Immigration minister Scott Morrison has just visited Cambodia and apparently one of the points on his agenda is the possibility of Australia sending asylum seekers there. Seriously? Cambodia? I’m just reading The People Smuggler, which tells the story of refugee Ali Al Jenabi. Ali grew up in...
“Scientists are not agreed that humans are causing climate change”. What a load of bollocks.
We human beings have an amazing ability to believe what is patently false. One of the more stubborn falsehoods is the idea that scientists don’t agree on climate change. It’s often argued that either the very fact of climate change is disputed by scientists and/or that scientists agree...
“Justice didn’t do a thing to heal me. Forgiveness did.”
“Justice didn’t do a thing to heal me. Forgiveness did.” This is the closing sentence of Debbie Morris’s remarkable book Forgiving the Dead Man Walking. On a Friday night in the 1980′s sixteen year old Debbie and her boyfriend Mark were kidnapped while on a date. After shooting...
Right Question, Wrong Answer
Many people find themselves torn over asylum seekers. They want to be compassionate, and for them this includes stopping people from dying at sea. Between 2000 and 2013 it is thought that approximately 1,225 asylum seekers on their way to Australia died at sea. During the same period 24,203 people...
On The Importance of Doing ‘Nothing’
Aided by a couple of days off and a flat mobile phone (thanks to a lost battery charger), I have spent the last three days doing ‘nothing’. I am so used to being busy doing ‘something’ – writing an article, preparing a sermon, running a meeting, dreaming a new idea...
Why Me?
I sometimes get asked how I answer the ‘why me?’ question. As my my tremors increase and my movements become slower, it seems a particularly and painfully relevant question. Why me, when I have given my life to serving Christ? Why me, when there’s so much more to do? The truth is...
What if God Didn’t Create a ‘Perfect’ World?
All my life I’ve understood the bible to tell the story that God created a perfect world, a world filled with all things good, free from suffering, pain, and death. This world became disordered as a result of human sin, from which Christ came to redeem us and creation. This constitutes a...
Tony Abbott, Aid and the National Interest
The Greens are currently running a campaign that declares “Tony Abbott has removed poverty reduction from the goals of the aid budget.” My politics lean more toward the Greens than the Coalition, but this campaign is outrageously misleading. This was the stated objective of...
Backward Steps on Climate
Hot on the heels of the appointment of a businessman who doesn’t think climate change is induced by humans to head up a review of the Renewable Energy Targets (Gee, I wonder where that might go?), comes the Abbott Government’s redefining of Australia’s objectives for international...
There Goes the Neighbourhood
Natalie Jean Wood died in her Surry Hills home sometime between 2003 and 2006. Her body lay undiscovered until July this year. For more than eight years no-one noticed she was gone, no-one missed her, no-one mourned her passing. I wonder if the same thing could happen in my street. I live in...