- Barry Williams.
A lot of people, including most of the Dads On The Air team, are glad to see the end of 2009. The year which saw the death of Michael Jackson, the triumph of Barack Obama and the failure of the Copenhagen climate change conference, was also the year in which the Australian government, headed by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, inexplicable moved against the nation’s fathers, holding multiple fundamentally biased inquiries into the previous government’s popular shared parenting legislation, which encouraged the courts to give fathers and their children a fair-go after separation.
The founder of the Lone Fathers Association Barry Williams, the grandfather of the fatherhood movement in Australia and way back in 1972 the first Australian male to receive the parenting allowance, here adds his voice to the chorus of concern over the Rudd governments apparent aims to roll back the legislation which encouraged cooperation between parents post-divorce
2010 is likely to see the dismantling of the modest reforms of the former Howard government which required the courts to at least consider the option of shared parenting after divorce; and to stop doing what they have always done, treating fathers as pariahs the moment they become separated dads. Prior to the reforms, the vast majority of children saw their relationship with their fathers willfully destroyed by a brutally corrupt family law system which had re-interpreted 1970s feminism to mean that fathers were unnecessary in their childrens’ lives, thereby creating untold personal and social damage.
This insanity, as many have pointed out, is likely to cost the Rudd government votes as it becomes apparent they are happy to attack separated dads in a misguided attempt to appeal to the feminist vote. What they forget is that most women love the men in their lives, their husbands, partners, brothers, sons, fathers, and regard the male-bashing vitriol of their aging sisters as little short of preposterous.
We close the program with an excerpt from the Men’s health conference, with a group of indigenous men involved in the Hey Dad program talking about their most intimate concerns.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank all our listeners and supporters for their contributions throughout the year, and all the best for 2010!!
If you would like to contribute to Dads On The Air as one of your New Year’s resolutions, feel free to contact us through the website.