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...
In Search of a Slogan. A Refugee Week Reflection
Why I am a Republican. A Queen’s Birthday holiday reflection
The Shocking Stories We Tell
A new chapter in my life
Thank goodness for all that debt!
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...
On the occasion of Sandy’s birthday
A Budget is a Values Statement
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...
A Jesus I Can Follow #4. Teacher of Subversive Wisdom
What does it take to live successfully? What does a life well lived look like? These questions have occupied human beings throughout history. Some centuries before Christ there was an international movement dedicated to these questions. We meet some members of this movement in Old Testament books...
A Jesus I Can Follow #3. Prophet of Social Justice
One of the perplexing things about Jesus is that he critiques the Pharisees for neglecting justice, mercy and faithfulness, but appears to do the same himself. Mercy? Yes he has that in spades. Faithfulness? You can tick that box too. But justice? If justice is getting what you deserve, whether...