In early 2008 the Rudd government set up a National Curriculum Board to develop a national school curriculum for Australia. Documents for key subject areas have now been released, and have attracted strong criticism from educators and churches. Dr Kevin Donnelly, director of the Melbourne-based Education Standards Institute, writing in Quadrant magazine, said the new …
Burning holy books is wrong
To the dismay and horror of most Christians, the pastor of a tiny fringe church in Florida supervised the deliberate burning of a copy of the Muslim holy book, the Qur'an, on March 20, an act that has unleashed a wave of retaliatory protests, burnings and even killings in Muslim-dominated countries. The NSW Council of …
Selling sex in Sweden
In 1999, Sweden became the first country in the world to criminalise the purchase of sexual services - in other words, it became illegal in Sweden to buy sex. The main reason for this is the direct link between prostitution and human trafficking. If you intervene to reduce demand, so the logic goes, then supply …
Doctors should not kill their patients
For those of us seeking to expose the fallacy of so-called "mercy killing," the state of play just got trickier. With several recent failures to pass euthanasia bills in state parliaments, euthanasia advocates in South Australia have tried a new tack. They have proposed a law which would protect doctors against a charge of killing …
What is public theology?
New words and phrases about ethics appear from time to time – such as “co-belligerence,” “consistent pro-life ethic,” and “public theology.” Co-belligerence refers to the waging of war by two or more parties against a common enemy, especially where there is some kind of remoteness between the co-belligerent parties, cultural, ideological or otherwise. An example …
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