On the "Christian Values Checklist"

Each Australian election, a coalition of Christian groups promote a resource called the "Christian Values Checklist" from the Australian Christian Values Institute, comprised of a list of twenty-odd "issues of concern to Christians", with the major three parties and a few right-wing minor/micro-parties evaluated. For each issue, each party gets a green tick or a red cross (or sometimes a question mark). The list has varied only slightly each time, but the contents are dominated by a relatively narrow set of issues in sexual and bioethics, along with certain privileges associated with the maintenance of a "Christian heritage".

The results mean that parties identifying as Christian typically get all green ticks, the two majors get a mix (with the Coalition faring much better than ALP) and the Greens get all red crosses except for the very last line, which is a generic environment question where every party gets the same green tick. The overall effect is far more important than the specifics. At a glance, readers are confronted visually by the idea that the more right-wing the party, the more "Christian" it is.

Each election cycle, I've posted some critical observations on this document. If they wanted to call it "our opinions on some issues we care about", that would be one thing. But they claim to be addressing issues "affect[ing] the very foundation of our society" and implicitly, the most important issues Christians care about, which is not true either empirically or (I would argue) theologically.

So, to limit myself to two brief comments:

1. What is left out? Heaps! A brief list off the top of my head: corruption, military spending and priorities, health spending and policies, education spending and policies, taxation, welfare, homelessness, Indigenous justice, DV, banking regulations, freedom of the press, economic inequality, racism, sexism, homophobia, surveillance, foreign aid, foreign policy, industrial relations, agricultural policy, water policy, negative gearing, ABC/SBS funding, disability policy and more and more and more.

On some of these, one small(ish) aspect is singled out as the "Christian" bit: that wealthy private schools get "equitable" funding, that abortion funding be removed from foreign aid, that gender-selective abortion be removed from Medicare (interesting double standard there: if you're opposed to abortion overseas, why not make the abolition of all Medicare funding the issue?), and so on.

2. What is put in? Many issues where Christians disagree in good faith. Some direct contradictions (support free speech but want default internet censorship). And much that is oversimplified and thoroughly misleading. For instance, if the Coalition get a tick for their support "legitimate orderly immigration", then this means abuse and illegality are considered legitimate.

Yet the bit that makes me laugh the hardest every time is the final line.

As though the entirety of environmental policy can be handled with a tick or a cross, and then every party gets a tick! This is such a crass way of giving the most curt of nods to the near universal support amongst Christians for creation care (NCLS says that over 80% of churchgoers affirm it as part of Christian discipleship), while defusing it as an issue by saying that we're all greenies now and the differences between preserving a habitable planet and the thinnest veneer of greenwash are irrelevant.

So, as a document revealing one strand of Christian political beliefs and priorities, it is illuminating. As a document intended to guide Christians' electoral discernment, it is not.

Three missing numbers: climate in the 2013 Australian federal election

"These are the three crucial numbers missing from the climate debate in Australia. Neither major party is likely to mention them. These three bipartisan agreements are fundamentally incompatible with the demands of either justice or prudence, let alone the love for neighbour at the heart of Christian ethics, a tradition from which both Rudd and Abbott claim to draw inspiration."

The ABC Religion and Ethics site has published a piece I wrote for CPX outlining some of the missing numbers in this federal election. Between writing the piece and its being posted, Abbott indicated he is not, after all, committed to even the paltry 0.5% emissions reduction target that he had previously (repeatedly) promised. Also, if I'd wanted to pick five, rather than three, numbers, I would have included these two as well.

• One twelfth: the share of global carbon reserves Australia controls.

• Eighty billion: the number of dollars in the Australian Future Fund, which ought to divest from fossil fuels, given that it is a future fund after all.

Bob Carr's maiden speech

Bob Carr, the newly sworn in Australian Foreign Minister, used his maiden speech in the Senate to raise an issue close to his heart. What was it?

I say, hurray for a scientifically literate politician, and for one who is not afraid to show it out of fear that it might lose him votes. And hurray for a politician who knows that climate change has a twin that may well be just as evil.

The price of carbon

"The good news is that the modest carbon price announced yesterday will neither impoverish Australians nor bankrupt our economy. The bad news is that the modest carbon price announced yesterday won’t save the planet either."

- The Australia Institute, Has the PM "knocked the brick wall down"?

The minority Labor government in Australia has announced the details of a long-awaited scheme to put a price on carbon. The basic outline is quite helpfully explained in the animation above, and summarised in greater detail here.
I speak of a carbon price, because it is not a tax, but an emissions trading scheme with a fixed price for three years. This is not simply a matter of playing with words, as explained here.

The scheme is modest in ambition, with only a 5% reduction in emissions by 2020,* despite Australians having the highest per capita emissions of all advanced economies and the 10th largest aggregate emissions overall (it would be interesting to see figures on aggregate per capita emissions, but I haven't been able to find them anywhere). However, unlike Kevin Rudd's defeated ETS, this target is not locked in, but can be raised by an independent Climate Commission anytime from 2015 when the carbon price shifts from being directly set by the government to being dependent upon the auction of a set number of emissions permits. Furthermore, the target for 2050 has been raised from 60% to 80%.
*From a 2000 baseline, which Australia continues to use, despite a global agreement to use 1990 as the benchmark. Therefore, Australian targets cannot be directly compared to those of most other countries. The later baseline makes them less ambitious than a similar figure from a 1990 baseline.

The price for tradable permits will start at a set price of $23 per tonne, rising slightly until 2015, when the number of permits will be capped and the price determined by the market. Only the largest five hundred or so companies will be involved, who together emit the vast majority of Australian emissions. Agriculture and petrol are excluded from the scheme. The former because monitoring of agricultural emissions are too complex; the latter because petrol prices are too politically sensitive (despite this weakening the social, economic and ecological benefits of the scheme). Most households will receive compensation in the form of tax rebates and a raising of the minimum tax threshold will simplify matters for the tax office and for about a million Australians who will no longer need to lodge a return. Only the wealthiest households will be worse off (or rather, only the most carbon-intensive wealthy households).

Many experts see the scheme as representing a decent first step of what was politically possible with a few regrettable compromises. This piece gets into more of the details than I have time or inclination to do at the moment.

A few brief thoughts: with the vast majority of Australian households projected to be better off and the administrative burden falling on about five hundred major companies, the threat of bureaucratic and economic armageddon waved around by Tony Abbott will hopefully be quickly rejected.

Yet with all the focus (by both sides of politics) on what it will mean for the average household budget, most people don't seem to understand that the point of the system is encourage behavioural change. If you don't want to pay more for your energy bills, then switch to renewable power and implement some basic energy efficiency and conservation measures. If you don't want to pay more for your food, then switch to eating local and organic produce. If you don't want your small business to pay more for its inputs, then consider lower-carbon alternatives for your business model. Whether the price will remain too low to encourage these changes directly through the hip pocket remains to be seen. It may be that the primary benefit of the system in the short term will be to provide some needed stability to the renewables market.

From a political perspective, the claim that the Greens are not interested in environmental issues ought to be put decisively to rest, given the political costs Gillard has borne over the last few months during negotiations. What these demonstrate is that without the Greens pushing her, she would not be here of her own free will. This was the price the Greens and independents demanded of Gillard after the hung parliament, and it is clear that this is therefore at the heart of what the Greens hoped to achieve with their new-found political influence. Whether they were right to block Rudd's proposed scheme back in 2009 (which was superior in a couple of ways to the current proposal, though clearly inferior in many others) is a more difficult question. Hindsight offers a perspective of the enormous fallout of that earlier decision (change of leadership in both parties, an early election, a protracted chance for the opposition to pursue large swings in popular support for a carbon price), little of which was obvious at the time.

The Greens' shift from principled opposition to pragmatic support of a least worst viable option represents a difficult yet crucial debate. The proposed scheme may represent the best that was actually available, that is, politically palatable, under current conditions (and so requiring plenty of sweeteners for some of the worst polluters), yet it is important to admit and repeat that it falls far short of what is necessary to avoid some very bad outcomes. Under such circumstances, is a small step better than nothing? Does this represent the strategic establishment of a system that can be scaled up as the political will builds over time? Or can much ado about very little ultimately prove a distraction from or substitute for more radical change, locking in assumptions about the viability of the status quo without addressing the root causes of the problem in our consumerist idolatry and myopic pursuit of further economic growth?

UPDATE: Ethos have kindly published a version of this post on their site, and there has been further discussion over there.

Gillard to continue as PM: Australian hung election resolved

Given the announcements of all the independents and minor party MPs, it appears that the ALP have the support of 76 MPs and can now go to the Governor General with a credible claim to be able to form Australia's next government. After an election result that gave 72 seats to each side, six figures were left holding the balance of power. The last seventeen days have seen intense negotiation between these six figures, each acting separately, and both major parties.

Of the independents and minor party members, Tony Crook (Nationals WA) and Bob Katter (Ind.) both backed the Coalition, while Adam Bandt (Greens), Andrew Wilkie (Ind.), Tony Windsor (Ind.) and Rob Oakeshott (Ind.) all offered their support to Labor, making it 76-74. Interesting, I don't think any of these figures have pledged to vote with their respective "side" on every issue, simply given their commitment to not support reckless no confidence motions or block supply. Hence, every issue will need to be debated on its merits (as it ought to be).

The final two figures to announce their intentions, Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott, mentioned three considerations as crucial in their decision: Labor's broadband policy (which is seen to favour rural Australia), the possibility of stability for the next three years (given Greens balance of power in the Senate and the recent swing against the ALP, they judged that Abbott was more likely to go to another vote sooner rather than later, which would be likely to remove their balance of power) and Labor's (slightly) stronger stance on climate policy.

So Prime Minister Gillard has avoided adding to her record as Australia's first female PM the dubious distinction of being one of its shortest-lived. Whether the ALP can govern with its herd of cats in support remains to be seen, but I'm not entirely cynical. It is a chance for much needed reforms in parliamentary processes, and will hopefully improve the quality of debate in the House as well as the Senate. But I'm not holding my breath on anything radically new emerging as a result.

In any case, I expect that governing will increasingly become a poisoned chalice as more of the serious global challenges of the next few decades continue to bite. It remains to be seen whether our political system can generate leaders willing to admit these difficulties honestly or whether we'll simply oscillate between alternative sides offering rosy visions of "progress resuming shortly".

I'd love to hear any other thoughts or reflections on this outcome.

Gittins on Australia's hung parliament

Ross Gittins once again talks sense in his latest SMH article on why the Greens did so well. Here's a taste:

"So unattractive was the choice the main parties offered that I'm sure people voted Greens for various reasons. But no doubt concern about lack of ''real action'' on climate change was the most prominent. Consider the way people concerned about global warming - still a majority of voters - were dudded by the two main parties. Both went to the last election promising to introduce (similar) emissions trading schemes; both went to this election promising not to introduce such schemes. [...]

"The Libs describe their approach as 'direct action' - which translates as support for the regulation and government intervention once primarily associated with Labor. Labor's major contribution to the climate change policy debate during the campaign was its proposal for a 'citizens' assembly', which sounds reminiscent of the Greens' historical preference for 'consensus-based' decision-making. The Greens, on the other hand, have been pushing for the economic rationalist approach of relying on a carbon tax and price signals."

Gittins mentions a new paper put out by the Australia Institute that includes six principles for policy design on climate change.

I've also just caught up with two slightly older pieces by Gittins: Gillard's failure of leadership and why the pursuit of green jobs is a distraction from climate action.

Hung parliament: not so bad?

Random thoughts on the Australian federal election result

"This is clearly the closest election result we've seen in Australian history."

- Antony Green, ABC's election analyst during an interview on Lateline.

I am not entirely disappointed with a hung parliament in Australia after Saturday's election. At the very least, it means that neither side can claim victory. They both lost. There was indeed a swing against the ALP (-5.4%) and towards the Coalition (+1.9%), but elections are not won on swings. And indeed, if they were, then the Greens received a much larger positive swing (+3.7%). One significant factor in this was likely to be disgruntled ALP supporters registering their disapproval of the Rudd/Gillard failure of nerve on climate. It may have also been punishment for Gillard's move to the the right on asylum seekers, but Rudd's popularity started its precipitous decline when he announced the shelving of his carbon trading scheme.

In the Senate, before below the line and postal votes are counted (and below the line postal votes, like mine!), it looks like both major parties faced negative swings (Coalition -1.3%; ALP -4.6%) while the Greens are highly likely to have secured balance of power (+3.9%) and the most Senate seats of a minor party in Australian history. The DLP may have followed Family First's success in 2007 by gaining a Victorian seat with only 2.23% of the primary vote.

Earlier this year in the UK election, when it became clear that the parliament was going to be hung, there was a lot of misinformation peddled by politicians, pundits and certain sections of the media about what it was going to mean. Due to a busy weekend, I haven't been following enough Australian media to know if a similar pattern has been emerging there. So to clarify some issues that were muddied here and may be there, by constitutional convention, Gillard remains caretaker PM until the result becomes clear, the incumbent PM has first right to form a coalition or minority government, and there is no necessity for either side to have a formal coalition to govern. Having more seats (yet not a majority), having more primary votes, having more two party preferred votes: none of these are really relevant in determining who forms government (except insofar as they can be spun to provide some kind of moral weight).

That a hung parliament doesn't necessarily mean instability can be seen from a wide range of nations who regularly manage to get along with one. That they have been rare in the UK and Australia has led to a little hysteria (from what I've seen, not quite as much in Oz as there was here a few months back) about the dangers of no party having a majority. However, it ought to be remembered that neither the ALP nor the Coalition (!) are really a single party (the internal divisions within the ALP are famous, and were on display in paradoxical ways with the recent leadership spill) and so Australia has never really had a majority government. We've pretty much always had to get along with a cobbled together kind of political power, and that's not all bad. Yes, this might be a little more pronounced than usual, but I think that it could turn out to be healthy if it means some negotiations and compromises, with each issue needing to be argued on its merits and weighed against other priorities. That's how the system works. As long as one side can guarantee a majority who will pledge to avoid frivolous votes of no confidence and won't block supply, then a minority government is quite feasible.

To get there, both sides are now wooing the support of the three independents (Tony Windsor, Rob Oakeshott and Bob Katter) who have pledged to work as a bloc. Although they are all former National Party members, it has quickly become obvious that they can not simply be assumed to belong naturally to the Coalition. They have affirmed their desire to (a) stay independent, avoiding a formal coalition and (b) provide enough stability for a full three year term, enabling one or other side to form a minority government with some stability. I found this quote from Oakeshott interesting. Along with a single Greens member, there is likely to be a fourth independent, Andrew Wilke, a former Greens member, who was also a whistle-blowing intelligence analyst under the Howard government.

In addition to these five, it is also important to note (and few media outlets seem to have mentioned it) that the sprawling WA electorate of O'Connor (which covers a greater area that NSW), saw not simply a surprise defeat by the outspoken and controversial Liberal veteran Wilson Tuckey, but a victory by a member of the National Party of WA, who are affiliated with the national National Party, but maintain a distinct party structure from them. In particular, they do not recognise a formal Coalition with the Liberal Party and so just as the Greens member is likely to side with Labor yet not enter a formal coalition, so Tony Crook of O'Connor is likely to side with the Coalition, but not be a formal member for the Coalition. There is no love lost in WA between the Nationals and the Coalition and Crook has indicated he is willing to negotiate with the ALP.

Speaking of the National Party (and for a moment lumping the WA Nationals in with the rest), that they can gain seven seats with 3.87% of the national vote, while the Greens gained just one lower house seat with 11.39% does make one wonder about the relative merits of arguments for proportional representation. Of course, Australia already has PR in the Senate and so the Greens' balance of power there is an indication of their current popularity. Whether it is a short term punishment of the ALP or indicative of longer term trends towards a greater consciousness of ecological issues remains to be seen.

Whatever happens, despite (or perhaps because of) a deeply disappointing and cynical campaign in which both major parties ran very negative campaigns almost entirely devoid of any global or long term vision, Australian politics just got more interesting.

Mainly bad news

A few things our new government largely ignores*

Total disaster: "Scientists estimate that 150-200 species of plant, insect, bird and mammal become extinct every 24 hours. This is nearly 1,000 times the "natural" or "background" rate and, say many biologists, is greater than anything the world has experienced since the vanishing of the dinosaurs nearly 65m years ago. [...] The loss of biodiversity compounds poverty. Destroy your nature and you increase poverty and insecurity."

Big coal gets bigger: a bet that there will be no serious cost placed on carbon emissions.

Mangrove losses worse than thought. Less than 7% of remaining mangroves are protected.

Antarctica ought to be World Heritage listed.

Conservative conservation in the UK: a false dawn?

Mackerel wars: and Mackerel are often considered something a "success story" in the prevention of overfishing.

Scientists claim almost 80% of Gulf spill is still in the water, contradicting the government claim that most has been skimmed, burned, collected, evaporated or digested by microbes. See also here.

Corals dying: coral reefs are among the most threatened ecosystems on the planet. Rising ocean temperatures, falling oxygen levels, rising acidity, falling fisheries, rising plastics - the bad news is pretty bad for corals.

Consumerism means "Earth Overshoot Day" arrives earlier every year. This year, the date on which we use all the resources that can be replenished in a year will be 27th September.

Desertification: "An area the size of Greece, or of Nepal, is lost every year to desertification and soil erosion, the world body said, equivalent to $42-billion in annual income."

The wake-up call: when my alarm goes, I usually hit snooze and roll over.

Now here's one biofuel I can get behind: made from whisky byproducts, it reduces the ecological footprint of water of life by reusing waste materials.

A small piece of "good" news: plummeting levels of phytoplankton might inhibit hurricane formation.

Priceless collection of crop biodiversity "saved" by Twitter. I'm not entirely sure whether this is good news (Russians are considering a halt to gross stupidity) or bad news (it took Twitter to achieve this).
*This post was scheduled a few days ago and this claim is more or less true on either outcome.

How green are the parties?

In a comment on a recent post, I was asked "which party [do] you think people should vote for if they really care about environmental issues?"

You can read my response, or better, you can listen to one of Australia's oldest and largest environmental organisations. The Australian Conservation Foundation, a non-profit non-partisan non-government organisation founded in 1966 and with about 40,000 members, has put out a 2010 election scorecard comparing the three major parties across twenty four tests. The ranking may not be a surprise, but the gaps are larger than I expected. You can download the full scorecard (including a discussion of method) here, but the summary table looks like this:

	ALP	Coalition	Greens
Reduce pollution	37%	13%	90%
Clean energy	47%	27%	100%
Sustainable cities	67%	20%	80%
Healthy environment	55%	23%	88%
Overall	50%	20%	89%

Despite claims of some Christians that they all "support greater care of God's environment", the parties are far from equal on this front.

Many readers may also be interested to compare the parties' commitments to international poverty reduction. The Make Poverty History website has published a 2010 election scorecard (or as a pdf). The differences between the parties are again quite significant.

Or if you're concerned about social justice within Australia, UnitingCare has this scorecard (Anglicare's election contribution is here). Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation (ANTaR) have also put together this scorecard comparing the parties on indigenous affairs, and the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre have put out this one.

Of course, these are not the only issues, but they are a few of issues that are (to different degrees) quite likely to come up in the next parliament (and, in the case of Senate elections, the next two Parliaments), and which Christians may find particularly interesting, especially since they are not always adequately covered by the mainstream media.

Gillard's climate inaction and the Citizen's Assembly

As we "move forward" to an Australian federal election on 21st August, Prime Minister Julia Gillard has just announced the ALP's climate change policies.

I'm a little underwhelmed.

Still aiming for endless economic growth, no price on carbon until after 2012, same tiny target (5% down from 2000 levels by 2020. Most of the rest of the world uses 1990 as a benchmark, as agreed at Kyoto. Australia doesn't, or our "reduction" would be revealed as an increase), slight increases on fairly lacklustre funding for alternative energies, more coal power stations (as long as they are "capture ready", which is a little like building a car with a third pedal but no braking system and calling it "breaking ready"), and in what is perhaps the most telling proposal, a Citizen's Assembly held over twelve months to build a bipartisan consensus on the issue that will last longer than an election cycle.

This last idea could be dismissed as a populist move aimed to give sceptics a chance to bury the hatchet or at least air their grievances and vent some steam, but there is more at stake. The perceived need for something like this is based on the observation that in Australia, some kind of legislation involving a price on carbon enjoyed bipartisan support for the last few years until this collapsed suddenly around the end of 2009 with the election of Tony Abbott to lead the Coalition, who has described climate change as "absolute crap" and whose policies even manage to make the ALP look green (which is all the ALP need, basically). Gillard's speech compares the need for such a consensus (which needn't include everyone) to support for Medicare (Australia's public health system), which began life as a partisan issue, but which gradually won widespread public support until it is now politically unthinkable for either side to abandon it.

The Citizen's Assembly will be accompanied by the creation of a Climate Change Commission "to explain the science of climate change and to report on progress in international action". If people think that the CSIRO, the Australian Institute of Physics, the Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Socities, the Geological Society of Australia, the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society, Australian Coral Reef Society, the Australian Medical Association and the Institution of Engineers Australia are all too political, part of a hoax, taken in by a fraud, in it for the money or whatever other argument people use to ignore the body of scientific opinion on climate change, then I am unsure what contribution another group set up by the government are going to make to building a community consensus.

Building a widespread understanding of the issue is important, and indeed, this was perhaps my largest disappointment with Kevin Rudd, that he abdicated his chance to lead the public debate on the issue, preferring to hang back and let the opposition shoot themselves in the foot over their internal squabbling on the issue.

It is also crucial to distinguish between the climate science (where expert opinion overwhelmingly acknowledges dangerous anthropogenic climate change) and climate policy (where expert opinion is more divided and where more deliberation on the goods of society is required) and to note that though we might agree (at least broadly) on the problem, proposed responses can vary widely for all kinds of legitimate reasons.

Exactly how the proposed Citizen's Assembly will work hasn't been spelled out in detail (or at least, I haven't seen where this has been done) and I can imagine a number of possible pitfalls to this approach. Nonetheless, I applaud Gillard and the ALP for trying something to raise the level of public debate on the ethics and policies of a good national response.

Gillard and the girls

"Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult."

-Charlotte Whitton

Australia has a new Prime Minister. RIP Kevin Rudd. Long live Julia Gillard.

There are all kinds of interesting things to say about this transition, from Rudd's inability to trust, to whether Gillard's move was its result or justification, from his record popularity earlier this year, to the hundred million dollars spent by the mining industry on undermining him, and from the single Liberal vote that ousted Turnbull and sank the ETS (with the help of the Greens), to Rudd's failure to use his double dissolution trigger. We can talk about a figure from Labor left taking the reins, the role of Labor right in bringing it about, of the likely timing of an election, of Gillard's chances against Abbott and of likely shifts in emphasis. Will the mining tax be dropped? Will the ETS be revived? We can even note the milestone that Gillard will be Elizabeth II's 150th prime minister.

However, just for a moment, can we notice something really novel? Not only is Julia Gillard Australia's first female prime minister, a notable landmark in itself (and on her first half-birthday crushing my daughter's possibility of being the same), but look around a little more and notice that this isn't an isolated phenomenon. For the first time, I am represented by women at all three levels of government: local, state and national. But it even goes beyond that. Can anyone beat this?

• Queen of Australia: Elizabeth II
• Governor General of Australia: Quentin Bryce
• Governor of NSW: Marie Bashir

• Prime Minister of Australia: Julia Gillard
• Premier of NSW: Kristina Keneally
• Lord Mayor of Sydney: Clover Moore

• Federal Member for Sydney: Tanya Plibersek
• NSW Member for Marrickville (and Deputy Premier of NSW): Carmel Tebbutt

"Women really do rule the world. They just haven't figured it out yet. When they do, and they will, we're all in big big trouble."

- Doctor Leon

Matters of Life and Death: hope and bioethics at 2009 New College Lectures

As many of you know, I am currently studying at New College in Edinburgh (the window at the bottom left is O'Donovan's office).

But there is another, newer, New College that I have known for longer than this lovely place. And that is New College at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. The latter is an Anglican college that has a strong history of encouraging Christians to think carefully about their faith and their world and this focus is particularly evident in the annual New College lectures. Previous lecturers have included Stanley Hauerwas, Oliver O'Donovan, Anderw Cameron and current Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd back when he was a gleam in the eye of Labor backbenchers. Although I'm not going to be able to make it personally, this year's series on bioethics and hope also looks excellent. Too often bioethics ignores eschatology.

Here is the advertising from New College:

“Our understanding of the future changes the way we think about our ethical responsibilities in the present. The lectures will outline three different conceptions of the future and their implications for bioethics. The secular perspective derived from the Enlightenment sees the future as a human construct, an artefact created by human ingenuity. In contrast, the neoplatonic future offers the hope of an escape from the material world into the timeless realm of the spirit. The biblical view of the future provides a third radical perspective. The future is not a human artefact; it is a reflection of the loving purposes of God. Yet the physical nature of our humanity is not obliterated, it is affirmed and vindicated. For Christians, future hope lies not in being released from our physical bodies, but in becoming the people we were meant to be.”

- John Wyatt

Informed by a biblical understanding of God’s purposes the New College lectures, will consider the bioethical issues that we face every day as we make decisions about creating, preserving and protecting life. Professor Wyatt is Professor of Ethics and Perinatology, the Institute for Women’s Health, University College London. He has a long-standing interest in the philosophical, ethical and religious issues raised by advances in medical technology. He is author of the widely acclaimed book Matters of Life and Death, published by InterVarsity Press.

Tuesday 8th September | Bioethics and creation
How do different conceptions of the origins of the cosmos impact on current bioethical debates? What does creation order imply about reproductive technology, parenthood, and the intrinsic value of human life?

6.15 pm The John Niland Scientia Building, UNSW, Drinks & Canapés, lecture to follow from 7.15pm, question time and supper to follow the lectures

Wednesday 9th September | Bioethics and redemption
The minimization of suffering is central to the moral vision of utilitarianism. How does the Easter story transform perceptions of suffering and how does this impact on current bioethical controversies about assisted suicide, euthanasia, ageing and degenerative diseases?

7.30pm Main Common Room, New College, UNSW, question time and supper to follow the lectures

Thursday 10th September | Bioethics and future hope
The Enlightenment project aims to create better humans by the use of technology. How should we respond? What are the implications of the Christian hope for bioethics? How should we treat our patients now in the light of the future?

7.30pm Main Common Room, New College, UNSW, question time and supper to follow the lectures

Entrance is free. Booking is essential and must be made by 4th September.

For further information, including to book, please contact New College Reception, (02) 9381 1999, newcollege@unsw.edu.au, or visit the New College Lectures Home Page.

The future is expensive

Following the success of their Climate Clever-er campaign last year, GetUp are hoping to soon run this ad on prime time TV (to make it happen, donate here).*

Both ads use humour to make their point; in both cases the government's proposed solutions are ludicrously inadequate when compared with the magnitude of the issue. High petrol prices are here to stay. There's no point cutting excise, whether by 5c or 10c, nor will knowing tomorrow's high price make it more affordable. We need to change our assumptions and behaviour, to discover that life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.
*Notice that GetUp are criticising Kevin and the ALP (not for the first time!). This is no Labor front.

A bit rich: getting some perspective

The federal budget unveiled this week by the new Labor government has introduced a new measure of what it means to be "rich" in Australia: an annual family income of $150,000. Above this, and various forms of government aid are now reduced or excluded. As a result, the oppressed upper middle class are crying poor.

The average Australian income is about $50,000, which is more than about 98% of the world's population. If you earn $150,000 p.a., then your income exceeds that of about 99.16% of the rest of the world.

I earn less than $30,000 and consider myself abundantly wealthy. True wealth is found in the smiles you give and receive, the tears you shed, the second, third, and fiftieth chances you receive, the people you trust, the hopes you cherish, the mountains you climb, the stories you share, the bounty of sun, wind and rain, and your name spoken in welcome.

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.

- Ephesians 1.3

Twelve points for the name of the building.

A new political landscape?

I've never read any of his four million psychology/child-raising books, but Steve Biddulph has written a very interesting article in today's SMH suggesting that climate change, peak oil and growing awareness of ecological crisis will shift the political landscape over the next two federal terms to a two-party contest between Labor and the Greens, with the Liberals reduced to a minor party. I think he is right to suggest that we will only hear more about climate change (if that is possible) and peak oil (easy to hear more than almost zero) in coming years, however, I wonder whether both major parties will continue to shift to the ecological 'left', bringing into the mainstream environmental policies once viewed as extreme. I suspect that there is enough poll-driven pragmatism in Australian politics to keep the major parties alive for some time to come.

How should I vote?

In ten days, Australians over the age of 18 have to vote in a federal election. If you're confused, curious, or simply looking to confirm your views, check out this excellent new website, freshly launched a couple of hours ago. It's called HowShouldIVote.com.au and in about three minutes it can tell you how to order your preferences for the House of Representatives (Lower House). Just enter your postcode and answer twenty multiple-choice questions about your attitudes to a variety of issues, and this website will match you to the responses from your local candidates. Easy!*

The website is run by GetUp, an independent, not for profit group, who lobby all sides of parliament on particular issues (you can see their FAQ page here), and the questions have been endorsed by one of Australia's leading pollsters.

Of course, what the website doesn't do is tell you how to vote in the Senate. My suggestion is to watch this little video:

Did you know that while the Coalition have held a majority in the Senate, they have passed 100% of their own amendments and blocked 98% suggested by other parties? They have passed complex 500-page legislation within a day of its being tabled and have reduced the hours during which the Senate sits. If you think the Senate ought to be a genuine house of review, perhaps it would be a good idea to avoid having the same party control both Houses. NB It is basically impossible for the ALP to gain a majority in the Senate this election due to their poor showing in 2004 (only half the Senate seats are up for election every three years).
*In some electorates, only a few candidates have completed the survey. If this is the case for you, please return in a couple of days and try again.

Moving on from Howard?

The Hon John Howard MP has spent eleven years as Prime Minister of Australia as leader of the Liberal/National Coalition. In the 2004 federal election, Howard's Coalition won by almost six points in a two-party preferred vote over the ALP. But now, with about six or eight weeks until the election (the date has not yet been set), he trails opposition leader Kevin Rudd by somewhere between fourteen and eighteen points, according to the latest polls. Some polls even predict he could lose his own electorate of Bennelong. With over twelve million people eligible to vote out of Australia's population twenty-one million, that's well over a million people who have changed their preference since 2004.

If you are one of them,* I'm curious: what has been decisive in your change of mind?
*That is, you voted for Howard's Coalition in 2004 (or placed them ahead of the ALP in your House of Representatives (lower house) vote), but if the election were held today, would give your lower house preference to Rudd's ALP. I'm happy for others (who have not changed their mind) to comment, but I'd really like to hear from those who have. You may comment anonymously if you like. However, please observe 1 Peter 2.17.

NB In case you haven't heard, there are new laws regulating enrollment deadlines. If you are over 18 and an Australian citizen, it is compulsory to vote. If you have changed address since the last election, you need to change your enrollment. There is now less time to do either of these than previously and if you don't, you will miss out and may be fined. You can enrol or change your details at the Australian Electoral Commission.
Image of John Howard at the recent APEC conference from Epoch Times.

Death sucks

Our church has a signboard on a fairly busy intersection in the middle of Leichhardt. There have been a number of above average signs in the history of this board, most of them making reference to contemporary events in one way or another:

Where the bloody hell were you last Sunday?
In response to a controversial Australian tourism campaign in the UK: 'Where the bloody hell are you?'
Biannual worshippers welcome here
Just before Easter.
Come to me all you who are Labor and I will give you rest
After the ALP lost the last Federal election.
If you're looking for a sign from God, this might be it

While our rector Tim was away recently, he asked me to put something up. I chose Death sucks, which seems to have generated some discussion. Yesterday I received a call from local newspaper The Glebe interested in running a story. Tim told me today that someone graffitied the board, crossing out the "sucks" and replacing it with "rules". A number of parishioners have mentioned overhearing conversations as people pass by. I'd love to hear your reactions too. Also, any thoughts on what might come next? I'm thinking of Life is a gift, and then a week or two later I have come that they may have life - Jesus. My thought has been to run with sentiments fairly widely shared (though with strong Christian bases) and then build on them with the third sign. However, I'm very happy to hear other suggestions/improvements.

St John's, Ashfield (whose sign is done by our friend Andrew E) has recently put up this one: Church: where relations are more than industrial.
There has been much discussion and controversy surrounding changes to industrial relations laws in Australia over the last couple of years and it has hit the news again recently.

UPDATE: A few years ago when my rector went on holidays, he told the catechists to get the sign into SMH's front-page interest section called 'Column 8' (it appears on the far right of the print version of the SMH front page (or used to - it's now on the back page) and has done so for many years). He did so with the first sign mentioned above ('bloody'). A few weeks ago when Tim again went on holidays, he repeated the instruction to me. And it seems I also succeeded. Thanks to the Wednesday Bible study group at the café, who helped work on the idea.

State Election Forum reminder

Tonight is the State Election Forum at All Souls, Leichhardt (cnr Norton and Marion Sts). See you there at 7 for 7.30-9.30. More details back here.

UPDATE: Well I thought the night was quite a success. At the last minute, the Labor candidate decided to show up after all (earlier, her office had said that she would send a representative). All three candidates behaved themselves (more or less...). There were a few visitors who walked in off the street and had a great time and many visitors from around the traps. Look out for a bigger, better organised and even more exciting Federal version of the same event later in the year. I might post my intro talk on 'why politics?' sometime in the next couple of days. Thanks to all those who came.

UPDATE #2: It was interesting that the final question of the night was about Scripture in schools* and whether the Greens would get rid of it if elected. So far off their agenda was the issue that for the only time in the entire event, the candidate didn't know what to say because she wasn't aware of her party's position on the matter (which can be read here - and doesn't involve the abolition of Scripture). Tim (the MC) had to jump in and help her by telling her what her own party thought on the matter. And this is the Greens candidate with the best chance of making it into the Lower House.
*For those outside NSW, this is an issue that has a lot of traction in Christian circles. Many Christians have been given the impression that the 'pagan' Greens are set on revoking this privilege as soon as possible. It is simply not true.