One of the ways International Men’s Day was celebrated, on Tuesday 19 November 2013, was by holding a Men and Fathers’ Strategic Roundtable at Parliament House, Canberra. Thirty-three delegates from many parts of the men and fathers’ movement actively participated. Three of the delegates were indigenous, seven were women and a few others came as observers. During the lunch break, Carolyn Managh from M&C Saatchi released The Modern [Aussie] Man White ...

Men are leaders. They will either lead goodly or badly. For almost 40 years men have been demonised by radical feminists and a compliant media because the radical feminists have rightly observed that almost all of the world’s problems have come from inerrant men. Look at the long list of dictators responsible for the deaths of 153 million people in the 20th Century. All of them (top 36) are men. Mao ...

This is an exciting time in the restoration of fatherhood in Australia. To quote Bill Biddle, manager of film distribution for Koorong: “Interest in Absent is exploding across Australia”. Many venues booked are preparing for overflow areas with extra screens as interest gets stronger. The Facebook page is up to 461 likes and Koorong, the national distributor of the Absent movie, received over 900 click-throughs on the Absent logo of one ...

In the Absent movie, which will soon be touring Australia, 13-29 June 2013, John Eldredge, author of ‘Wild at Heart’ says, “If you take snapshots of western culture right now the prognosis is not good”. David Blankenhorn has stated in ‘Fatherless America’ written in 1996, “Fatherlessness is the most harmful demographic trend of this generation”. Dave Kopel, in his article called ‘Fatherlessness: The Root Cause’ says: As Pat Moynihan wrote in ...

In June, 2000, a 44-year-old father experiencing family separation killed himself in the bush in the Victorian Gippsland region. Greg Wilton had a five-year-old son and a two-year-old daughter. This event made national news because Greg Wilton was also a federal parliamentarian. Each year in Australia, more than 2,500 people die by suicide. This is significantly more than the national road toll (about 1,700). Most people are aware of the focus ...

My last article mentioned a report from the Australian Institute of Family Studies that revealed that an alarmingly high number of children spend the day with their father but never sleep over. These children, and their fathers, are being denied the opportunity for a normal parent/child relationship and all the benefits that accrue from this. They are children who only visit their father. They have no sense of being at home ...

One of the reasons my life has been so good is that I have had a good father. I also want to be a good father to my own children. However, the freedom to make this choice no longer exists for separated fathers in Australian society. Family Law legislation in Australia has removed from me my authority as a father and placed it in the hands of anonymous government bureaucrats who ...

One of the things I enjoy about spending time with my children is the opportunity to drop everything else I do. This is through necessity as well as through choice, since my children offer me no other option. I’m involved with a number of community groups which require a considerable amount of time, research and thought. As well as this, like most people, I find that I need to work for ...

It may by reassuring for separated fathers to know that many federal parliamentarians have some awareness of their plight. The efforts of many men in communicating their experiences and highlighting the injustices inherent in the Family Law System is paying dividends. During the recent meeting of the Fatherhood Foundation/Dads4Kids at Parliament House, Canberra, the following comments were made: Senator Bill Heffernan said that they hear all the time in the party ...

‘Promoting family values’ has been the catch-cry of both well-intentional and vote-hungry politicians throughout the ages. In Australia in recent years, it has had a particularly strong and enthusiastic resurgence. Who can forget Bob Hawke’s emotional electoral promise that, “by the Year 2000, no Australian child will be living in poverty”? In 1989, the Hawke Labor Government introduced the Child Support Scheme, which had the effect of engineering and accelerating the ...