Richard Di Natale yesterday announced his retirement from politics, and his reasons make me want to stand up and applaud the long-overdue display of right thinking and political priority. Here’s the important part of what he said in his tweeted announcement.
After nearly a decade as a senator, half that time as leader, this morning I’ve announced my resignation as Parliamentary Leader of the Australian Greens. It’s not a decision I’ve come to lightly because leading this incredible movement for nearly five years has been one of the biggest honours of my life.
But my boys are nine and eleven years old now and they have only ever known their dad as a busy and tired and sometimes grumpy politician. They’re growing up quickly and I want to spend more time by their side than a relentless political schedule allows.
In this, he has made an excellent decision. There is no more important occupation in this life than parenting, nothing more significant which one can do to leave a legacy which makes the world a better place. That Richard and I would differ diametrically on most values doesn’t diminish the underlying truth that absent fathers, in particular, are a predictor of a significantly increased likelihood of experiencing poverty, abuse and neglect, behavioural problems, incarceration, teen pregnancy, incomplete schooling, drug and alcohol abuse and even obesity.
It’s wonderful that Richard Di Natale has adopted the Christian conservative paradigm of decision making which considers the short and long term potential impacts and consequences for our most vulnerable citizens – children – before other preferred effects. Better late than never, at least for his kids.
Of course, the designer children created in test tubes just for single mothers or lesbians will still be raised – deliberately – with an absent father. 100,000 or so Australian preborn babies will still be deliberately killed in elective abortion clinics each year. More than 2,500,000 children attending government schools are highly likely to be taught gender is a feeling and surgery can change your biological sex. Philosophies of consequenceless sex, drive-though divorce-on-demand and state-sponsored single parenting will continue to underwrite an epidemic of fatherlessness with all its resultant societal traumas.
For those children, the self-anointeds’ preferred vision of society is imposed without sober consideration of consequences for them. As long as the adults get what they want, nothing else matters.
I really am happy Richard Di Natale is taking his responsibility for his children’s emotional, physical, psychological and social wellness seriously and placing it above all other considerations. This is a policy initiative every single candidate, party, and voter let alone parent should immediately adopt. Sincere congratulations on a fine example for us all in this one thing.
Make career decisions based on your child’s best interests, not your desire for a newer car, a bigger house, better holiday or personal fulfilment. The real Australian hero is the stay at home mum who refuses to let strangers raise her young children, the dad whose intentional presence may mean spending significantly less time at work or otherwise changing the world.
Applaud the parents who decide the national curriculum is hollow indoctrination at best churning out mindless worker drones incapable of questioning the status quo groupthink; parents who consider independent schooling vital to raising independent, responsible adults not given to petulant tantrums about vainly imagined rights. These are the people creating a positive future which will pay dividends long after they’re gone.
Let’s follow Richard’s example in no other instance than this one shining moment from a career of craven virtue-signalling: nothing is more important than caring for the children we have conceived.
