litany(ii)

Cec, absolute gentleman, encourager and faithful Christian. What a delight it was to know him. At a time when things were low and I felt I was being victimised in public he alone would stand and demand quality behaviour from bullies and respect for all people in disagreements. At his funeral someone commented (not a church person) "Why do Anglicans talk about sin at a funeral?" Cec would have understood well.

Nessie, widow and gentlewoman.  What a great friend she was, and what a faithful worshipper. How sad the demise into Alzheimers.

Toni and David, stalwarts and faitfhful people.  What more need to be said of those who were there before I arrived at my second parish, who were great supporters of church life, and who continue to be so.

John, theologian, pastor and father. A gentle man who died too soon. Who gave to theological education a humanity and hope that it was in danger of losing.

Peter, quiet man and writer.  Throughout my ministry people with mental illness have been given to me to remind me of how delicate people are. Peter was shocked when I publicly thanked him as I left St Paul's for his gift to us and to me of himself

Lyn, ecumenist and vigorous woman of the the church,  what fun and a privilege to work with someone who wanted her church (RC) to be more open and inclusive and to take its failure seriously

Jenny and Linda, intelligent lay women. Who were challenged to respond to the gospel with vigour and rigour and who did.

Margaret, Janet, & Yvonne  students who took the opportunity to hear the voice of God calling them to vocation as priests

The Blesseds Juliana & Patricia, religious, who took the difficult path of reinterpreting what their call meant and who continue to grapple

Kay, faithful woman,  who in a life of difficulty which seemed to be hit with one thing after another, continued to have faith and praise God 

Well, the list just gets longer and longer. I have not missed people off so much as just stopped in mid-air...and there may be a few more tomorrow (All Saints Day)

litany (part1)

Would it be too maudlin, pious or whatever on this Halloween E'en to begin my litany of saints
Tom, reader and arguer, who has muddled along with faith for most of his life, and now finds himself in medium care nursing home a bit bored
Allan, pray-er and writer, my alcoholic friend who amidst a crazy life used to come & pray with me every day; sometimes in a stupor so thick you could almost blow over the limit just breathing in his air. Wrote funny, observant novellae about Australian pub culture. I loved to talk to him. Died Christmas Day 2005 waiting to go to his family's for lunch
Charles and Mary, teachers, musicians and worshippers. Faithfully devoted to each other for decades, without children he gave himself to teaching young children the faith through Sunday School, she to being his faithful companion, friend and spiritual support.
Lillian, mother and struggler. I said at her funeral she had a hell of a life. Which she did like most people of her era. But she loved her children and refused to love one of us more than the other. She never felt she was too old to learn more about Jesus, and she loved to sing.
Martha, matriarch and widow. In a quiet way my grandmother inculcated in her three daughters the importance of being a faithful Christian and a wise mother.
Spencer, priest and scholar. What ever else he may have been (boring old so and so springs to mind) he was a priest who was faithful to his call. He drove like a maniac, and loved to pray and to read. He served as a Bush Brother in outback Queensland and always loved the sense of call that said being a priest is about embracing challenge and loving the people God gives you.
Helen, counsellor. Who has shown me and others the richness and mystery of Christ within through our subconscious and the mystery of dreams.
Philip, troublemaker and director. A priest who has stuck to the truth of paying attention to Christ within and without. This has got him into all sorts of curious places where he couldn't (and didn't) keep quiet.
Laurie, good man and public servant Quiet municipal treasurer and faithful man, encourager of the young. Who encouraged us to grapple with the complexity of right and wrong.
John, pompous know it all priest. Too smart for his own good, he enthused many young people with a vigour for things catholic. Too foolish, ambitious and unaware he boxed himself in to an awful view of life
Keith, priest and scholar. Who when I told him as my supervisor that I'd been done for DUI laughed..and put it into perspective. With a commitment to true catholicism he refused to be intellectually boxed in and set himself in retirement to read through the Goolwa library. He died too young. He challenged us to think hard
Jan, friend. Who allowed me to challenge her complacent faith and who used to walk me to challenge my weight!
Joyce and George, missionaries and priest. Good evangelicals tested by personal weakness, they were of great support in time of difficulty. At her funeral Mark, priest and pastor, said..."She loved Jesus". Testament enough.

Ora pro nobis

It's time to go

It will come as no surprise (if you could care less) that Big Brother host Gretel Killeen will be dumped before next season (here). (It may come as something of a surprise that the whole format which rated so badly last season will return at all!)
I don't actually know what the last season was like as I couldn't bring myself to watch more than 30 seconds of the total inane rubbish. More tellingly the three Misses Clark didn't watch it. And as they are the targeted demographic that is much more important.
Constrained by the watchful eye of authorities when the whole of Australia witnessed a sexual assault two years ago, the last season was pretty careful to avoid the heavy crudity and the blatant promotion of promiscuous sex that had increasingly become the ratings-grabber.
But the truth is the format is old and tired and they should let it go.
So, it is inspiring really to watch the ABC's equivalent ...The Abbey... where 6 women have lived in a cloistered monastery for 33 days. It bears comparison with BB, because many of the dynamics are the same...locked in community with people you never knew, exposed to public view, and unable to escape.
But the quality of what is possible when this process is regarded as constructive and not merely titillating is inspirational. The 23 year old Tusa (who could be a typical BB housemate) was really struggling with important things in last night's show...what do you name as God in your life?, what is important in life, and so on
All of these women impress me as having entered into serious reflection, and made obvious constructive steps towards some pretty important self-understanding.
The contrast with Boring Brother could not be more stark.
Get rid of BB and bring on the Abbey. Hopefully it is a sign that we want something more out of life than cheap titillation.

My oscillating view

One of the questions that doesn't get enough attention about religious faith (by people of faith) is the scrutiny of the 'spectacles' through which we look at the world, God, the Bible, stories etc.
Ruth Gledhill of the Times raises the current discussion about whether the 19th century stigmatic Padre Pio was faking it!(here)
It is clear that some people look at the world through supernatural glasses. They want God to be the sort of God who inflicts people with the wounds of the passion, or the world to be the sort of world in which the Blessed Virgin appears to a group of children on a hillside in Southern France or Eastern Portugal. The randomness of these events seems curious, and more likely to happen in some places and to certain types of person than other. Perhaps that fact alone is not surprising, or it should alert us to be more careful.
My concern is that such views of the supernatural, although they seem powerful and dramatic are actually demeaning of the way God relates. I don't doubt that God could do any of these things, but whether God does is another question.
Or is the issue that we want God to be this sort of God.
In fact I do believe God relates to my life, but the sort of change and growth that is being asked of me is far deeper and profounder than just acknowledging various 'supernatural' phenomena. In a way that sort of stuff is easy, you either accept it or you don't.
What is often difficult for us to accept is that God deals with us slowly, that God is patient and that most of the stuff that is "Godly" in lives is fairly ordinary....like learning to love, to seek forgiveness, to practice humility. Too much of this other stuff (stigmatae, visions etc) seems to have a contrary effect. It produces a sort of arrogance, hubris even, and stops the process of ongoing deepening...why should we go deeper when God has wounded us with the supernatural.
Worse than this, it might distract us. We spend so much time authenticating the Shroud of Turin that we lose sight of the poor at the door.
An old Buddhist proverb reminds us to be wary of the supernatural ...If you meet the Buddha on the way then kill him.
It is the journey and its end that is the point, not the temporary distraction of a vision or supernatural encounter.

And there was evening....

Don't you get the impression when reading the Creation story in Genesis that it does go on a bit...and there was evening and there was morning...just gives a sense of one day after another? A sort of unremitting process which looks as though it's going to go on and on.
The election seems a bit like that.
And we look forward to ....and there was the 25th November...and they all rested (and some even retired!)

Not much to pick

The much awaited Boothby electoral forum, put on by the group of tired-old lefties who form the remnants of Action for World Development in the Blackwood area was last night. And all six candidates turned up. I am as unsure as ever about who I am supposed to vote for.
Craig Bossie - Australian Democrats, Was quite impressive and coherent, but frankly admitted that the Dems were after a Senate seat. The same is true, of course of Andrew Cole -Family First who nevertheless made a good fist of it, and was probably the most realistic of the lot of em. I am in no way drawn to Family First, and none of their invidious social policy was aired last night, (is it perhaps being moderated as they face political realities. To have my daughter whisper in my ear...'well it's Family \First then' was quite instructive. I think little-old-left leaning-she was saying that the he was the only one of that bunch who wasn't either a loony or a party hack.
Nicole Cornes-Australian Labor Party, who has been much criticised was OK but light on. She is obviously a nice person, but iot is difficult to see her not just doing what she is told if she gets toi Canberra. Jodi Kirkby-Greens, was to my mind good, but again they are after a Senate seat too. Very little serious environmental policy was discussed though she did askthe sitting member Andrew Southcott-Liberal, how the Government could give Indonesia $200 million to stop chop[ping down tress and then give Gunn's in Tasmania $100 million to chop them down! To be fair to Southcott he is probably at the most unpopular he has ever been. He is perceived as doing nothing much, and there became an increasing titter each time he was asked a question (and he fielded most) and said "Well thank you for that question...." and people would laugh, and you began to hear "well why don't you answer it", because for sure he is a politician and has made an art form of seeming to answer questions whilst saying nothing.
The wildcard is popular TV journalist Ray McGhee -Independent who is well-liked. But he oscillated between buffoonery and sheer impatience with both major parties and a sense of frustration with Southcott's ineptitude. He is, I suggest, inviting the protest vote but does not seriously think he will get to Canberra.
He lacks the credentials, I suggest, of other journalists like Smart Money Editor, Anthony Keane of the Advertiser who has a good economic grasp and a strong commitment to family values. I would vote for him, the parties would do well to try and woo him. But he would not be so silly as to leave my niece and my two great nieces at home in Adelaide while he had to waste time in Canberra. Woops did I just declare a bias.
My serious point, there are quality candidates around most have good reason to be suspicious of the dysfunctional nature of the political system.

Validity

One commentator, John Hyde Page, says about last Sunday night's 'debate'

Future generations will mock us - in the same way that we mock those who used to read the entrails of goats, or listen to the Delphic Oracle.

He is talking about the infamous worm the strange little gauge that had everyone's gander up, which fluctuated to allegedly reflect how 100 would-be voters reacted to the stuff that was being trotted out. Much has been written and I don't need to rehearse it again, but I rather agree with him.
I am worried about statistical validity, although my knowledge of such things is limited to having done 1st year Statistics at University. One thing I am clear about, however, is that Page is correct in suggesting that the worm is not to be taken seriously.
But what of the polls that we get once or twice a week in these pre-election days. We are told that some of the most serious ones are based on less than 2000 people being polled nationwide. We are assured this statistically valid. By my count there are 150 electorates each with about 58,000 enrolled electors. So if each electorate is polled then that is less than 20 people per electorate. 20 out of 58,000 doesn't seem to me to be really likely to be predictive.
Even if it a spread of the states then 300 people per State doesn't seem to me to be terribly likely to provide statistical validity.
Ratings
Equally well my previous question about who was watching what (here) was answered in the press today. It said that National Bingo Night was the big winner! The assertion in the Advertiser was that 1.6 million nationally, and 190,000 locally were watching Bingo. But only 1.4 million nationally and 135,000 locally watched channel 9's broadcast (incomplete as it was) though an additional 907,000 & 83,000 watched the debate through ABC. (see the Advertiser p.15 for these confusing figures).
Now forgive me but if I add these two lots of figures together doesn't it actually mean that both locally and nationally more people watched the debate (on 2 & 9) than watched Bingo...2.3 million v 1.6 nationally & 210, 000 v. 190,000 locally. But who cares.
And, as usual where do these ratings figures actually come from, and how do they declare them with such accuracy...and how do they account for people like me who were watching the debate and Australian Idol and SBS simultaneously! I am a true man!

Adelaide City Council elected a mayor and various councillors with less than 7,000 voters casting their lot. A flaw of voluntary voting.. But these people will make decisions which affect the whole fo the State who use the city of Adelaide.

These are musings, I guess, but perhaps we shouldn't believe everything we are told. Or even when we are told we should think about what it actually means!

worth a titter

Two interesting posts

If you want to follow these up here are two interesting posts from good but different thinkers inb the Anglican world today.

• Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori (Presiding Bishop of the US Episcopal Church) in her annual(?) webcast from Trinity Church, New York.....she is a very impressive person! (here)
• Archbishop Peter Jensen of Sydney interviewed by Monica Attard about a whole range of issues....she is a very impressive person also...(text here recording here) I think she has him on the run about women bishops, which is most unusual. He sort of recovers, but I think in a way she has mercy on him!
  

TEAM-SA

They had fun, but didn't win.
But they had fun...maybe that is winning in our nation's capital!

Random thoughts

• Early morning TV asked whether the (in)famous worm was biased against the PM last night. 75% of people thought yes!...This could be (of course) that the worm was biased because they didn't like what Howard was saying. I noted in particular that where he strayed from the issues and made snide digs at Rudd...ie. digs that were about things like "he doesn't have the ticker" (what ever that means) rather than "he hasn't had the experience" (what ever that means!)...then the worm dipped
• I mused that the choice of programs during the "Great" debate was two feeds (one marred by interference) on different channels....Australian Idol...and Australia's Biggest Bingo game...and some interesting religious program on SBS...I wonder which won?
• In general I muse that authority figures are becoming younger. Perhaps today I feel particularly aged!
  

The transubstantiation of TEAM-SA

It is 7 a.m. and I have already been to the airport to farewell Team Walford who are on their way to our nation's capital where they become the State Team in the Australasian Pacific Finals of the Tournament of Minds. Good luck to TEAM-SA (as they now are) 15 or so High Schoolers from Walford and 15 Primary Schoolers from various other schools in the state.
Good luck to them all.

10 things I hate

Apart from being my favourite movie (here) I have been wondering about the ten things I hate about the presenting parties at this election time....these will have to grow as time goes on so check back
Labor

1. I hate their failure to provide sufficient distinction between themselves and their opponents. This phenomenon will no doubt go down in the history books as the decade in which the two parties became indistinguishable
2. I hate their capitulation to market driven economics and their desertion of the commitment to traditional labor policies in education, health and social welfare
3. I despise the fact that the Labor party's compassion for the underdog has now been thrown away
   
4. I hate that they are no more compassionate to refugees than their opponents
   

Liberal

1. I hate the arrogance of a government that thinks that the electorate should be grateful without question for their policies of the last decade
2. I hate the proposition that they and they alone have the answers
3. I hate the opportunism that in getting control of the senate they took the opportunity to introduce workplace reforms which had not been debated in the electorate
4. I hate a particular candidate in whose electorate I have been who appears to have taken his electorate for granted until our support appear to have been in doubt.
5. I hate the cynicism of throwing money at the electorate in less than subtle ways (or even subtle ways) in what looks like vote buying
6. I hate the revelation that we are supposed to believe that after ten years of government there are suddenly a whole range of issues that can now be addressed which haven't been addressed in that decade ...in areas of health, aboriginal issues, education etc
7. I hate the way refugees have been treated
   

the end is.....

well the Synod....(see below) ended yesterday. So here we are with an afternoon up our sleeves.(plenty of boxes still to unpack)

It was, I suppose, quite good. Though I have never known a Synod to end a day before it was scheduled to.

Some observe and again, I suppose, it is true that it is a much more controlled exercise than it has ever been. That we discuss what we are allowed to discuss, and there is probably a lot less free rolling challenge.

We live, as they say, in interesting times.

Busy, busy

This weekend the annual Synod (busy meeting) of the Diocese of Adelaide. So blogging will be intermittent.
Last night (Friday)the Archbishop wide-ranged from Sudan to evangelism, from aborigines to the environment. Today there will be money and women bishops, Anglicare and administration.
I suppose it has to be done.
It is always good to get together and have lots of people who you know, and have some common interest with in one place at one time.
Think about us as we sit and listen and try (in my case) to keep our mouths shut.

furious furore

It is difficult to imagine that John Howard expects to be taken seriously about his latest promises (here) to be more open to the process of reconciliation. Would that it were true! Even if it is, the electorate will have difficulty reconciling this (pun intended) with the image of the ever more furious Howard thumping the lectern at the Melbourne Reconciliation convention as senior aboriginal leaders turned their backs on him in defiance.
Would, indeed, that it were true that there has been a change of heart. But it looks rather like the latest in opportunistic backflips.

X marks the spot

I don't think we should get too thingy about Xenophon deserting the SA Legislative Assembly. For heavens sake the other parties do it all the time. Wait until the Liberals are trounced and see what Howard does!
Xenophon is such a quality performer that the Senate seems an ideal place for him to weave his spell. His ability to catch the popular imagination is so effective that he must stand a good chance of getting in.
Those of us who feel that it is important for the Senate to hold the two major parties in check and to deny either one the exercise of autocratic power will see that he is probably just the one to do that.
Well done. I bet everyone, just everyone; is spitting chips!

In the midst of life we seek death

Have we been seduced into a phoney discussion about the death penalty in Australia in  this pre-election insanity?

I always feared that in a period of chaos or unclear decision making, where leaders are more intent on getting re-elected than leading, that we would get some opportunist who would lead us back to the unthinkable position of reintroducing the death penalty.

So here are ten early-morning reasons why the death penalty is wrong

1. What if you get the wrong person?  This is the most obvious and yet most easily overlooked reason. But the stories about this are legendary. Our legal system is not based on certainty it is based on probablility...beyond reasonable doubt. It may be OK in some people's mind to send people to jail when you are 90% sure of their guilt, and accept the risk that in one out of ten cases you may be wrong, at least the innocent can be set free. The dead cannot be brought back to life.
2. It diminishes the State Most of us understand that the State should try to be exemplary, it should respond to our aspirations rather than our fear or anger. This is a difficult enough path to tread at the best of times. We do know that we should be careful and respectful of human life. The State should be at the forefront of that particular aspiration, not the principal player in reaking vengeance. I think that if we look at States that have the death penalty, the US, China...we see that these great nations are not improved but that they are diminished by such poverty of policy.
3. It is playing God.  This is not a particularly religious argument. It is about deciding that in our society that the chief safeguard on human life is the presumption that no one person or institution will act to take away the life of another. Even in the face of guilt, we say that the sanctity of life is such that we do not validate another person's guilt, or the general poor application of the law by doing what that person has done (taking a life). We remove from individuals the presumption that this decision can be made without reference to higher moral authority, and with the inability to be able to certainly discern that with any absolute certainty...ie we do not know that we have the right to do this,  we don't do it. Wherever you get your moral authority from (we call it 'God' in this example) this argument is still cogent
4. It is a poor and selective reading of the Bible. This again may not be particularly religious. It is about the sort of narrow reading of authoritative sources to only back up our case. So we will tire of hearing "An eye for an eye", as Ghandi is oft (mis)quoted as saying "An eye for eye leads to a world of blind people".  The truth is that the appeal to these sorts of external authorities like the Bible is so often the desire to paint in black and white what is clearly in all shades of grey. We could equally well cite "vengeance is mine says the Lord, I  will repay" or "I desire  mercy not sacrifice". Let alone as we begin to unfold that we are not a Judaeo society alone, but that a Judaeo-Christian society is not stuck in the brutal land of the "lex talionis" but is one which seeks 'a more excellent way'. This begs the question that, in Australia at least, there are a myriad of other cultural, religious and moral influences that need to be weighed
5. It confuses the notion of what sentencing and punishment is about Again it is easy to think that we sentence people to punsh them for their crimes, but in a civilised society we also seek to rehabilitate. It is a civilised thing to do to work with those who have wronged even when we are angered by their guilt, and offended by their crimes (indeed particularly when this is so) to seek their rehabilitation. It is a big and presumptuous call to say that anyone is beyond rehabilitation. To often the temptation to do this is this simplistic response to see this as black and white. 
6. It is an expensive option Necessarily the death penalty must be subject to the highest level of appeal. The American system shows that this can be lengthy and expensive.
7. It may actually exacerbate the problem of terrorism rather than ease it For the life of me I cannot see how martyrs are actually deterred by the death penalty
8. It is socially and racially abusive and prejudicial Given the undeniable reality that aboriginal and poor people are over-represented in our prison systems, we must begin with the assumption that these people will also be more in danger of the death penalty than others. It is not that these people are more guilty (a ludicrously simplistic solution) but that there are other social reasons which need to be addressed. To throw the death penalty into this complex mix is to further compound the idea of injustice.
9. It is brutal, not civilised Not all will agree but in a world where Western Judaeo-Christian society so often takes the moral high ground, at some point we must acknowledge that the taking of life is a brutish act. Even if we allow another to deliver the injection, or pull the lever or fire the shot; we are promoting lack of compassion rather than mercy. Indignation, however righteous or not, does not justify such brutishness
10. It simply is not logical. In the end taking another person's life will do nothing. Nothing! to bring back a dead person. It will not ease the pain. It will not make any grieving person feel better. It may actually make matters worse

The slippery slide

There is nothing more certain than the death penalty is  treacherous political ground.

Comments yesterday by Labor frontbencher Robert McLelland  about the death penalty brought a sort of diplomatic rebuke from Kevin Rudd.

McLelland outlined (it seems to me) what is the official position of all major parties and that is that they are opposed to the death sentence. The case in point is Indonesia's application of the death penalty against the so-called Bali bombers.

That there has been a weakening of the position of absolute opposition to death as penal sentence there can be little doubt. The PM has for a long time declared a general unwillingness to ask death promoting governments to commute death sentences.

The official process seems to be that when Australians are sentenced to death we express some opposition, but increasingly it seems that when crimes have been heinous our principles have become a bit gelatinous. We may ask, but not very hard.

McLelland merely said that we are not just opposed to the death penalty for Australians, but we think it is barbaric and inhuman for anyone.

It is not particularly surprising that Howard should decline to ask for the death sentence to not be applied to those Indonesians who perpetrated the Bali massacrs. It is perhaps a little surprising that he should so vehemently declare that as an Australian he finds it very difficult to stick to his principles in the face of the deaths of 88 or so fellow country men and women.

There is, no doubt, a political expediency....since a huge swathe of the electorate is seduced by the notion that the death penalty solves things.

How the death penalty discourages people who see martyrdom as a victory I do not know?

What is more disgusting, is Rudd's sidesteppping the issue and seeming to chastise his colleague, for what (as Minister Downer has pointed out) is his and his party's position. That they are opposed not just to the death penalty for Australians but for any person.

There is no "aspirational" or principled leadership in this country.

There is only electoral fear. Fear that at the next or any election the redneck element will vote you out.

Too bad that those of us who want more principle and less weakness and vacillation appear to be  well in the minority.

As the world turns

It was my great pleasure at the weekend to officiate at a wedding of one of my parishioners. I have known the family for nearly forty years. The uncle of the groom and I were mad Anglicans at university together.
His parents, who in a way look exactly the same as they did in 1970...except for the fact that they are frailer...have been faithful church people, I suppose, for all of their lives.
In fact when I said to their parish priest some weeks ago when we were bemoaning how hard things were...Thank God for KK ....and she said to me with liturgical vigour...Yes thank God for KK!
For that reason alone it was sufficient joy to do this wedding.
KK is probably the quintessential Australian born in the 1920s. Of Anglo-Celtic background, stable job for most of his life. Worked hard. Maintains a sense of humour and a strong sense of service, loyalty and friendship. He and CK, as faithful matriarch and patriarch beam benignly over their family...even though it has not been without its pain.

The groom is a great young man, who works hard and has a great sense of humour. He is lively and intelligent and socially and politically aware. His new bride looked, of course, stunning. She is of Cambodian origin though she was actually born in a refugee camp in Bangkok. Her parents finally ended up with their kids in Adelaide, and they sat with quiet and respectful demur throughout the proceedings. Conversation with them is good, though you are never quite sure of the transmission of subtlety from them to me and me to them. Always, always deadly polite.
The best man, older brother, I married five years ago. His wife today looking quite the mother, and their two daughters (both of whom I have baptised) looking gorgeous. Well, the best man spoke with a humour and dignity that shows the maturation of the marriage process on a man. And it was good to see it.
Did I mention that the uncle of the bride who works in a remote aboriginal community as the administrator/carer/ambulance driver...wasn't actually there, because well he lives remotely? Or that the groom's sister has a boyfriend who is Iranian.
I bumped into a man who told me he was baptised in the church where I am the priest, and he was blown away when I told him I knew his mother.
Much food for thought about our interconnectedness....I tend not to think of it as being inbred!
But any way it does suggest much about the nature of Australian society.
For those who live in small worlds where two chops and three vegetables automatically present themselves for dinner still, and everyone's ancestors were born in England, mainly, or Europe...it is not like that. Probably has never been like that. Thank God for open families. Thank God for culture-clash. Thank God for opportunities like this.

Inclined to agree

No one will be surprised to discover that new Australian Workplace Agreements are being "sent back to the drawing board" at a rate of two to one. (here)

The opportunistic Opposition cites this as a failure of  process but I think that analysis is poor.

What would be more alarming is if 90 per cent were being approved and there was a huge outcry that they were not being properly scrutinised by the Workplace Authority. That is clearly not the case.

That there is a huge bureaucratic workload, there can be little doubt. This is not surprising in a new system (in our tin pot little organisation for example a new licensing system has taken over eighteen months to process and we are only talking about a couple of thousand licenses).

I don't doubt there will be further problems, but I would have thought that over-cautious scrutiny is a good thing rather than a bad thing.

Colourful comment

It is interesting to note that the newly released citizenship booklet (download here if you want) says "No one should be disadvantaged on the basis of their country of birth, cultural heritage,
political beliefs, language, gender or religious beliefs."
I do not then understand how Minister Andrews can promote this document as a key policy
instrument, and at the same time use national and ethnic origin as the significant
filter against refugees of Sudanese origin. (here)
One thing that really worries me about these sort of defective analyses that say: it is because a person was born here, or there; or it is because they belong to a certain ethnic grouping...is that it is just so unreflective.
I mean a headline in the pathetic Advertiser this morning says...Africans drink and fight, says Andrews.
My immediate reaction is to say: it is not Africans that drink and fight it is young men!
(I don't think this is sexist!) Last year it was Lebanese Australians, and "Shire" Australians who were in a pitched battle on the beaches of Sydney. Last Sunday I watched a little of that ever-glorious West-Side Story...there it was Puerto Ricans, Poles and Italians.
It is pathetic to single out one nationality, when it is more to do with bored young men of any race or nation.
At a time when the UN is saying that Sudan is the refugee community of greatest need we are saying ...but we will not take the problem cases. How pathetic!
How pathetic, too, that the Labor Party agrees with the Coalition about this. There is here no ideology, but rather the craven cowing to a racist electorate that wants these problems to be (pardon the pun) black and white!
I do not want a government that capitulates to such populist nonsense, but one that actually says we will do more than just paint racist solutions to what are complex social issues.
Did the victimistaion of the Jews teach us nothing?

Women at the pointy end

In a split but definitive judgment of the Anglican Church's Appellate Tribunal, a majority (4-3) judgment was handed down last week that there is no objection to women being ordained as bishops.
In the way that we love legal things, it is all a bit too tricky to go into here ( I will be happy to point you in the right direction...like here). Friends outside the church will find it laughable. Might I say that much of it is because we are too sensitive to people's alleged sensibilities and so we slow everything down to try and accomodate absolutely everybody. This doesn't seem to work, and does allow bizarre obstructionism which can go on for years.
Well perhaps now it is over.
The ABC's Religion Report had very good interview with two leading Australian Church Women, Colleen O'Reilly from Melbourne and Kay Goldsworthy in Perth. O'Reilly makes a number of very good points. She exposes how those opposed to women's ordination are a little precious in their claim that their opposition is 'biblically based', as if some how those of us who support the ordination of women are not.
I, in fact, (and O'Reilly makes the same point) would hold that the notion of the radical equality of women is a key scriptural principle...just as much as the equality of black and white.
Moving on from this she then makes the point that if 'alternative episcopal oversight' is going to be sought in Dioceses where women minister for people who can't tolerate it, then equally well alternative episcopal oversight should be being provided in Sydney, The Murray and Armidale for people who (like me) are deeply affronted that women's ordination is denied.
These streets need to run both ways!!

A little bit puzzled

Surely I am not the only one to have noticed that these new plans that the sitting government keep revealing to us, the humble electorate, are all a bit desperate!

Touted by the fly-guys, Abbott et al, as the be all and end all in health policy one wonders why after 11 years in government the restructuring of hospital governance with local boards only appears to have dawned upon them in these weeks before an election. Well, one doesn't really wonder!

But it seems like policy on the run, ill-conceived, hastily thought out and responsive only to the whim of the electorate. Far from being 'aspirational' ( a word they only appear to have just discovered) it seems desperational, erratic and therefore likely to be frought with yet-to-be-conceived problems.

One wonders what next? If my memory serves me correctly we will actually begin to see fresh loaves, sliced and unsliced...raisin and sesame seed sprinkled...this will be handed out to people (probably free) as they sit watching performing elephants and big-footed clowns at the Canberra Hippodrome.

It a mad, mad world!

Get up to that Senate

I have been interestedted to be included on Get Up's mailing list largely because I am pretty disillusioned with traditional party politics.
Get Up is an interesting phenomenon (and may yet prove to be more partisan than it claims to be), in our two party system neither of the major parties likes the suggestion that there should be a genuine third, fourth or fifth voice.
This seems to me be undemocratic!
Democracy is not about hearing two voices, it is about hearing the voice of the people who comprise the democracy. Some of those voices are easy to hear. They are articulate, dominant, rich. They are privileged, educated and entrenched.
Some, many certainly, perhaps even most, find it difficult to make their voice heard. The infamous Richard Nixon used the term "silent majority" and perhaps that is a good way to characterise what is a political reality.
In such a system a bicameral (two chamber) parliament has its part to play. In Australia the Senate has been touted as protecting States' Rights. Though in latter years it has perhaps given a voice to the disillusioned, who find that neither of the major parties adequately expresses their position.
The two major parties seemingly hate the Senate, because it has so often stood in their way. Such a possibility occurred when the Coalition fluked a majority in bth houses at the last election. They then presumed to pass their raft of IR laws which they had not (it would seem to me) put to the people!
This, I suspect, will play no small part in their downfall if and when the next election is called.

Pray it may be today or tomorrow...but surely no longer!

Any way, into this comes the innovative Get up. Who have with innovative aplomb invited us to share in the democratic process in a way never before seen. Explore their site and see if it apeal to you (here) It must have the Rudds and the Howards quaking.
So we might just go along on Friday:

You're invited GetUp's "Save Our Senate" Town Hall Forum at the Adelaide Museum
at 12:30pm this Friday 5 October, including Senators Natasha Stott-Despoja and
Bob Brown in a frank discussion of the importance of our house of review and how
it has changed since the Coalition won control. Seats are limited so be sure to
RSVP now - and invite your friends and family: