Do you know any university students (or year 12 students about to go to uni) who:
Then Compass will be of benefit to them. The Compass program is a strategic future leaders training initiative run in partnership with the Compass Foundation and the ACL.
The Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) today congratulated Julia Gillard and her ALP team on their election victory and said they looked forward to working with the newly-elected Government on many issues of interest to Christians.
“Although Ms Gillard has declared her own lack of religious belief, we appreciate the fact that she went out of her way to engage with the Christian constituency during a frenetic election campaign and has also acknowledged the importance of Australia’s Christian heritage,” ACL Managing Director Jim Wallace said today.
“Ms Gillard has also made strong commitments on a number of issues of concern to Christians, including her decision to continue and expand the popular school chaplaincy program, her commitment to retain the definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman, and her support for ISP-level filtering of Refused Classification material. These are commitments she made clear would not be traded away in negotiations with the Australian Greens,” Mr Wallace said.
“Also very welcome have been Labor’s commitments to continue to tackle homelessness as a national priority (with the goal of halving homelessness by 2020), to work to close the life expectancy gap between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians, and to continue to increase foreign aid funding,” he said.
The level of concern over the NSW same-sex adoption bill has increased to such an extent that a ‘Kids Rights Count’ campaign website assisting people to email politicians crashed last night coping with demand.
To date more than 40,000 emails have been sent to NSW politicians via the Australian Christian Lobby’s www.makeastand.org.au website from people asking politicians to put the best interests of children first and reject the legislation.
ACL NSW Director David Hutt said that the website server crashed last night trying to keep up with the number of people seeking to urge their political representatives to reject the bill.
“We have had an overwhelming response from people wanting to make a stand for kids’ rights. It’s great to see so many people speaking out against a bill that puts the rights of adults ahead of the rights of children. MPs are on notice that the community does not support this legislation and will be looking closely at their voting record,” Mr Hutt said.
Media Contact: Glynis Quinlan on 0408 875 979
By Jim Wallace, ACL Managing Director
Well the decision has been made. There will be many who rightly question the decision of the Independents given the count on seats won, first preference votes and two party preferred votes, all of which were in the majority for the Coalition. However, as Tony Abbott has gracefully acknowledged, that is our system, and we need to respect it for all its other strengths.
The real concern is the influence of the Greens in the next parliament, certainly from July 2011 when they take their place holding the balance of power in the Senate.
Despite being unable to answer the question about gay marriage in ACL’s Election Questionnaire, they are now, not unsurprisingly, raising it as a major issue they will be pursuing as early as they can in the Parliament.
However Christians should take confidence that Julia Gillard made an unequivocal promise on gay marriage, not only to maintain the party policy that marriage is between a man and a woman as long as she is the leader, but also not to trade it off if the Greens hold the balance of power.
While the Greens will attempt to force a conscience vote on the issue, neither Labor or the Coalition can allow this, without betraying the their promises, as their position on gay marriage is an unequivocal plank in their party policy and party policy is not subject to a conscience vote.
Family First may yet retain a seat in the Senate, with Bob Day, the SA candidate still ahead for the final seat there with over 85% of the vote counted and with preferences still to be distributed. While David Fawcett the Liberal candidate competing for the final seat is also a strong Christian, it would be important for the future of Family First to retain the seat in the Senate.
A minority Government is certainly a recipe for instability and we need to pray that it will not lead to a further deterioration of Christian values in the nation. In this regard the Christian constituency must realise that it must commit to a much higher degree than it has of late, and participate in debates in the public square and bring Christ into it.
The Australian Christian Lobby will write on Monday, via email, to all NSW Upper House members, calling on them to ensure that adoption in NSW remains as it should be, about the rights of children, not adults (draft below).
The letter appeals to MLC’s to separate the issues of known and stranger adoption, the latter requiring Governments always to act in the child’s best interests, given that the children being placed are already traumatised by the circumstances of their being orphaned or disadvantaged by having almost certainly reluctantly been given up for adoption by a mother who feels she can’t cope with their upbringing.
“Those who believe Christians are against this simply as a gay and lesbian issue should realise that the Bible is replete with injunctions for Christians to protect orphans and we will not shirk this responsibility, or fail to ask legislators to meet theirs, because of the strength of a very aggressive and selfish gay rights lobby,” said ACL Managing Director, Jim Wallace.
Writing to members of the NSW Legislative Council, Mr Wallace argued that the scope of the Adoption Amendment be limited:
“if you are convinced of the need for reform in known adoption, I ask that you in all conscience ensure the legislation is limited to [known adoption]… Adoption has never been about the rights of adults, but the rights of children.”
The far-left so-called environment party represents a serious threat to our way of life, warns ACL Managing Director Jim Wallace writing in the Spectator Australia magazine out in newsagents tomorrow. In an opinion piece which is featured on the magazine’s front cover, Jim writes:
“In recent weeks, Bob Brown has triumphantly announced a ‘Greenslide’. But it is yet another reflection of how our democracy has become determined by the highest bidder, rather than the most deserving.
The Senate race was so unequally framed that Brown was able to present the Greens, without doubt the hard left of Australian politics, as a genuine alternative to the two major parties, and to continue the deception that this party is about what is natural and is above our tainted mainstream politics.
It was an attractive argument for an electorate presented with such a negative campaign by the major parties. But even a cursory glance at the Greens, their ideology and record in politics, makes a complete mockery of any claim to genuine third party status in Australian politics.
