Whether or not Tony Abbott is deposed as PM this morning, his position is surely terminal. At least I hope so, for under Abbott’s leadership we do not have a Liberal Party, we have a Conservative party. Conservatives, as the name implies, believe in conserving the existing structures in society. If change is to occur it must be slow and incremental. To the conservative our social and power...
1. A mature debate on same-sex marriage Within the Christian world there are a variety of principled perspectives on same-sex marriage, including diverse views within the conservative wing of the church. Yet it seems that this discussion is surrounded with hysteria. The moment anyone urges anything other than opposition to same-sex marriage they are pilloried. It is my wish for the church that we...
The great environmentalist David Suzuki has spoken of the shame he experienced when as a Canadian of Japanese descent, he and his family were incarcerated in their homeland during WWII. Being of Japanese heritage they were viewed with suspicion, so untrustworthy they had to be locked up. This experience was so damaging that Suzuki spent his teenage years saving for a plastic surgery operation to...
In the last few months, the Minister for Immigration, Scott Morrison, has come under heavy attack. I myself have written a number of pieces in which I challenge the morality of policies Mr Morrison has introduced. I’ve noticed however that alongside questions of policy, people I know have started asking questions about his personal motivations and the authenticity of his faith. In my...
There it was again last night. Foreign Minister Julie Bishop on Channel 10’s The Project program offering up the Coalition’s tortuous logic on foreign aid: “We can’t borrow money from overseas, just to send back overseas again”. The 2014 – 2015 aid budget stands at $5,031.9 million, equal to 0.32% of our national income. Prior to the Coalition coming to power there...
Today is the Queen’s Birthday holiday. Yet I suspect that not many of my fellow Australians will give much thought to the Queen nor her birthday. For most today is just another public holiday. Nonetheless, this public holiday always arouses my republican inclinations. I find it odd that Australians have a foreign monarch, for the institution is inherently un-Australian. It is elitist – only...
There’s a lot of angst in our community about the levels of debt we acquired during the global financial crisis. Yes Australia invested a lot of money stimulating the economy. What if we hadn’t? Listen to what happened elsewhere. Joe Stiglitz, a Nobel prize-winning economist writes in the book The Price of Inequality The 2007-08 financial crisis and the Great Recession that followed...
As the nation prepares itself for what is predicted to be a particularly tough budget, I find it worthwhile remembering something I learnt at theological college, that a budget is a values statement. Whether a church budget or a national budget, we can never reduce budgets to simply being financial statements. Budgets require choices, and when we choose one thing rather than another we reveal the...
In the last few years I’ve noticed a shift in the language of politically engaged Christians. Increasingly rare is talk of Australia as a “Christian” nation whose heritage must be preserved and increasingly common is talk of “the common good”, with Christians asking how they can contribute to it This is a welcome change. I don’t think it’s possible for a...
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 Australia’s government aid department prior to the Coalition coming to power: AusAID advances the...