The SPC Board:
a mini social justice forum in its own right!

Peter Whiting

As our website explains, “Social Policy Connections draws on the rich resources of Christian social traditions, and works to bring them into creative engagement with contemporary challenges to human wellbeing”. Some recent changes to our Board exemplify the rich diversity in traditions available to us.
The most recent addition is Danusia Kaska, who has been a keen supporter of social justice issues and involved with the St Vincent de Paul Society since her teenage years. Currently she is the soup vans operation manager for Victoria.
Attending his first Board meeting in April was Chris Mulherin, an Anglican minister completing a doctorate at the University of Divinity on the relationship between science and faith. Chris is an ex-engineer and ex-missionary, and teaches in tertiary institutions on topics ranging from climate change and history of science to philosophy. Read Peter’s editorial in full.

Easter marchers protest treatment of asylum seekers

Photo Protest at St Patrick’s Cathedral, Ngoc Son Nguyen.

Thousands of Australians marched on Easter Sunday in protest about the various forms of detention for 30,000 asylum seekers and refugees around Australia, and including Manus Island and Nauru.
Church groups were strongly represented, with large numbers in Melbourne streaming from churches to assemble with union members, human rights networks, and others assembling for the march to Parliament House.
Melbourne’s Anglican Archbishop, Philip Freier, wrote in The Age on 17 April that nearly 1000 children are in detention in Australia, with another 177 in “grim conditions in Nauru”. The Anglican bishops of Australia had expressed their “profound disquiet” about the plight of children in detention, and about our nation’s treatment of asylum seekers.
Catholic Bishop Vincent Long spoke strongly to a large crowd in St Patrick’s Cathedral before the march. Archbishop Denis Hart distributed a statement at the Mass, pleading with political leaders to adopt humane treatment of asylum seekers.
Uniting Church and Baptist leaders were among other religious groups raising their voices in protest, emphasising that religious faith demanded care for vulnerable and distressed people.

Minimum – or is that minimal? – wages

Tony French

Photo mayday_NYC2013_DSC_0067, Michael Fleshman, flickr cc.

You have to hand it to the right wing Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) and their ability to grab a headline, the latest being its call for the abolition of the minimum wage.
ACCER reminds us that the past 10 years have been the most prosperous in Australia’s history, yet this unprecedented rise in prosperity has not lifted the living standards of many full-time low-paid workers and their families. Poverty remains persistent among many working families. You might ask how their financial situations would improve if there were no minimum wage settings.  The minimum wage is, well, pretty minimal. Read this article in full.

Minimum wages a guarantee of poverty?

Kate French

mayday_NYC2013_DSC_0067, Michael Fleshman, flickr cc

Following years of fruitless annual submissions to the Fair Work Commission (FWC), Brian Lawrence of ACCER (Australian Catholic Council for Employment Relations) has had enough. He is fed up with the FWC, in particular with its failure to take much notice of the comprehensive economic studies that he and others have submitted, the miserly minimal annual wage increases awarded, and the evident social consequences of all of this: growing social exclusion at the expense of social cohesion. We are witnessing, he says, the undesirable rise of a permanent underclass, the working poor. Read this article in full.

Working Australia 2014:
wages, families, & poverty

This ebook, published by the Australian Catholic Council for Employment Relations (ACCER), and edited by the chairman of ACCER, Brian Lawrence, draws from ACCER’s submissions to annual wage reviews in suport of low-paid workers and their families, including to the Fair Work Commission’s current wage review. Download this ebook. See also ACCER’s reply to a request from the Fair Work Commission’s Expert Panel to seven questions concerning minimum wage settings.

The complexities of Anzac Day

Bill Frilay

Photo Two elderly citizens leaving flowers at the ANZAC Memorial in Torquay, William Ng, flickr cc.

Bill Frilay asks if we are romanticising ANZAC, avoiding the cruel reality of war, and failing to assess the moral decisions that plunge us into war.
Photo Two elderly citizens leaving flowers at the ANZAC Memorial in Torquay, William Ng, flickr cc.

 

 

 

Pope Francis & John XXIII

Bruce Duncan

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