Posted by Kevin Bates
on November 4, 2007, 7:37 am
Listening to the banter, the offers of huge dollars for roads, health, education, skills training,tax cuts and so on, you'd think that all there was to people was a sense of their own needs.
It seems sadly, that that is as far as the electorate often thinks. This is understndable when families are just making ends meet and any promise of financial relief or imporvement of services is welcome and the mob who a repormising the biggest help get my vote.
It is a commentary on the state of play though for many of us, where my needs take precedence over everything else.
There is little attention being given to dealing poverty or the root causes of poverty. There is little attention being paid to the the plight of Third World poverty apart from a vague promise o throw a few more dollars at the problem.
There is little attention being paid tothe rights of refugees, or the creeping erosion of civil rights that has occurred under the present government. Former High Court Judge Brennan addressed this lack this week.
Global warming at least is getting some attention, but really not being taken to heart one feels. It's a political football rather than a deeply espoused cause.
Good and thoughtful peopole are puzzling over how to spend their vote on November 24 and are looking for some signs of wisdom and creativity.
Amid all the points-scoring, the locked-in ideologies and clever political foot-work it is hard to find such wisdom, except in the occasional civil debate between more junior representatives of each of the major Parties.
Again, we have ample evidence of the need for the gospel to impact on our national conversation. some Church people and others manage to get something of the gospel perspective into the limelight now and then, but generally we are very quiet and cautious.
The protection of our own insitutions and funding arrangements need to be protected to!!
So where is the hope in all this?
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