To mark the 50th anniversary of the Australian Family Law Act in 2025 A Sense of Place Magazine is running this series Classics of the Fatherhood Movement.

Also, keep an eye out for the upcoming book from A Sense of Place Publishing, Failure: Family Law Reform Australia by veteran journalist John Stapleton.

In writing Children of the State Australian author Peter van de Voorde hoped the book would unravel the entire legal morass which had strangled and destroyed so many of the nation’s citizens.

Peter argued in the book: “Today, every Australian child is at risk of being deprived of the protection of their biological family, because we have collectively failed to recognise the supreme guardianship powers of the State. Perceived legal rights to the protection of their own family, something everybody assumes parents and children are entitled to, are in fact non-existent. This has resulted in the creation of a multi-billion-dollar child-removal industry, engaged in the redistribution of stolen children for profit, across the Western world.

“Cumulatively impacting more than six million Australians and currently draining our annual taxpayer funded budgets to the tune of $53 billion, that this issue is not at the top of the national agenda places a huge question mark over the quality of our collective vigilance. Without rights or anyone to turn to, the overwhelming socioeconomic consequences of misguided family and child protection policies reach deep into every community.”

Twelve years in the making, Children of the State: Stolen for Profit, presents a devastating compilation of statistics and analyses of failed family and child protection systems.

It provides a detailed account of morally indefensible international family and child protection laws and practices, which combine to provide legitimacy to the involuntary removal of millions of children from their biological families.

Impacting more than 25% of the Western world’s population, with most countries pouring more of their taxpayer funded budgets into waging war against their own constituents then they spend on national defence against external threats, that this issue is not at the top of national agendas places a huge question mark over the quality of our collective conscience and vigilance.

Without rights or anyone to turn to, the overwhelming socioeconomic consequences of misguided family and child protection policies reach deep into every community. It’s where our families, friends and neighbours, struggle in silence each day with the effects of their imposed loss of family protection.

An author for the first time in his life, Peter van de Voorde, a former entertainer and resort manager at various points in his life, describes the process of producing Children of the State thus: I had never written a book and will never write another. It was momentous.

It took two years of my life.

It was the hardest thing I’ve ever undertaken.

I was way out of my comfort zone. I never went to university. Making sense of such a sensitive subject, I could not have done it without the experience broadcasting in the field of child protection for so many years gave me.

I don’t mind admitting a certain obsessive trait helped get me across the line. My nature doesn’t allow me to walk away half way through a project; my character trapped me into it.

I was never going to say, I will give it away after awhile. I had to see it through.

And he concludes:  

I came face to face with a terrible injustice playing out under our noses.

I now refer to myself simply as an ex-member of the silent majority.

OUT SOON MARKING THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE AUSTRALIAN FAMILY LAW ACT

CLASSICS OF THE FATHERHOOD MOVEMENT THE SERIES SO FAR

Classics of the Fatherhood Movement: Father and Child Reunion by Warren Farrell
Classics of the Fatherhood Movement. Taken Into Custody: The War Against Fathers