May 24, 2016

MARK GREGORY: Leaks from NBN were in the public interest. The response was designed to hide the NBN mess.

The National Broadband Network (NBN) was meant to be a nation building project that positioned Australia as a leader in the global digital economy, but it has become a political football and as every day passes, Australias future prospects in the global digital economy are diminishing.

December 19, 2024

A view from Palestine

May 10, 2017

CHRIS BONNOR and BERNIE SHEPHERD. Gonskis second coming will need a miracle or three

Anyone remotely committed to excellence with equity in our schools will feel the urge to break out the champagne this week. After six years a conservative prime minister is not only using the language of Gonski, he had the man standing next to him while he re-booted the Gonski Review. Politics was swept aside: this new initiative would give Australian students the quality education they deserve with more funding, fair, needs-based and transparent; so the narrative went.

July 25, 2015

John Dwyer. An increase in the GST or efficiency gains to fund our hospitals. Which would you prefer?

Premier Baird has announced that he will require a 15% GST to fund our public hospital system in the coming years. It is certainly true that with present policies, revenue wont match the cost of the anticipated future demand for hospital care. Hospital admissions climb steadily each year (average increase 3%) and the additional patients tend to be sicker and older. Our current health system puts pressure on our State and Territory governments to constantly find more beds and provide new hospital stock. Without financial restructuring his government will not be able to provide us with the quality service we need and expect. The better targeted suggestion from Victoria that we increase the Medicare levy wont provide the money needed. The current levy only covers about 50% of the cost of Medicare.

April 30, 2016

Robert Mickens. Cardinal Pell and the Vatican power struggle.

The Holy Sees abrupt suspension this week of anexternal audit of all its financial operations by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) is being described by almost everyone as the Vatican old guards latest attempt to derail Pope Francis reforms.

This narrative pits a powerful Italian bureaucracy resistant to greater transparency (including the Cardinal Secretary of State, Pietro Parolin) against Australian Cardinal George Pell, the controversial figure the pope handpicked two years ago to lead the newly instituted Secretariat for the Economy.

September 13, 2024

A five-minute scroll

On X today: US Politicians launch a bill against China’s world leading genomics team and Andrew Wilkie addresses arms trade with Israel. Witness the devastation for a 13-year old in Palestine while Palestine takes its permanent seat in the UN General Assembly. Finally, a moment from the US presidential debate - Donald Trump and Kamala Harris on Israel, the Middles East and Ukraine.

April 16, 2016

Luke Fraser. Grattan in the transport pantomime: 'You're getting colder ... '

Earlier this month the Grattan Institute made its first major report into transport, producing Roads to Riches: better transport spending[i].

The 70-page report is replete with interesting-enough statistics, but it misses the mark on the major problems and where solutions might most reliably be found. Its core conclusions could perpetuate expensive mistakes (more of that in a moment).

The Grattan is one of our brightest and most respected think-tanks; its CEO is talented and speaks truth to power. So if even Grattan can miss the mark in transport, it bodes ill indeed for the national debate. Transport matters: at current spending levels, just two years of national road funds would pay for Australias entire $50 billion dollar submarine program. A 15% per cent efficiency gain in road spending would yield almost $4 billion to almost meet the Gonski education funding reform shortfalls.

February 12, 2015

David Neuhaus SJ. The future of Christians in the Middle East. Part 1.

Christians in the Middle East must be a voice for justice, peace, pardon, reconciliation and selfless love. The fear that dominates the experience of many Christian communities can only be overcome by understanding, dialogue and faith, all of which are necessary to maintain the Christian presence in the Middle East.

In one of his pastoral letters to the Christian faithful in the Holy Land, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Michel Sabbah wrote:

December 12, 2014

Graham Freudenberg. Gough being Gough.

LAUNCH OF JAMES CARLETONS THE WIT OF WHITLAM,BELLEVUE HOTEL, PADDINGTON, NSW, 8 DECEMBER 2014

As Henry Kissinger discovered to his chagrin in Beijing in 1971, Gough made a habit of getting there first. The Bellevue is no exception. Most of us here probably associate the Bellevue with its glory days when Suzie Carleton was, as Gough always described her, its chatelaine. And Gough and Margaret were very much part of that scene.

August 30, 2015

John Menadue. Why are we so cruel? The problem starts at the top.

The news out of Manus and particularly Nauru shows how callous we have become. It is not that we are always as cold-hearted as this. The response to the attacks on Adam Goodes and the murder of an AFL football coach shows our generous and humane sideour better angels.

But we dont seem to care about the cruelty being inflicted on children and women in Nauru. The Nauru government is corrupt. There is no rule of law worth the name. Magistrates are sacked by the government. In effect, we bribe the Nauru government to do our dirty work. Women and children in Nauru are crying and we turn away.

November 19, 2016

JOHN MENADUE. Peter Dutton has got it wrong in blaming Malcolm Fraser on refugees.

This is a slightly edited text of an interview with Elizabeth Jackson on The Saturday AM program on ABC radio on 19 November 2016-11-19

ELIZABETH JACKSON: The former head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet and former secretary of the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs has hit back at comments from the Immigration Minister, Peter Dutton, that Australia is now paying for the mistakes of former prime minister Malcolm Fraser.

In a television interview Mr Dutton said Malcolm Fraser made mistakes in bringing some people to Australia the 1970s and he said, “We’re seeing that today.”

Mr Dutton said many foreign fighters getting involved in conflict zones were the children or grandchildren of migrants who came in the 1970s.

John Menadue was a senior public servant under both Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser in the 1970s and in the 1980s in the Immigration portfolio.

I asked John Menadue whether Australia was, in fact, now paying for Malcolm Fraser’s mistakes.

November 30, 2015

Bullying and bugging in East Timor.

The bugging by Australian Security Intelligence Service (ASIS) of an East Timorese cabinet meeting in 2004 will not go away. The event was so outrageous it is not surprising that it continues to resurface. Only a Royal Commission or a Judicial Review can redress some of the damage that has been done to Australia’s reputation, our intelligence agencies and most importantly of all, in our relations with our near neighbour, East Timor.

April 16, 2013

Report of 'Clerical celibacy in context'

A few nights ago, some fifty people went to the Veech Library, at Strathfield, to hear a retired history professor, Ed Campion, give a lecture entitled Clerical Celibacy in Context. The next day people telephoned the library to get copies of this lecture but there was none to be had because the lecturer performed without the safety net of a text.

He started with the story of the Mass, showing how the clergy became more and more dominant in worship. Parallel to this, their privileged civil status grew until by the time of Thomas Becket and Henry II they were a separate entity in society with their own courts, tax system and much besides. This growth accentuated the division between clergy and laity, giving the clergy power over other Christians. Clericalism was about privilege and power. Prohibitions reinforced this distinction, keeping the clergy out of pubs and theatres, tonsuring their hair and dressing them in drab clothes, and barring them from trade, the money market, surgery and warfare.

December 9, 2014

Australia is worst performing industrial country on climate change.

For the Lima Conference on Climate Change that has just begun, a report by the think-tank Germanwatch and Climate Action Network Europe examined the 58 emitters of greenhouse gasses in the world, and about 90% of all energy-related emissions. The report named Australia as the worst performing industrial country in the world on climate change. We have now replaced Canada as the worst performing industrial country. The report author told The Guardian, which has published this story ‘It is interesting that the bottom six countries in the ranking - Russia, Iran, Canada, Kazakhstan, Australia and Saudi Arabia - all have a lot of fossil fuel resources. It is a curse.The fossil fuel lobbies in these countries are strong. In Australia they stopped what were some very good carbon laws.’

April 16, 2016

Evan Williams. The seven sacred cows of Australian politics

We are indebted to the Hindu religion for that useful term sacred cow. As every schoolboy knows, Hindus venerate the cow and forbid its slaughter or abuse. Our political landscape abounds in sacred cows institutions or practices that are considered beyond criticism, immune to scrutiny and supported by politicians of all parties. Some sacred cows are worth having, of course. Perhaps the most sacred is the Parliamentary Remuneration Tribunal much loved by MPs when it delivers them well-deserved salary rises at regular intervals. Other sacred political cows are harder to account for. Heres my list of the top seven.

May 10, 2017

RICHARD BUTLER. Afghanistan: Early Warning.

The US is planning to increase its forces in Afghanistan. It is bound to ask us to do the same. In the light of his performance in New York, our Prime Minister seems certain to accede, and do so without prior public or parliamentary discussion.

May 24, 2016

ANN GILROY RSJ: A Response to Pope Franciss Commission on Women Deacons

Women Religious welcome any development in Church that responds to women’s repeated call to have an equal share in the decision-making. Pope Franciss proposal to set up a Commission to study the possibility of having women deacons, while not yet a decision to change a structure, is offering Catholic women a frisson of promise.

November 19, 2016

MACK WILLIAMS. Trump : Getting our priorities right

Is China going to fill the void?

The media-hyped flurry to try to establish the likely policy guidelines of the Trump administration is timely and natural but should be approached very cautiously. Not only is it virtually impossible at this moment to reach many definitive conclusions it is no less easy to identify the likely key players in the new administration even within the close-in transition team as the sacking of Governor Christie and his cohort has illustrated. At the same time Australia needs to undertake a proper review of the major strategic trends in our region which have been developing for some years - and pre-date Trump. Concerns about the implications for our region stemming from Trumps comments in the campaign certainly served to accelerate those trends. But we are where we are today because of the fundamentally changing strategic scene.

March 5, 2014

Eric Hodgens. Where do bishops come from?

Sydney needs a new archbishop who has every chance of becoming a cardinal once Cardinal Pell turns 80. How do we get a new bishop?

The pope will appoint one. Since 1917 he has claimed the right to do so. History is not on the side of that claim but that is another story.

Todays official method is for bishops to send recommendations to the Papal Nuncio. When a diocese becomes open the nuncio does a search, checks these recommendations, and makes a list of three suggestions. This is called a terna. He sends it to the Congregation of Bishops in Rome the papal personnel department. The bureaucrats of that department do their own checking and prepare the agenda for the Congregation. There are about 30 cardinals who are members of the Congregation some live in Rome and would regularly attend; others are spread round the world and attend when they choose. The Congregation meets fortnightly, discusses the matter and sends a list of three to the pope for his approval and appointment. The pope normally takes the first name on the list.

December 31, 2013

Repost: Are most asylum seekers and refugees Muslims? John Menadue

Repost for holiday reading.

Well, as a matter of fact, they are not.

But I am sure that many commentators and a lot of the community believe that most are Muslim. The dog-whistlers like Scott Morrison feed on this assumption .According to Jane Cadzow in the Sun Herald he urged the Coalition parties to ramp up its questioning to capitalise on anti-Muslim sentiment.

Figures on this issue are extracted from the DIAC Settlement data base. One reason for the difficulty in analysing the figures is that a religious test is not applied to persons seeking refugee status, and neither should it. Ascertaining religious background often then depends on voluntary declarations.

December 18, 2014

Kerry Murphy. Intra-religious conflict.

Most violent deaths of Muslims in the world are due to others claiming to be Muslims. The conflicts in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria are all predominantly conflicts within the Islamic community. This is strongly felt within the communities but not usually reported in the mainstream media.

This week in Peshawar in north western Pakistan, more than 140 mainly Muslim children are killed by men who claim to follow a version of Islam that requires them to chant God is Great whilst they execute unarmed school children. They claim this is because the military in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan has attacked yet another group of people where other civilians are killed. “We selected the army’s school for the attack because the government is targeting our families and females,” said Taliban spokesman Muhammad Umar Khorasani. “We want them to feel our pain.”

February 18, 2018

JIM COOMBS. Trickle Down My Hat !

The orthodoxy of the Neoliberal Economics_(Lets call it Nasty prehistoric Unfair capitalism, NPUC for short) asserts in the face of universal__contradictory evidence, that giving capitalism free reign benefits the poor and the weak. Pull the__other_ one!

February 18, 2018

The American Empire, China, the Region and Australia

As the American Empire weakens we see a tendency to look to China and seek security in a nebulous concept of the region. We are not facing up to the defence of our continent by Australians for Australians.

October 4, 2017

WALTER HAMILTON. Koike's coup.

Japan is going to the polls on 22 October, with the conservative coalition led by Shinzo Abe facing a stiff challenge from a new party led by the right-wing governor of Tokyo.

August 12, 2024

Iran is about to attack Israel

Iran may be about to launch a proper missile strike on Israel for the first time ever - in retaliation for the attack on Tehran last month which killed Ismail Haniyeh. Israeli intelligence says an attack is likely to come within days.

December 31, 2013

Remarks by Sir William Deane AC on "Refugees and Asylum Seekers: Finding a Better Way".

On 17 December, Sir William Deane, former Governor-General launched Australia21 - essays on refugees and asylum seekers. Sir William Deane’s remarks follow.

Paul Barratts acknowledgement of the traditional custodians in which I respectfully join, serves to remind us that apart from indigenous Australians we are all migrants or descended from migrants and that many of us were asylum seekers or are descended from asylum seekers. My own great-grandfather came to Australia with his wife and young family, including my grandfather who was aged 7 from Tipperary in 1851 on a wooden sailing ship called the Harry Lorrequer. They sought asylum on this side of the world from the devastation of the great famine. After disembarking in Melbourne and time on the goldfields near Ballarat, my great-grandfather took his family to Wahring near Nagambie in rural Victoria where he became the legal owner of land taken without compensation from the Taungurung people. That land, which we now know was unlawfully acquired, provided the basis of his and his familys subsequent well-being.

April 28, 2016

Frank Brennan SJ. Manus Island proposal.

Asylum seekers on Manus Island should be brought to Australia and processed.Those who are refugees should be permitted to stay in Australia.

Neither the Liberal Party nor the Labor Party agree.The race to the bottom and the race against time is now on as the country prepares to go into election mode on or about12 May 2016.The Labor Party is adamant that the Rudd governments MOU with PNG was posited on the firm understanding that the processing and resettlement of the asylum seekers would be done and dusted within 12 months.

September 16, 2024

Five-minute scroll

We start the week with our five-minute scroll on X to bring you a sample of the world and local issues that may not be found in our mainstream media. Today the first posts we saw include the plea to educate yourself on the history of Israel’s actions in Gaza, Malcolm Turnbull talks reality regarding AUKUS, Yemen sends a missile 2000 kilometres into Israel, the Philippines speaks to peaceful coexistence with China and Miriam Margolyes speaks out about Israel to the Jewish community in Australia.

April 13, 2014

Caroline Coggins. The story of Easter: the love template.

How often do we fall in love, the sort that turns us around, strips us and re-orientates us, shakes the foundations of what it is to relate and be with another? Not very often, mostly we are too guarded. But at times it happens, and I have come to take this as a call, our feelings leap forward and say follow me.

A person I loved died this week. He was an old man, though he did not feel old to me. I just loved him. He had been a training supervisor when I was becoming a psychotherapist, so I came to know him in that particular way. This man stretched me. He was shy and very private, but he knew the way the human heart worked, and what it needed to grow. Mostly he worked with children, and they are great teachers, open, and available to their needs. This man taught me about my duty of care. Sounds clinical, but it was far from that, it was his relationship with me that showed me what this means. He mentored me into the depths of what another really needed of me, and then what I needed to do/grow within myself to get there. This man knew how to keep an opening for the other.

February 17, 2013

The asylum seekers that we don't talk about

In the last ten years, 65,000 asylum seekers have come to Australia. 47,000 or 72% of those came by air. Only 28% came by boat. In the last five years, we received 47,000 asylum seekers, of whom 28,000 or 62% came by air. Only 38% came by boat. In only one year, in the last ten years, 2011-12, did we have more boat arrivals (7,379) than air arrivals (7,036). Air arrivals are fairly steady at about 5,000 to 7,000 p.a. whilst boat arrivals fluctuate more.

March 5, 2014

National Council of Priests - Choosing a successor to Cardinal Pell - a pastor or a prince.

In late February the National Council of Priests met with the Catholic Bishops Commission for Church Ministry. This is an annual dialogue. Fr Ian McGinnity who is the President of the National Council of Priests sent to his colleagues a record of the issues that were raised with the Bishops. The issues raised referred generally to the selection of bishops and archbishops. It has particular relevance to the process which will now be put in motion for the appointment of a successor to Cardinal Pell. In its conversation with the Bishops, the National Council of Priests refers to comments by Pope Francis about the qualities he was looking for in bishops. The Council also described the issues which the Council believes should be followed in the appointment of bishops and archbishops. John Menadue

March 22, 2013

The Flow of Asylum Seekers to Australia follows world trends. John Menadue

The Australian Parliamentary Library has just released a Research Paper showing that the flow of asylum seekers to Australia since 1999 follows the trends of asylum flows to OECD countries generally.

Reading the Australian media one would think that we have a problem with asylum seekers that no other country has.

At the Centre for Policy Development, in a report we issued in April 2011, we pointed out that the trend of asylum seekers to OECD countries, including Australia, showed that civil unrest and persecution in source countries are the major influences in asylum movements around the world and far more influential than the deterrent policies of any one destination country including countries like Australia.(p 32)

September 8, 2015

Paul Budde. The NBN - from bad to worse.

I am sure that I am just as frustrated as most Australians especially as month after month, year after year, it becomes clearer that what I, along with others, have been saying since 2011 that a cheaper and faster NBN such as the Coalition Government is trying to install by retrofitting ageing copper networks is not delivering.

First of all the minister promised a quick six-month turnaround for the policy change; but now, two years later, apart from pilots, none of the so-called multi-mix technology (basically a retrofit of the old copper and coax cables) has eventuated. Now the government has also admitted that this retrofit might cost up to $15 billion more than expected.

July 27, 2014

Another Israeli massacre of Palestinians.

One thousand and thirty-five Palestinians in Gaza, mainly innocent civilians, women and children have been massacred and so far the world turns its head away. And the number is increasing by the hour. We don’t want to feel the suffering of the Palestinian people.

Alongside this 1,035 dead Palestinians there are 42 Israeli’s who have died. Just imagine what the Israeli lobby would be saying if 1,035 Israelis had died.

May 31, 2024

Will Australia proceed with the recognition of a Palestinian state? No visible progress

Australia’s foreign minister Penny Wong has recently said that Canberra would consider recognition of a Palestinian state. However, there is no visible progress towards that recognition.

December 1, 2014

John Menadue. The ABC should stop kicking own goals.

There is not much doubt in my mind that the budget cuts to the ABC are part of a vendetta against the ABC and to oblige Rupert Murdoch who intensely dislikes quality competition. The ABC is the most trusted media organisation in the country and News Corp is the least trusted.

But the ABC looks to be kicking some own goals.

Walter Hamilton, John Tulloh and I have pointed to the very disquieting cut backs in the ABC regional coverage when it should be dramatically increased given the rapidly increasing importance of our region. We still have a white mans media that clings to the North Atlantic.

May 30, 2015

Peter Day. Grappling with same sex marriage

Current Affairs.

Human sexuality is a complex and fragile thing far greyer than black or white. It is best tended to by gentle, wise, and humble hands.

There hasnt been much gentleness or wisdom surrounding the same sex marriage debate.

Like most issues of public importance, we tend to be led to the voices of fear that inhabit the extremes, and both extremes certainly have fiery preachers who are skilled at trotting-out the emotive and incendiary; all taken-up with alacrity by a mass media and consumer market that revels in confrontation - confrontation that is too often devoid of intellectual rigour, dispassionate reasoning, and wisdom.

February 24, 2016

Terry Laidler. All Roads Lead TO Rome?

So, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse will take Cardinal Pells final evidence next week by video link from Rome. Tim Minchins song and the associated crowd funding effort will allow some victims of abuse to attend, but both are symptoms of fairly widespread community disappointment.

Commissioner McClellan was also clearly disappointed at this outcome. Given the complexity and probable seriousness of material still to be canvassed with Pell and the varied reliability of technology, the cardinals prior commitment to attend had had the obvious advantages that observation of the totality of the free exchanges under cross-examination brings. McClellans remark that perhaps the cardinal could come by boat was a little ungracious, but understandable on a calculus of the relatively small risk involved in contrast to the trauma and damage suffered by the victims of abuse with which the Commission is dealing daily.

December 7, 2014

Frank Brennan SJ. The Cardinal Pell precedent.

Speaking of the financial reforms in the Vatican, Cardinal Pell says:

‘The first principle was that the Vatican should adopt contemporary international standards, much as the rest of the world does.

The second principle meant that Vatican policies and procedures would be transparent.

The third important principle within the Vatican was that there should be something akin to a separation of powers and that there would be multiple sources of authority.’

January 19, 2016

John Menadue. Media censorship and the NBN

The ABC’s outgoing editor of its Technology and Games subsite, Nick Ross, has claimed that he has been ‘gagged’ by ABC management from publishing further articles about the NBN. He has now left the ABC.

For link to an article on this latest gag on NBN coverage, see link at bottom to article by Renai LeMay of 14 January, in delimiter.com.

There is a continuing pattern of failure by the mainstream media to expose the mess that Malcolm Turnbull has left us in the NBN. It has been almost entirely social media, including this blog, that has carried stories about Malcolm Turnbull’s failure in his administration of the NBN.

August 13, 2016

GRAHAM FREUDENBERG on Brexit. They are not laughing now.

They are not laughing now. So the UKIP leader Nigel Farage gloated in the European Parliament in July 2016. It was not the first time these exact words have been uttered, in the same spirit of vengeful vindication in a European parliament.

January 11, 2016

Vale Malcolm Fraser

Repost from 21/03/2015

I am sure that Malcolm Frasers concerns for human rights were always there. But as he grew and matured, that concern flourished and became obvious to all. He became our moral compass on human rights.

I was first conscious of Malcolms concern for human rights when I listened to his speech in September 1975 at a luncheon in Parliament House Canberra to honour Helen Suzman. She was an anti-apartheid campaigner who for 13 years was the sole opponent of the apartheid regime in South Africas parliament. For the first time that I can recall, Malcolm Fraser spelled out his opposition to apartheid and white rule in Africa. It surprised me. But, I found it very encouraging. It was the beginning of my better understanding of Malcolm Fraser.

August 16, 2017

IAN McAULEY. Pauline Hanson, Malcolm Turnbull, and the ABC a Faustian bargain

Turnbulls deal with One Nation, to require the ABC to be fair and balanced, looks innocuous at first sight, but if implemented it would see the ABC cast into the wasteland of moral relativism.

September 16, 2015

Bruce Kaye. Refugees in Australia and the Good Samaritan.

When I was a teenager a famous preacher of the day, Dr Gordon Powell, was the minister at St Stephens Presbyterian Church Macquarie Street Sydney. I recall hearing some of his sermons and in particular a sermon from a series of sermons he preached on the Hard Sayings of Jesus. He remarked at the beginning of the series that the really hard sayings of Jesus were not those that were complex or oblique. Rather the hardest sayings of Jesus were those whose meaning was all too clear. The difficulty was in how to work out those sayings in everyday life.

May 12, 2017

IAN MCAULEY. Theres more to Morrisons conversion on debt than appears at first sight

There is nothing novel about Treasurer Morrisons discovery that government debt is all OK provided its applied to funding useful assets. But it may be an indication that the government is disillusioned with monetary policy as a means of stabilising the economy, and is moving back to fiscal policy.

October 15, 2014

Ian Webster. Suicide prevention.

September 10th was World Suicide Prevention Day Suicide Prevention - One World Connected and from the 5th to the 12th October Mental Health Week ran in Australia. The weeks highlight was the ABC’s “Mental as which ran through the whole week. Over three nights Changing Minds the inside story” on ABC TV involved us with the staff and patients of Liverpool Hospitals in-patient mental health unit. It was riveting television. The program portrayed the relationships between staff and patients with disordered minds as they slowly regained their sanity. There was much humanity.

June 6, 2015

Pearls and Irritations - Policy Series and Current Affairs.

Fairness, Opportunity and Security. Policy Series edited by Michael Keating and John Menadue.

With many other people, we are concerned about the policy vacuum and the poor level of public debate on important policy issues. We began aseries of articles on policy issues in Pearls and Irritations on 11 May.They have now all been posted.There are forty-nine articles on fifteen policy areas from over thirty contributors. They are linked to the contributor’s name (below).

December 17, 2014

Michael Keating. The Government's mid-year budget update. Part 2.

Where to from here?

So what is the Governments strategy to return the Budget to return to surplus as the government has promised over the medium term?

The May Budget was almost universally criticised for its unfairness. While restoring fiscal health of the nation may require sacrifices, the evidence clearly showed that in the May Budget the Government did not demand equality of sacrifice (for example, see my comments on the Budget posted on this site last May).

December 18, 2014

John Menadue. Normalising Crime.

I was astounded when I read what Archbishop Antony Fisher told The Australian last week. The report said Australias most senior Catholic cleric has proclaimed that families are more likely than priests to abuse children and rejected a church report that linked celibacy to sexual abuse. Archbishop of Sydney Antony Fisher said that celibacy could not be to blame for abuse, which occurred in every church, regardless of whether it was celibate. The thing about child abuse is most of it happens in families. It is an awful thing we hate to even touch on it, but it cant be about celibacy because you look around society at the moment, its in every church, celibacy or not. Its in many families and their not celibate, generally speaking.

Pearls and Irritations

John Menadue's Public Policy Journal