One of the principle moral challenges facing NSW politicians during this election campaign is how to balance the need for gambling reform against pressure from cashed-up pubs and clubs who donate to political parties and demand relaxing rather than tightening the law. Both the Premier, Kristina Keneally, and Opposition Leader Barry O’Farrell have indicated they …
Speech on Special Religious Education
Speech by Rod Benson, Public Affairs Director, NSW Council of Churches, to a public meeting for "Save Our Scripture," NSW Parliament, Monday 28 February 2011. There were about 180 people present. For more than 140 years students in NSW state schools have enjoyed access to religious education, a situation that is the envy of my …
Keneally and O’Farrell on politics and faith
On Tuesday night I joined about 140 senior church leaders at the NSW Parliament to hear Labor Premier Kristina Keneally and Opposition Leader Barry O'Farrell address the first NSW election forum convened by the Australian Christian Lobby. Both leaders made initial statements and then took questions from church leaders. Premier Keneally spoke of the challenge …
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Feb 20 – World Day of Social Justice
Here's the latest news from the Baptist World Alliance: Washington (BWA)--As we move into the second decade of the 21st Century, a theological question raised in the second half of the 20th century remains a pressing one: how to talk about God in a world increasingly marked by social injustice and oppression? In spite of …
Free Seena from immigration detention
Two related events in the past 48 hours have done more to lower my opinion of prominent politicians and galvanise my support for public policy reform than anything else in 2011. The first was the federal opposition’s response to a decision by the immigration department to fly grieving asylum seekers to funerals in Sydney yesterday for eight of those killed when …
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