Arena in Washington DC.

Livestreaming allows ordinary people access to information unfiltered by the spin of the legacy media.

There’s no doubt it was inspiring, despite the usual over-the-top American kitsch and team-Trump hyperbole.

But that’s all part of the fun, Kid Rock and all.

Doubtless there will be more from 3am tomorrow when coverage of his second inauguration begins.

I’ll be up.

Underneath all the glitz though, was serious policy for families which I hope will reverberate to Australia.

Trump’s boldness on so many commonsense issues is killing Woke and its toxic DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) offshoot that infests big corporations, government departments and universities.

That is good news for mums and dads.

For those who don’t know, DEI pushes racial discrimination and LGBTIQA+ issues and career limits and punishes anyone who questions its orthodoxy.

Woke ideology and DEI has given us forced pronoun compliance and biological males in girls and women’s sports and their private spaces.

That’s why on the campaign trail and then again at the victory rally, Trump continues to lambast it.

At the rally he repeated:

“We will get critical race theory and transgender the hell out of our schools. We will keep men out of women’s sports. It will be done tomorrow”.

Trump’s policy adviser Stephen Miller told the crowd:

“It's not up to you if you are a man or a woman. That decision is a decision that is made by God and it can't be changed.”

Apart from Family First and a few others in the minor party space, no Australian political leader has spoken with such clarity and resolve about one of the major cultural issues destroying the lives of thousands of our young people.

(In fairness the Liberal leader in WA, Libby Mettam, has been good).

If Peter Dutton similarly pledged to save girls’ and women’s sports and get LGBTIQA+ ideology out of our schools, along with critical race theory, he would win the up-coming federal election.

Because of the leadership vacuum, Family First is standing Senate candidates in Qld, NSW, Vic and SA – supported by a team of lower house candidates – who are committed to protecting children from Woke LGBTIQA+ indoctrination.

Trump also said he would restore patriotism in American schools.

Like America and much of the West, Australian children have also been taught to question the legitimacy of their nation and this badly needs to be addressed.

If young people don’t love their nation, despite its faults, how can we expect them to fight for it if the time comes, which it might given current global instability?

Elon Musk, who famously took the “red pill” and switched from being a left-wing Democrat to a full-blown MAGA Trump supporter, has single handedly saved freedom of speech by purchasing Twitter, which he renamed X.

Suddenly conservatives had a voice without the censorship of their ideas that the likes of Mark Zuckerberg of Meta have only dropped since Trump was elected.

Musk took the stage this morning and declared that the Trump project was looking well beyond tomorrow when Trump’s flurry of executive orders will restore sanity to girls’ sports, the border, energy and so much more.

“We want to set the foundation of America to be strong for a century.”

If Trump delivers in his final term and if JD Vance succeeds him, that vision may well be fulfilled.

The Biden-Harris attempt to continue the Obama experiment has shown the world what Woke is and the voters didn’t like it.

Australians are only just starting to feel the pain of Woke policies and haven’t fully realised the nightmare.

But things are moving quickly thanks to Trump.

The question for the up-coming election is will the “Trump effect” affect Australia?

Family First hopes so and our candidates will carry similar commonsense policies on energy, family and gender to this election.

Whether it is this election, or a subsequent one, Woke’s days are numbered.

RIP DEI.

The Family Court's recent decision to permit a teenager, pseudonymously referred to as Ash, to access cross-sex hormones exposes the dangers inherent in LGBTIQA+ gender fluid ideology.

Judge Peter Tree openly acknowledged the "real risks" posed by so-called “gender affirming” treatment, including potential infertility, irreversible physical changes, and uncertain mental health outcomes.

Yet, instead of erring on the side of caution, the court chose to allow the treatment, citing Ash's "dignity of risk."

This stark admission by the judiciary underscores an urgent question: why are Australia's elected politicians failing to protect vulnerable children from harm?

Leaving these contentious and life-altering decisions to courts demonstrates a glaring abdication of responsibility.

The Family First Party strongly believes that it is not the role of judges to navigate such complex issues without clear legislative guidance.

Policymakers must urgently step up to safeguard children and provide a framework grounded in scientific evidence and long-term welfare.

Legal academic Professor Patrick Parkinson has expressed deep concerns over the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones in children, noting, "Many parents now have serious concerns about the safety and efficacy of these treatments."

He advocates for thorough psychological investigation and therapy before any medical interventions are considered.

The Family First Party echoes these sentiments and urges Australian politicians to heed the lessons of international reviews, such as the UK Cass Review, which recommended extreme caution in administering such treatments to minors and led to the closure of the UK’s Tavistock child gender clinic.

Child gender clinics abound in Australia, despite the UK and many other nations ditching LGBTIQA+ gender medicine.

Failure of Australian politicians to act will only lead to more children being subjected to unproven and potentially harmful medical procedures, with the courts admitting that "regret cases" are likely in the future.

This is a pivotal moment for Australia's leaders.

Politicians must confront the risks of gender fluid ideology and act decisively to implement laws that protect children from unnecessary and irreversible harm.

The Family First Party is fielding candidates at the up-coming federal election who will fight for the protection of children from harmful LGBTIQA+ gender fluid ideology.