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This election we consider a PM who is doubted because of her atheism, an Opposition Leader who is doubted for being too 'Catholic', and the Greens who are doubted as being anti-Christian. Church social agencies have been involved in important issues with each of these groups.
The election has been plagued by trivial spats and personality conflicts, to the neglect of policies based on the values of equity and social justice for everyone. This reinforces the importance of church and community groups being more active in their social advocacy.
Christians rarely agree on what they want from government. The Australian Christian Lobby jumped the gun last week with its forum for political leaders to address Christian voters: the elevation of Julia Gillard means it now needs to engage afresh with a new Prime Minister.
The Coalition's new asylum seeker policy returns to the policy it put into practice under Mr Howard, adding new nasties. The Government's asylum seeker policy is bad; the Coalition's is worse. It is designed to appeal to human baseness, not to human generosity.
The Howard years made me feel ashamed to be Australian, and I felt about his electoral defeat the way East Germans felt about the Berlin Wall coming down: as a kind of cleansing. Rudd disappoints for a different reason.
Most of these could be described as love songs, even when they focus on the land, on values or on people overwhelmed by misery. Although they tap deeply into the darkness of being human, they are sweet and wistful in the hope that animates them.
As Anzac Day approaches, Australian flags adorn our streets. To many, this display of nationalism is inoffensive and appears even as a sign of cohesion. But it may also be a worrying facet of the growing appeal found in exclusionary identity politics.
There is much to salvage from Howard's policies, misconstrued as universally liberal and bereft of state intervention in the interests of the underprivileged. More could be done to link such a policy frame with several aspects of Catholic Social Teaching.
Tony Abbott has declared John Howard's statement, 'We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come', to be 'self-evidently and robustly true'. The Australian people deserve a better basis for policy than an appeal to self-interest.
The conflict between Archbishop John Bathersby and Fr Peter Kennedy was passionate and public. This book shines a light on the dispute, setting it into a human context that is much larger than that offered by the media coverage.
Tim Fischer, Australian Ambassador to the Vatican, has a vital role in a state he calls a hub of power and intelligence. One can't help but wonder if Cardinal George Pell thinks he, rather than Fischer, should be Rudd's man in the Vatican.
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