David Grace

We all know that we live in the lucky country. The island continent, celebrating 100 years since federation, is the sixth largest country and the smallest continent on earth.

Yet its population is a mere 19 million, sparse by any standards in a world where families in many countries live in cramped and overcrowded cities without adequate infrastructure to provide for them. One hundred years ago as our federation was formed, there was a mere four million people here.

Over the century, many changes have occurred which have an impact on family life. Population movements from country to city, growth in transportation have changed the train, boat , horse and carriage transportation system to one of frequent planes, buses, trains, ships, and cars making easy the travelling of long distances in relatively short periods of time. Changes in communication have enabled the odd slow letter or telegram to be replaced by an array of telecommunications equipment to enable phone, facsimile and email communications around the country, indeed the globe instantaneously. The information age has seen the introduction of substantial advances in technology which carry messages to families far away from each other and business communications through a range of media. But of course the forces of evil have found much use for those media for the promotion and distribution of pornography, advising on how to make explosive devices and other dangerous practices.

These changes have created substantial difficulties for parents in controlling the nature of information to which their children are exposed through media entering the home not only in the traditional published form but also in the electronic format. The once practice of checking out the written material lying about a home has developed into a need to study the programs on television and the media the child scrolls through on the internet- for many, a difficult task, especially for those who have difficulty turning a computer on let alone scrolling through the menus and links to an infinite variety of material to see what Johnny or Jane may be investigating. The need to install certain blocking devices to limit access to offensive material adds to the cost and time of trying to manage the upbringing of our future generation. And all this in an environment where the pace of life seems to eternally increase.

Australia today provides a safety net through a social security system which, limited though it may be, at least ensures a basic level of income for those in need, our elderly and our frail or disadvantaged. A century ago society did not have those social protections in place.

In the 100 years of federation our families have suffered through two world wars, the regional conflicts of Korea and Vietnam, the Middle East and recently the occupation of East Timor by our military as head of the UN Peace Keeping Force. These activities have to differing degrees brought great emotional and physical pain and suffering to many Australian families through the loss of life or permanent physical or psychological harm. For the losses suffered by those families, the families of the current generation owe an enormous debt of gratitude. We in the AFA are proud to have as one of our patrons a distinguished war veteran Major General Digger James who is with us today.

Through all of those losses the support of families for those injured provides a unique environment.

It is unique because-

• It is founded on the love between a father and a mother, a husband and a wife, a sister or a brother
• It provides a special supporting infrastructure
• It is a place of care, of solace and of comfort, where the pains, the sorrows and concerns are shared and where understanding is found,
• It is a place of spiritual well being a place where people who pray together stay together and who worship our God even through difficult times to share the virtue of Hope , and
• It is a place of common wealth for each member of our Australian community.

The family is today as it was at the commencement of federation, the fundamental unit of our society. Whilst families today have shrunk in average size, they have nonetheless survived the wars and conflicts, the impacts of technological developments, the legislative changes that have brought social change eg changes to Sunday trading laws, working hours and work habits as well as more fundamental change such as the progressive liberalisation of our divorce laws to the point where today the most significant contract entered into in our society can be unilaterally cancelled without proper cause. It has not survived without harm as the results of such progressive legislative change is to create a view that it is ok to be divorced because what is legal is moral and hence divorce is perceived as morally justified.

Other legislative change involves the progressive liberalisation of a range of civil and criminal laws decriminalising homosexual acts and creating the same or similar rights for people in non marital relations including sama sex couples as for married persons. This has undermined the special status accorded to the institution of marriage because of the inherent value of marriage to the economic and social health of the nation.

Other social change impacting on families particularly in the latter part of the century has been the sexual revolution enabling, through the use of the Pill and other contraceptive devices, the development of an absence of responsibility in sexual matters and a lessening of responsibility and desire for parenthood.

Drugs have also devastated many families and it is difficult to imagine any family not affected directly or indirectly by drug or chemical abuse. Mr Mark Le Grand has spoken of these matters in his Paper delivered at this Conference earlier today.

Educational changes have seen curricula developed which carefully avoid reference to our Christian values and the training of a range of values and ideologies with the notion that any of them ore ok and you should feel free to chose whichever one you like. This type of teaching in schools is reinforced through Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission's oversight of the provisions of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and its restrictions on the rights of parents to teach religious values to their children. These changes encourage the spread of nihilistic and humanistic libertarian philosophies and undermine Judaeo Christian attitudes within our society.

Within Christianity itself there has developed a loss of the sense of sin, changes brought about through the infiltration within the Church of so called modernist thinkers who reject many of the fundamental and time tested teachings of the Church because the impact seems a little harsh on some people whom it affects.

These reflections seem negative. But the family has great strengths, those summarised above as unique qualities and it is those strengths which ensure the survival of the family for not only the last one hundred years but also the next millennium and beyond. Family is common across cultures. Whilst having differing emphases for different cultures nonetheless the inherent structure and value of family is a common and significant aspect of their upbringing.

Australian culture has been influenced heavily by various stages of immigration throughout the past one hundred years. In the early part of the century the major immigrants came from Great Britain and Northern Ireland, later from eastern Europe, and Italy and Greece still later from Asia, and a variety of other eastern and southern American cultures.

The family remains however the medium through which the traditions of those cultures are passed on from one generation to the next.

The notion of family has almost unbelievably been the subject of attack from many quarters seemingly determined to confuse and in the process undermine family values as these values create problems for some lifestyles or activities.

Examples of this of recent times include an article in The Australian last year where the journalist argued that 40% of marriages will fail, 20% of women will never marry and 10%will be homosexual lifestyles. Hence the majority will not be traditional families, she argued. Other articles suggested that "few children live with their natural parents".

Yet statistics show that family households make up 70% of Australian households and that 74% of all children live with their natural parents . Obviously the accuracy of the data depends on how the family is described.

Taken in the sense in which most Australians understand family to include grown up children who may have left home either because they have themselves married or for work or other reasons does not mean that they cease to be a family. The nuclear family of mum, dad and the kids, whether born or adopted is the readily understood meaning of family by the vast majority of Australians. This Association holds the view that family is founded by a man and a woman joined in marriage and their children by blood or adoption.

But whilst figures which show that about 21 % of children today live with one parent only may be true, and it is a fact that young people are marrying later, these statistics show trends which are of concern just as figures showing drug statistics increasing or crimes of violence increasing are of concern and call for community and government response.

In the US and UK political leaders have made it clear that societies which denigrate marriage and allow numbers of young people to grow up without fathers are asking for trouble. There the debate seems to be over, the recognition is there and so policy and legislative responses are needed on an ongoing basis to turn the tide. However in Australia the debate is not over. We have governments at State and Federal levels passing laws that do not encourage a mum dad and the kids scenario.

Social trends however are not irreversible. ( Just take the smoking issue in this country as one example). The key to social trends is attitudes. Attitudes are moulded through many environments of which family life is a very important one.

The reversal process is one in which the AFA must be fully involved. This will not be easy but the price of freedom is eternal vigilance and we must be vigilant in pursuing our goals.

Within Australia, families

• Remain the means of procreating the human race (despite scientific attempts to do otherwise)
• Remains the blessed institution of God for the upbringing of children
• Remains the institution for nurturing our children throughout their upbringing
• Remains the engine room of our democracy

and continues to provide the foundation for the development during the next century as the future of our nation.

Thank God for Australian families over the first one hundred years of federation - they are truly the common wealth of the nation.