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Text from the speech presented by Father Frank Brennan SJ at the launch of the Report by the Committee of the National Human Rights Consultation at Parliament House, Melbourne on 8 October 2009.
In Life and Death: How do we honour the Patient's Autonomy and the Doctor's Conscience? Frank Brennan's Sandra David Oration at St Vincent's Clinic, Darlinghurst, Sydney, 17 September 2009.
Like many Aboriginal communities, the Western Desert communities of WA's Pilabara are dealing with many pressing local issues. If plans for a national representative body can address some of these without introducing cumbersome structures that will inevitably fail, it will have achieved much.
Last week a Supreme Court judge gave a sensible decision regarding the case of a quadriplegic man who wants his carers to discontinue feeding him. 'Right to life' and 'right to die' advocates have had a field day. You'd think they had not read the judgment.
Before the mission was established here, the local Aboriginal community of 200 persons was forced to host 1000 convicts from the mainland for eight years. I daresay not all the convicts were easy-going beachcombers.
While day one of the National Human Rights Consultation hearing ended with a growing hope for the rights of the oppressed, day two, dominated by politicians and lawyers, diluted this hope in legalism, fear and falsehoods.
Good intentions are not enough. Gone should be the days when Aboriginals are marginal to the corridors of power. Perhaps it will not be until we have seen the first Aboriginal Prime Minister that agitators for Indigenous justice will be vindicated.
While it is inherently racist for a person to claim membership of the best race, it is no bad thing for a religious person to claim membership of the one true religion. That is what religious people do.
Frank Costigan was a man of such moral authority that you would not need to speak to him, just think, 'What would Frank do?' When Frank was being wheeled in for surgery, he completed reading the morning papers, then waved to his children.
Bishop Geoffrey Robinson's book is an invitation to put fear behind us. Given the treatment it has received by people who should have known better, it has become an icon; a call to conversation without fear.
We need to be on our guard against laws and policies enacted in the name of the public interest but with insufficient consideration for the human rights of the minority.
Bishop Bathersby and Fr Kennedy are pastoral, down to earth men. If there had been more dialogue between them, and between Cardinal Pell and Bishop Robinson, the Catholic Church would be more the Church Jesus would want it to be.
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