With parental rights front and centre of Family First’s campaign for the up-coming federal election, Tony Abbott has made a stunning admission about how those rights were first undermined when he was PM.

Writing for Canada’s National Post, Abbott admitted that his ministers were deceived by bureaucrats into introducing programs like the so-called “safe schools” program which told children their gender was fluid.

“An example of this was the introduction, by (Liberal) ministers who had been captured by bureaucrats, of the social engineering, gender fluidity-encouraging Safe Schools program, which was masquerading as an anti-bullying initiative, even though it had been devised under my (Labor) predecessors,” he wrote.

In my view, Abbott is being quite generous to his Education Minister Christopher Pyne.

I don’t believe Pyne was “snowed” at all. He knew exactly what Safe Schools was about and he later became one of the key drivers in the Parliament to remove the gender diversity requirement from the Marriage Act.

As a lobbyist for the Australian Christian Lobby I took material produced by a radical LGBTIQA+ activist group, Minus 18, to Pyne’s Assistant Education Minister Scott Ryan.

Ryan couldn’t believe the advice to children on penis tucking and chest binding.

There was even advice to children to get so-called “gender affirmation” surgery “with or without parental consent”.

Ryan’s staff later admitted to me that material was indeed promoted by “Safe Schools” but our efforts to have it removed under the Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison Liberal-National Governments were fruitless.

Countless Australian children are now on sterilising puberty blockers prescribed by child gender clinics throughout the nation.

Whistle blower psychiatrists like Dr Jillian Spencer remain suspended in Queensland, despite an LNP government now in power.

Abbott is not wrong to say bureaucrats take advantage of elected people.

But the flip side of his concern that “conservatives are often in government but not in power” is because too many Liberals have given in to Woke agendas.

That certainly seems to be the case of the Crisafulli Government in Queensland but it is early days still.

This of course is why Family First exists and is fielding candidates across southern and eastern Australia at the up-coming federal election.

And restoring parental rights over what children are taught at school is one of our key campaign themes.

After years of “climate policy”, Australia’s electricity grid is so fragile that even Liberal and National governments are joining Labor, the Teals and Greens in supporting power rationing.

The Third World state of our grid was rammed home in December when 8000 south-east Queensland homes had their air conditioners turned off remotely by government electricity authorities on a typically hot day.

That’s right, things were so bad authorities scrambled to avoid blackouts by logging into people’s homes to disable the compressors on their aircon.

It sounds more like something Xi Jinping would do than something encouraged under an LNP government.

This followed NSW Labor Government urgings during a hot day in late spring for Sydney-siders to refrain from using dishwashers to wash their dishes and washing machines to wash their clothes.

As a small child in the 1970s I remember my grandparents using a fire and a big copper tub to wash sheets outdoors, and of course their wood stove-equipped kitchen had no dishwasher.

I just never thought we’d be returning to those days in metropolitan Sydney or Brisbane in the 21^st century.

Instead of blasting the former Queensland Labor Government’s mismanagement of the electricity grid, which ironically has more reliable and cheap coal-fired generation than other states, the new LNP energy minister wistfully said power rationing on a hot day was better than having the power cut.

I kid you not.

David Janetzki said: “Energex and Ergon Energy carefully manage electricity demand peaks for those who have opted into PeakSmart, to smooth the load and help prevent widespread outages.”

A Minister worth his or her salt would have fired up and said the situation was unacceptable and that the new government was working to shore up the grid to make sure every Queenslander could use their aircon when they needed it without Big Brother’s finger on the kill switch.

Perhaps his sheepishness was because PeakSmart was introduced by the former Campbell Newman LNP government in 2012, according to the ABC.

Today’s LNP Deputy Premier Jarrod Bleijie, who was a senior member of the Newman Govenrment, flicked his own switch to blast PeakSmart.

“It’s not a solution, and I’m not happy about it,” he said after the Courier Mail exposed the pre-Christmas intervention.

“I don’t think Queenslanders should expect an energy company to be able, at a flick of a switch, to turn people’s aircon for a few hours a day.”

This of course begs the question as to why the LNP introduced it in the first place.

One LNP Senator who speaks truth (which explains why he remains ignored by his party on the backbench) is Senator Matt Canavan.

Putting his LNP colleague Janetzki to shame, he wrote that PeakSmart was more like “Peak Stupid”.

Sure, householders opted in to PeakSmart by signing on to a $400 discount of their aircon unit.

But people doing it tough will sign up for such an Orwellian scheme because they are desperate to get aircon.

Eight thousand of them in some of the poorest areas of Ipswich and Brisbane had their coolers cut by remote control by faceless bureaucrats in a country that once prided itself for its egalitarian ethic.

Now it is only the rich who can avoid the pain of electricity grid-weakening climate policies while the poor are incentivised to make the sacrifices elites won’t.

Our politicians should read Orwell’s Animal Farm. It is a parable of modern Australia where everyone is equal except some animals are more equal than others.

Family First opposes net zero policies which jeopardise our electricity grid and raise prices which in turn show up in ever-escalating household and business electricity bills.

With global emissions continuing to rise and Australia’s efforts of no impact to the “climate crisis”, Family First believes affordability and reliability must be prioritised.

Expensive environment-destroying industrial windmills and solar factories should be halted in favour of a coal-to-gas-to nuclear transition over time.

The grid must be stabilised and prices cut as a matter of urgency.

High electricity prices caused by the “climate” policies of both Liberal and Labor are a major cause of the inflation that is currently crippling household budgets.

Cutting power prices can only be done by harnessing Australia’s comparative advantage of abundant coal, gas and ultimately uranium.

It can’t be done by rolling out more windmills and solar sheets and then bulldozing tens of thousands of kilometres of bush to make way for transmission lines to dispersed intermittent power sources.

It is the folly of this policy that has made PeakSmart part of our political elites’ armoury to make sure those who are less equal do their bit to save the planet.

The Victorian Liberal parliamentary party’s treatment of Moira Deeming exposes a glaring hypocrisy in the so-called progressive left and the #MeToo movement.

Despite last week’s Federal Court ruling that found Victorian Liberal leader John Pesutto’s conduct towards Deeming was “untruthful” and “evasive,” there has been a deafening silence from those who claim to champion women’s rights and integrity. Where is the outrage?

Imagine the scenario reversed: if a conservative man had lied about a progressive woman, the fallout would have been swift and unforgiving.

As Peta Credlin astutely observes, “The uproar from the #MeToo movement would be nuclear.” Yet when it’s a “moderate” like Pesutto targeting a conservative woman, the double standards are stark.

(“Moderate” is the wrong term to describe someone who thinks a woman can have a penis and should be allowed in girls’ and women’s spaces – the Liberals need new nomenclature for their factions).

The injustice doesn’t end there. Deeming’s “crime” was standing up for women’s rights—particularly their right to safe spaces.

For this, she has been vilified, excluded, and left to bear the brunt of a leader who, as Credlin highlights, is too “delusional” to apologise.

Pesutto’s refusal to accept accountability, even after a Federal Court verdict, speaks volumes about his character and judgment.

It also speaks volumes about the character of some of the Christians in the party room who, according to media reports which have not been repudiated publicly by them, voted with Pesutto to expel Deeming.

A party room meeting is scheduled for tomorrow to discuss her re-admission. If these Christians do not change their vote and apologise, preferably publicly, Christian voters will need to be far more discerning when it comes to the Liberal party’s Christian candidates at the next election.

What’s truly at stake here is not just one woman’s reputation but the integrity of a political party and its ability to offer a credible alternative to an incompetent Labor government. Credlin rightly points out,

“If the Victorian Liberal Party won’t stand up for women’s rights, then frankly it has no right to call itself Liberal.”

This case should serve as a wake-up call to all Australians. Hypocrisy and cowardice must not replace principle and justice. It’s time to demand better from those who claim to represent us, starting with leaders who are brave enough to admit when they’ve failed.

The failure of the Liberal Party to uphold basic integrity, women’s rights, the best interests of the mum and dad family, the human rights of unborn babies and economic and energy policies that help families get ahead is why Family First is in the political fight.

Statement from Lee Jones, Family First spokesman and candidate for the Upper House Division of Southeast Metropolitan.

Recently Coalition Leader Matthew Guy announced he would restore freedom of religion to religious schools by amending the Equal Opportunity Act. Big tick for that.

But last year he told LGBTIQA+ radio that Daniel Andrews’ Conversion and Suppression bill, which jails parents, pastors, doctors & imams for helping gender confused children, was “a good bill”.

Here’s his quote:

“The bill is a good bill. It stands, and it will continue to stand. And I just don't want there to be – for the very strong LGBTIQ community in Victoria – I don't want there to be any equivocation, or any view that there might be another agenda out there. There's not. And I just want it to be clear so that everyone can be in no uncertain terms, that this ain't coming back.”

The question is does Matthew Guy believe in freedom or not?

Matthew Guy can’t tell religious schools they will now be free to uphold scientific views on biology but at the same time support jailing people who try and convince children to stay away from gender clinics.

London just closed its child gender clinic, the Tavistock Centre, for harming children with puberty blockers and cross sex hormones.

Yet Matthew Guy is on a unity ticket with Dan Andrews in wanting to jail people who take the UK’s approach.

This election is about protecting your family and your freedoms from the harmful radical political correctness of the major parties.