Articles

Open letter to Scott Morrison

09 Oct 2015  |  Author: Bishop George Browning  | Theme: Civil society and politics; Leadership and institutions

Warmest congratulations on your appointment. Yours is a huge responsibility. However it is one which all must share, as together we seek a fairer more equitable Australia. I am very grateful that you are publicly known for your Christian faith. This places upon you an added and grave responsibility to guide a fiscal policy that self-evidently serves common good, not self interest.
Download

Border control gulags have had their time

04 Oct 2015  |  Author: Fr Frank Brennan  | Theme: Civil society and politics; Public theology and ethics

Now that the boats have been stopped and will remain stopped no matter who is in government, there is no reason to maintain the facilities on Nauru and Manus Island. The conditions in these facilities are not only harsh, they are cruel. These facilities no longer serve any useful purpose. They cost a fortune. They are wreaking havoc with the local community as well as with the traumatised detainees. They have outlived their intended purpose. They are gulags which rightly tarnish Australia's reputation.
Download

At the third altar: Caring for the treasures of the world

16 Sep 2015  |  Author: Rt Rev'd Prof Stephen Pickard  | Theme: Civil society and politics; Public theology and ethics

I count it an honour to have been asked to give this annual John Roffey lecture. I knew John personally, and I certainly knew of his reputation and his deep commitment to the poor and marginalized from his time as CEO of Anglicare South Australia. Before his work with Anglicare John was and always remained a scholar of Hebrew Scripture with a passion for the prophetic.
Download

The inviolable inherent dignity of Aylan Kurdi

07 Sep 2015  |  Author: Fr Frank Brennan  | Theme: Civil society and politics; Public theology and ethics

These last few days, all of us, no matter what our politics, no matter what our comprehensive worldview, have been arrested by the image of Aylan Kurdi, the dead boy washed ashore on a Turkish beach in his all too familiar clothes. I believe in Aylan's inviolable, inherent dignity as a human being like all of us, no matter what side of a national border we might live. I believe that a globe of 7.3 billion people with inviolable, inherent dignity confronts huge challenges and real evil when almost 60 million people are displaced, when inequality is increasing, and when climate change is accelerating.
Download

Strategic decision making in a Liberal democracy

05 Sep 2015  |  Author: LTGEN John Sanderson (Retd)  | Theme: Civil society and politics; Leadership and institutions

The emerging social complexity of dealing with large scale movement of populations under stress and the rejection of modern governments and radicalisation of young people seeking greater meaning in their lives has its origins in the failure of liberalism to fulfil its promise of a fairer and more egalitarian world. The difficulty for those in positions of public responsibility of maintaining a moral dynamic based on a belief system about the essentially spiritual nature of human beings and their relationship with the environment compounds as these issues become more complex and they are constrained by their office to seek simple macro-economic solutions that involve elements of force. The seeds of this dilemma were sown in the wars of independence that followed the Second World War when the West took the position that freedom required adherence to the Western economic model and acted to force cultural change on those emerging nations that showed signs of choosing other paths. Many western leaders were confronted in a moral sense by the paths they were constrained to follow.
Download