MEDIA RELEASE

Family First will run pro-life candidates at next year’s election committed to repealing Victoria’s dangerous euthanasia laws and restoring dignity to end-of-life care.

The Allan Labor Government has announced sweeping amendments to Victoria’s Voluntary Assisted Dying (VAD) laws that will remove key safeguards and put vulnerable people at greater risk.

More than 1,200 Victorians have already been euthanised under these laws since they came into effect in 2019. Now Labor, possibly with the help of Liberals and Nationals, wants to make it even easier.

Family First believes in real compassion — not killing. We stand for expanding palliative care, not euthanasia.

If someone feels they need to kill themselves it probably means they are not getting access to modern palliative care.

Every human life is precious, and our society must do everything possible to protect those nearing the end of life, not pressure them into an early grave when mixed motives of some family members the economic pressures on the health system can come into play.

The proposed changes include:

• Allowing doctors to “suggest” euthanasia to patients — a gross violation of medical ethics that devalues life.
• Forcing Christian doctors and nurses to provide information about euthanasia, even if it violates their conscience — a direct attack on religious freedom.
• Doubling the eligibility window from six to 12 months to live — undermining hope for patients who may otherwise respond to treatment.
• Cutting the consultation period from nine days to five — increasing the risk of rash decisions.
• Dropping interpreter requirements — risking fatal misunderstandings among non-English-speaking patients.

These are not minor technical tweaks. These are fundamental shifts that expose the sick, elderly, disabled, and non-English speakers to the prospect of state-sanctioned death — often without fully understanding what they are agreeing to.

Health Minister Mary-Anne Thomas says these changes will bring Victoria into line with other jurisdictions. But dragging Victoria down to the lowest common denominator in euthanasia policy is not progress. It is a betrayal of the vulnerable.

Family First will not stand by while the culture of death takes deeper root in our healthcare system. Our candidates will fight to repeal these laws and champion world-class palliative care so that no Victorian feels they are a burden or better off dead.

Free speech in Australia was already on life support before Victoria’s so-called “hate speech” laws passed this week.

Deeply flawed anti-discrimination laws, which also exist in other states, now have the frightening overlay of criminal sanctions in Victoria.

That potentially means jail simply for speaking the truth about gender or marriage.

The Australian Christian Lobby’s Victorian director Jasmine Yuen summed it up well when she said she feared the “subjective and undefined terminology” used in the Bill could see Victorians hauled in front of the courts for expressing contentious views, such as stating that “trans women are not women”.

Australia’s anti-discrimination laws are already “subjective and undefined” – one only has to read the judgement of Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal Member Jeremy Gordon in the case brought against me by two LGBTIQA+ drag queens to know that.

Lowering the bar further is legally reckless for a society that venerates its ANZACs for fighting and dying for our freedoms.

Victoria has form in using the threat of jail against its citizens so that the wishes of radical LGBTIQA+ activists can be carried out.

Even the hapless Victorian Liberals support jailing parents for up to ten years if they try and stop their child from being injected with sterilising puberty blockers, taking their support for the so called “anti-conversion” laws to the 2022 election.

Thankfully the Liberals belatedly saw sense and did not repeat this mistake,  opposing this week’s “hate speech” laws.

But it wasn’t enough to stop Labor and the Greens ramming it through.

One of the big changes this week was the insertion of the word “likely” into the law.

To go to jail, intent or some objective “reasonable persons” test, is no defence.

If what a citizen does is “likely” to incite contempt, revulsion or severe ridicule against a minority group, you can be dragged before the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal and ultimately sent to jail.

If this test was applied to the case brought against me by the two Queensland drag queens who are suing me for saying they are dangerous role models for children (which they are), I could be in even more trouble than I currently am.

Australia’s regime of flawed anti-discrimination/anti-vilification laws have much in common and Victorian and NSW cases have been cited the two trials I have been through.

Having sat through around 10 days of court room legal arguments and read hundreds of pages of submissions against me over the past five years, it is clear to me this week’s Victorian laws have been constructed to ensure people like me can never get away with exercising freedom of speech when calling out the nefarious agenda of the LGBTIQA+ political movement.

Victoria has even made “drag queens” a protected attribute in the legislation.

Is this so people like me can never again criticise the gender-fluid and “camp culture” indoctrination agenda of children that even the expert witnesses in my case admit is behind DQST?

The public rationale for beefing up federal and state “hate speech” laws was the antisemitism crisis.

The LGBTIQA+ political lobby cleverly used it to smuggle in chilling advances to their agenda to completely snuff out free speech.

They are totalitarians and for a large part of their journey the Liberals supported this. Thankfully they woke up this week, but it was too late.

Family First plans to contest next year’s Victorian election.

Just as we are fighting at the current federal election for free speech and freedom of religion, our efforts will be redoubled in the state campaign.

Family First Senators, if elected, will fight for a Commonwealth override of state-based anti-free speech "hate speech" laws. Family First has already announced it will abolish state and federal human rights commissions which are activated by these laws.

Fighting to repeal anti-free speech and anti-family laws constructed by LGBTIQA+ political activists with the help of politicians will continue to be top of Family First’s agenda.

MEDIA RELEASE

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.