Author: gordonmoyes.com

Scripture: 1 Timothy 4:12

Canadian Justin Bieber, age 16, arrived in Sydney recently. At the Overseas Passenger terminal, a small concert was hurriedly arranged. It was eventually called off by the police because they could not control the crowd of 6000 girls, mostly aged about 13 years who had spent all night waiting for him. Eventually police called in the Riot Squad, as the girls ran in one direction then the other following rumours he was coming. This follows two other riots by similarly aged girls in New York.

I asked a mother who I knew had allowed her three young teenage daughters to travel and spend the night unaccompanied in Sydney, why she did it. “Do you know who Justin Bieber is?” I asked. “No, just some boy from Canada.” “Why did you allow three such young girls to be alone all night in Sydney?” “I couldn’t control them. They just went feral. I cannot understand my girls.”

I asked her if she remembered the Beatles when she was young? Or the Bay City Rollers? Then I asked if she realized what 13-year-old girls with raging hormones could be like? She replied, “I never thought of that.” It is just as hard for parents to understand teenagers as it is for teenagers to understand parents, (to be addressed in the next in this series).

This week has seen in the news several reports of teenagers committing serious crimes. Four young teenagers held up a taxi driver with a meat cleaver and stole his money. A 13 –year-old was arrested for drug trafficking. An 11-year-old was arrested for stealing and driving cars. The 11-year-old was so uncontrollable that he had only spent 7 days at school this year. His parents did not appear in court nor take him home after he was charged, saying that they could not control him. His mother requested he be held in custody because she could not control him. A magistrate remarked that teenagers committing crimes were becoming younger and younger. The TV show “60 Minutes” showed a program called “The Wildness of Australian Teenagers.”

There are just over two million young people in Australia between the ages of 15 and 24. But four out of five teenagers in the world are to be found in less developed countries. That youth population, which represents nearly one-fifth of the people on earth, must be reached with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

They are being reached and exploited as no other generation in history. They are the target of thousands of millions of dollars of advertising by Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Nike, Reebok, MTV, Levis, Pepsi and ten thousand other advertisers.

Parents often cannot understand teenage behaviour. They often wrongly ascribe their own theories about the behaviour of their children and frequently blame themselves.

There is “conduct disorder” that refers to a group of behavioural and emotional problems in youngsters. Children and adolescents with this disorder have great difficulty following rules and behaving in a socially acceptable way. They are often viewed by other children, adults and social agencies as “bad” or delinquent, rather than with a correct understanding about what is going on within them.

Many factors may contribute to a child developing conduct disorder, including brain damage, child abuse, genetic vulnerability, school failure, and traumatic life experiences.

The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP) suggests the following ways for parents to prepare for their child’s teenage years:

· Provide a safe and loving home environment.
· Create an atmosphere of honesty, trust and respect.
· Allow age-appropriate independence and assertiveness.
· Develop a relationship that encourages your teen to talk to you.
· Teach responsibility for your teen’s belongings and yours.
· Teach basic responsibility for household chores.
· Teach the importance of accepting limits.

http://www.aacap.org/

Remember that your teens will probably experiment with his or her values, ideas, hairstyles and clothing in the attempt to define, or find, themselves. This is completely normal behaviour. However, inappropriate or destructive behaviour can be an indication that there is a problem.

Teenagers, especially any with self-esteem issues or family problems, are at risk for any number of self-destructive behaviours such as experimenting with drugs or alcohol, or taking chances with unprotected sex. Depression and eating disorders are common health issues that teenagers face. The following may be warning signs that your child is having a problem:

· Agitated or restless behaviour
· Unusual weight loss or gain
· Less focus on school work
· Trouble with concentration
· Sadness that does not go away
· Indifference about people and things
· Lack of motivation
· Fatigue, loss of energy and lack of interest in activities
· Low self-esteem
· Trouble falling asleep
· Trouble with police or other authority figures

If you are worried about your child’s emotions or behaviour, you can start by talking to friends, family members, your spiritual counsellor, your child’s school counsellor, or your family physician about your concerns.

If you think your child needs help, you should get as much information as possible about where to find help for your child. Parents should be cautious about using Yellow Pages phone directories as their only source of information and referral. Other sources of information include:

· Employee Assistance Program through your employer
· Local medical society, local psychiatric society
· Local mental health association
· The mental health department
· Local hospitals or medical centres with psychiatric services
· Departments of Psychiatry in nearby medical schools
· National Advocacy Organizations
· National professional organizations.

The variety of mental health practitioners can be confusing. There are psychiatrists, psychologists, psychiatric social workers, psychiatric nurses, counsellors, pastoral counsellors and people who call themselves therapists. Few states regulate the practice of psychotherapy, so almost anyone can call herself or himself a “psychotherapist” or a “therapist.” Take care.

1. The concerns about Australian teenage boys

The Reader’s Digest recently asked: “Where have all the fathers gone?” A professional counsellor gave the case of a 15 year old boy, sullen, angry, and beyond the control of his desperate mother. Dad had walked out years previously. It was a pathetically sad story. What was the advice of the counsellor?

“The boy needs a man to pay attention to him, someone he can look up to.” In some communities of Sydney, there is hardly an intact family where the man is living with his family, is employed, provides support and leadership to the family and is a role model to the young men. In one street I know, in all of the houses there is not one man who is the father of the family of that house.

The men there are largely inadequate, alcoholic, and lacking direction in life. They lack pride in their role as husband and father, and their sons have no idea what it means to be a man and a father.

Australian schools have had strategies to help girls. We have self-esteem programs for girls, mentor programs, maths and science programs. These programs have been stunningly successful, and now girls outrank boys in graduation from High School, are top of the high school in 66% of the classes, topped the state in 103 subjects compared with boys topping 51 subjects, in having the higher number of places in universities, and so on.

There are three quarter of a million children living with one parent. There are 373,000 children of sole parents where the parent is not employed. Those teenagers represented by these figures are a ticking time bomb unless they develop some purpose, meaning and significance in their lives. There is a hopelessness among teenage boys that is reflected in their poor performance at school, a horrifyingly high suicide rate, injury rate and their involvement in crime.

“It took women 30 years to change society’s ideas about what women are, now we can re-educate people about boys,” says senior lecturer in education at the University of Western Sydney Nepean, Peter West. “How much longer are we going to put up with the statistic that Australia has the highest rate of male teenage suicide in the world and that 80% of successful suicides in Australia are by men? We are doing something wrong. Boys have the message that they have to live fast and die young.”

Teenage boys must understand their role and significance but most are uncertain and react only with aggression and violence. There is a desperate need for boys to come into contact with a good male role model, preferably their own father. Unfortunately many of my generation are poor at communicating with their sons at the very time when sons need good role models and to understand the hard facts of life.

Dr John Powell, an American psychologist, spoke very movingly about his father’s death. At the moment of his father’s death his mother was on one side of the hospital bed and he was on the other side. He helped put some pillows behind his father’s back and the last minute of his father’s life he records like this: “I remember that minute my father died. I was on one side of the bed and my mother was on the other. He was barely conscious but all of a sudden he sat upright and he looked with a face of awe and I knew that he was dying because my father never showed any emotion on his face, he kept everything inside his guts.

Then I lowered him back onto the pillows and he shut his eyes, and I said ‘Mum, he’s dead. Dad is dead.’ She leaned across to me and said ‘Oh, John, he loved you so much. Did you ever know how proud he was of you?” And those words hit me like a blunt object. I wanted to say ‘Why did you tell me that?’ but instead I said to her ‘I’d better go and get the doctor to confirm he’s dead.’

And out in the corridor I kept asking myself, ‘Why did she tell me that?’ And then I suddenly realised. She told me that because he was always too frightened to tell me that.

“He never told me he loved me and he never told me he was proud of me. I went back with the doctor into the room and I stood against the wall crying and a nurse came up to me and said all the usual things. I couldn’t talk to her. I wanted to say to her ‘I’m not crying because my father died. I know it’s a blessing for him. But I’m crying because he never told me he loved me. I’m crying because he never told me he was proud of me.’ It would have made such a difference to me if I’d known he loved me and he was proud of me.”

One of the hardest things in the world is to stand beside a grave and think of all the things that ought to have been said in life that never were said. True communication in families means to talk and to listen to one another. There is a growing concern that our teenage boys have few role models and little communication. A commitment to Jesus Christ gives a teenager the greatest role model of all, and Jesus is a friend through whom we can communicate everything to God in prayer. He is our model of manhood, and the means of our communication with our Heavenly Father.

2. What is it that teenagers want?

“Project Teen Canada” was a nation-wide survey of young people from 15 to 19 years of age, conducted in 1984. It surveyed 3,600 young people asking about their beliefs, hopes, values, sources of enjoyment, and their attitudes toward family, friends, sexuality, and the church. The project was co-ordinated Dr. Reginald W. Bibby, professor of sociology at the University of Lethbridge, author of “The Emerging Generation”.

Young people today place a high value on friendship, expressing indifference for institutions, including the church. They are “open to God – closed to the church.” The teenagers’ beliefs were consistently higher than that of their parents. 85% of teenagers indicated belief in the existence of God (compared to 81% of adults). 85% of teenagers reported belief in the deity of Jesus Christ (compared to 68% of adults). Regarding life after death, 80% of teenagers professed belief (compared to 69% of adults).

91% indicated they considered friendship to be very important to them. Seven other values were very important to a decreasing number: Being loved 87%; Freedom 84%; Success 78%; Excitement 58%; Acceptance by God 41%; Recognition 41%; Being popular 21%. (Leslie K. Tarr. World Evangelisation, December 1986).

An Australian teacher took a similar survey, asking “What do teenagers want?” He asked fourth year/Year 10 (fifteen to sixteen-year-olds). They replied:

1. We want to achieve something in life – success.
2. We want to prove to our parents we can “make it”.
3. We want to be trusted by our parents – over money matters, over times of coming home, over the choice of our friends; to be trusted to make our own decisions.
4. We want our parents to stop nagging us about study.
5. We want some privacy to get to know who we really are.
6. We want to be popular.
7. We want fun. You’re only young once.
8. We want to be understood. Listen with patience.
9. We want to know the facts of life, sex, human relationships, feelings and values, the big controversial issues in economics, politics, sex and religion.
10.We want what sensible, responsible adults want!

I was impressed with how one teenager wrote to the Sydney Morning Herald: “Sir: I am only 17, but I have become very cynical about the problems facing the average kid in Australia, and how nothing is ever really done to help. I believe that unemployment, drugs, teenage suicide, youth homelessness, juvenile sex and child poverty are a symptom, not a disease. These problems are rapidly growing and, at best, politicians are covering up the realities that confront the average teenager every day. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think that one in seven teenagers would seriously contemplate suicide if their lives meant anything.

Similarly, I don’t think the average 13 to 19 year-old would need 10 different sexual partners each year if he found stimulation and enjoyment from life. Maybe if teenagers could sense some hope they would stay at school or try to work, but nothing is being done to provide that hope. In the 60s, teenager rebelled against authority, trying to change their destinies – they failed, and my generation is the result. We have no cause, we let life direct us without trying to make a difference. We don’t try, as our parents did, to change the system because we see that there is no point. The system doesn’t care. The youth of Australia are looking for someone to bring some hope to their plight. I hope such a person exists.”

That someone is Jesus Christ. He cares for teenagers and His Apostle Paul spelled out to young Timothy how a teenager should live.

3. The Bible’s advice to teenagers

The world always regards teenagers with suspicion, and even Timothy was suspect. The advice given to Timothy is the hardest possible advice to follow, and yet it was the only possible advice. The advice was that Timothy must silence criticism by conduct.

Plato, the great Greek philosopher, was once falsely accused of dishonourable conduct. “Well,” he said, “we must live in such a way that all men will see that the charge is false.” Arguments and verbal defences cannot silence criticism; conduct can. What then were to be the marks of Timothy’s conduct?

Paul wrote to young Timothy (1 Tim 4:12) “Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith and in purity.”

1. An example in speech. Too many teenagers are foul mouthed, trying to impress. Paul asks that your speech should always be honest and loving, “speaking the truth in love” (Eph. 4:15).

2. An example in life. This suggests that our lives are to be controlled by our commitment to God, not like the hypocrites Paul described (Titus 1:16): “They profess that they know God; but in their works they deny Him.”

3. An example in love. Love, the greatest of Christian virtues, means an unconquerable benevolence. If a person is guided by Christian love, no matter what other people do or say, a Christian will seek nothing but their good. A Christian will never be bitter, never resentful, never vengeful, will never allow hatred, will never refuse to forgive. No matter what others are like, no matter what they do, a Christian will seek only their good. This kind of love takes over the whole of one’s personality. Ordinarily, love is something which we cannot help. Love of our nearest and dearest is an instinctive thing, which is part of our being. The love between the sexes comes unbidden.

Ordinarily love is a thing of the heart; but clearly this Christian love is more than a thing of the heart; it is a thing of the will. It is not something which a man cannot help; it is an achievement and a conquest. Christian love is that conquest of self whereby we are enabled to develop an unconquerable caring for other people. One authenticating mark of the Christian leader is that he cares for others, no matter what others do.

4. An example in faith. This implies that we trust God and are faithful to Him. Faithfulness to Christ, no matter what that fidelity may cost. It is not difficult to be a good soldier when things are going well. But the valuable soldier fights well when his body is weary and his stomach is empty, when the situation seems hopeless and when he is in the midst of a campaign the movements of which he cannot understand.

5. An example in purity. “In purity” is important as we live in this present evil world. Ephesus was a centre for sexual impurity and the young man Timothy was faced with Kings Cross-style temptations. He must have a chaste relationship to the women in the church (1 Tim. 5:2) and keep himself pure in mind, heart and body. Purity is an unconquerable allegiance to the standards of Jesus Christ.

When Governor Pliny was reporting back to the Roman Emperor Trajan about the Christians in Bithynia, where he was governor, he wrote: “They are accustomed to bind themselves by an oath to commit neither theft, nor robbery, not adultery; never to break their word; never to deny a pledge that has been made when summoned to answer for it.” The Christian pledge was to a life of purity. The Christian ought to have a standard of honour and honesty, a standard of self-control and chastity, a standard of discipline and consideration that is far above the standards of the world. The simple fact is that the world will never have any use for Christianity, until the Christian Church can prove that it produces the best men and women in the world.

The authenticating mark of the Christian leader is a life lived on the standards of Jesus Christ, and not on the standards of the world.

Nigel Lane at his excellent blog: http://youthworkercoach.com/blog/ says there are eight things that set Christian teens apart and that make Christian teens different.

1. The Bible – they read it, study it, and meditate on it. Non-Christians just ignore or ridicule it.
2. Prayer – they do it as a part of their normal lives as opposed to only when a crisis occurs.
3. Temptation – they recognise it and resist it [not always successfully] as opposed to embrace it or not even see it as temptation but simply as a fun thing to do
4. Guidance – they understand that there is a plan worth finding and seek guidance from God and others as opposed to letting life pass them by.
5. Witnessing – they talk to others about their faith [this is not an easy one and they often need support].
6. Peer group pressure – they can spot it from a distance and do everything they can to not get sucked in by the popular crowd.
7. Personal relationships – they treat people with respect and offer them support and love at all times rather than look down on people different to them.
8. Self image – they get theirs from God and what he says about them rather than following the popular fads and media provided images.

Jesus calls teenagers to a radical, new life-style, different to the rest of community. Without Him you will always be only average, but with Him you will become one of the change-agents of this world. There is no greater challenge for any teenager than in the freshness of life to commit yourself to Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord.

Rev the Hon. Dr Gordon Moyes AC MLC

27 April 2010

The Parliamentary Leader of Family First NSW, Rev the Hon. Dr Gordon Moyes AC MLC, has announced that the State Council of Family First NSW conducted an executive search and then elected one of Australia’s leading Christian businessmen as the NSW Chairman of Family First.

“I believe Parliamentary leaders of political parties should never also hold the position of Executive Chair in key boards,” said Dr Moyes. “That always leads to a concentration of power and dictatorship amongst those who hold key leadership positions. Political parties should always be led by elected lay leaders, and politicians should see their role as being servants of the party.”

Consequently, Family First NSW conducted an executive search, and then conducted an election that resulted in former Commonwealth Bank Executive, and Chair of many Bank subsidiary Boards, Mr. Neville Cox, being elected.

“Neville has had many years experience as a senior executive in the banking and finance industry. He is currently a director of several companies in the banking, superannuation and technology industries as well as not-for-profit and church related organisations.”

“One of Neville’s several involvements is Regional Director for Australasia for Focus on the Family. There is good symmetry between the political party and Focus on the Family because both hold to identical values placing the paramount interest of Australian families”, commented Dr Moyes.

In addition to his directorships, he is passionate about developing leaders and mentors senior business executives and leaders in Christian ministry. As a committed Christian, Neville is involved in many local congregational activities with his schoolteacher wife, Marilyn. He also heads the committee behind the forthcoming Sydney Prayer Breakfast.

Dr Moyes concluded, “The sad history of many micro-political parties with only one parliamentary representative is that the parliamentarian is not accountable to a strong external figure and Board. This leads to a loss of transparency and accountability in the ongoing operation and viability of political parties”.

With members in both Federal and state parliaments, Family First is a macro-party, the fifth largest in the nation. It has a good chance in winning two Senate seats in the Federal election. Its formal recognition as a political party in NSW by the Australian Electoral Commission opens the way for it to be a force in the next State Election as well. END.

The annual anniversary of the landing of Australian and New Zealand soldiers at Gallipoli challenges us all. The stories of that event together with various myths and legends that grew in the hearts of the youth of nationhood have meant that Australians have a special place in the heart on that Turkish peninsula. Like many others of the latter generation, I wondered what it was all about. I studied the history, read the diaries, went to the war memorials and I wrote down material.

But it was while I was watching Peter Weir’s acclaimed film Gallipoli on an aircraft in 1982 that I realised that Australian soldiers were being shot on wide sweeping sand beaches. I remember thinking, “Why are they not digging in? Why are they not making trenches and barricades?” In the film’s credits I saw that this Australian film was made on the wide sandy beaches of South Australia.

But Gallipoli is not like that. I knew that from my school geography lessons. Its beaches were rocky, even flinty, solid clay and stone: it took a lot of effort to dig rock trenches to give soldiers shelter. Every fresh brigade on landing was mown down by machine guns on the cliff. As I stood in Gallipoli looking at a pile of freshly uncovered skulls, Turkish men who worked in the Commonwealth war grave cemetery identified for me the skulls of Turkish soldiers s and those of Allied soldiers. When I asked how they could tell which one was Turkish and which one was Allied, I was told, “Very simple. ” They pointed to the tops of each skull and said, “All allies have bullet hole top of skull,” because the machine guns fired down upon them from the cliffs as they landed.

I felt that, so bad was the film in its misrepresentation of the hardships that Australian and other troops faced, a film should be made at Gallipoli. I put together the Wesley Film Productions film crew and went to Gallipoli to film inside the trenches. Incidentally, that was the first time anyone had made a film at Gallipoli since 1923 when C. E. W. Bean arrived with a burial party. I make the point that bodies were not buried before 1922. As Charles Bean came in towards shore, he thought he saw snow on the cliffs, but they were the bleached bones of dead soldiers who had not been buried.

I convinced some people to put up some money. Some Sydney people put up over a million dollars to cover the costs of the film crew that I led. The trenches, which are still there, were cut into the solid shale, rocks and clay. Everywhere I went in 1982, pieces of bone and metal buckles were uncovered every time the wind blew. I picked up shovels that had the British war insignia on the back of them. I researched the history, wrote the script, raised the money and took the 34-member crew with me to Anzac Cove.

Ironically, when we visited in 1982 not one of the Turkish guides or the bus drivers knew how to get from Çanakkale to Anzac Cove. The road was almost impassable. What a difference there is these days, since the new road has been cut into the hills and completed, as tens of thousands of people go to Anzac Day commemorations at the beach.

In the early morning air, at dawn in 1982, I am filmed as the only person on the beach. As I walked the beaches, climbed into the trenches, read the tombstones and thought of the piles of contorted flesh of young Australian manhood, I realised that, in that foreign country, there will always be a part of Australia. Colonel Mustafa Kemal, who led the Turkish resistance so brilliantly in defending his own country, later became Atatürk, the President of Turkey, and the man who brought Turkey into the twentieth century. In 1934, he spoke of the Australian war dead in some of the most moving words I have ever read:

Those heroes that shed their blood
and lost their lives
You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country.
Therefore you rest in peace.
There is no difference Between the Johnnies
and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side
here in this country of ours.
You, the mothers,
who sent their sons from far away countries
wipe your tears
your sons are now lying in our bosom
and they are in peace
after having lost their lives on this land
they have become our sons as well.

I stood in tears reading those words and reading the names of the young men who had fallen and who lie buried in the cemetery that will be known forever as Lone Pine. I realised that there on the west coast of Turkey, part of the heart of Australia lies buried. In later wars, far greater numbers of Australians would be killed and wounded at Passchendaele and the Somme and other war cemeteries would be built in Europe, the Middle East, South-East Asia, the Pacific Islands, Papua New Guinea, Malaysia, Korea, Vietnam—but Gallipoli holds part of the heart of Australia.

Long before it was popular I made the film, Our Magnificent Defeat, and led Martin Johnston, our producer, and Robert Draper, our cinematographer from New York, as well as an international crew from Australia, the United Kingdom, Europe and America. For 15 years the film that I made was screened every Anzac Day across Australia and it has been screened by all of the major networks in Australia. It has played some part in the renewal of interest in people going to Gallipoli ever since. Thousands of copies on video were sold mainly to schools and RSL clubs.

While I was at Gallipoli, in my imagination I thought of all those who had fought in Australia’s name: he who crouched in a shallow trench on that hell of exposed beaches, the steeply rising foothills bare of cover, a landscape pockmarked with war’s inevitable little piles of stores, equipment and ammunition, and the weird contortions of death sculptured in Australian flesh.

From the going down of the sun on that first Anzac Day—the chaotic maelstrom of Australia’s blooding—to the desert and heat of Afghanistan and Iraq, to the frozen mud of the Somme, the blazing destroyer exploding on the North Sea, to those fighting in the desert and the ratholes of Tobruk, to the crashing, flaming wreckage of a fighter in New Guinea and all those who lived with the damned in the places cursed with the name of Burma Railway, Sandakan and Changi, he was there.

He was there in Europe, France, Germany, Spain, Crete, Greece, Syria, Korea, Malaya, Africa, Vietnam Afghanistan and Iraq. He was your mate, the kid across the street, the medical student at graduation, the mechanic from the corner garage, the baker who brought your bread, the gardener who cut your lawn, the nurse, the telephonist, the land-army driver, the clerk in the office. He was an Army private, a Naval commander, an Air Force bombardier. No man knows him. No name marks his tomb because he is every Australian service man and woman. He died for a cause that he held to be in the service of our land so that you and I might say in freedom, “I am proud to be an Australian.”

A trial of ethics classes in NSW schools is about to begin. Although suggestions like this have been made in the past, successive education ministers have not allowed it. The only reason it became reality this time was the personal intervention of Premier Nathan Rees, in the dying days of his incumbency.

Christians have been put onto the back foot, forced to answer the dual question, “What’s wrong with teaching kids ethics?” and “What’s wrong with giving non-SRE children something to occupy their time as they sit idle during SRE?”. Some Christians will not know how to address these questions. Many schools breach SRE guidelines anyway. We must educate ourselves on this vital topic.

Thousands of volunteers and supporters of SRE in local communities have worked tirelessly in schools and receive little recognition of their extremely positive work. On the other hand, the non-religious St James Ethics Centre (SJEC) has already received wide exposure. Why? I think their support has been boosted by those who see this as a chance to break SRE and remove all trace of religion from public life.

I’m pleased to see other denominations and faiths starting to make their views known. I’d like to suggest 10 reasons why the ethics trial is a bad development and why you should urgently pray about it, then make your views known to your local MP. Click here for the petition.

1. Mainstream ethical behaviour is taught every day in schools by existing teachers. An educational review has shown these classes are not needed. Are we saying that teachers are not doing their job?

2. An ethics course promotes a philosophical system. The St James Ethics Centre is a self-confessed secular organisation. Why is this approach favoured? Why not give this course a more accurate name, such as “Secular Philosophy”?

3. The reason given for trialling the course — that non-SRE children are sitting idle — is untrue. Non-SRE children are occupied and supervised in well-managed schools. In any case, as the new classes are voluntary, how does it solve the ‘problem’? There will still be children neither in SRE nor this course.

4. Anglican SRE is taught mainly by local volunteers. There is a proven track record of positive community involvement. They are properly screened, trained and authorised. Who will be the teachers of the SJEC course? How will they be trained, what connection will they have with the school, and for how long will they keep teaching the course?

5. It is being presented as new, exciting and more useful than SRE. The result may be that fewer parents will choose SRE. But this time has been set aside for religious instruction as a recognition of the importance of this subject. Secular ethics is not an alternative. This trial is of ethics (minus God). Next it could be more maths or English. We still want children to be taught about God.

6. To be blunt, what this Government has done in approving the trial is renege on an assurance given by governments to the churches since 1880, and reaffirmed in 1990 and 2008, that it would not permit ethics or any other programs to be delivered at the same time as SRE. How can we be sure that it does not gut SRE from the curriculum?

7. The local Parents and Citizens associations are already being compromised by being invited to support this initiative without proper consultation. The P&Cs occupy an honoured role in our society (I was once a P&C president myself!) as they support the whole school community. They are being invited to offer sectarian support for an untried initiative.

8. The study of religion is vital to an understanding of our culture, art, faith and human history. A recent survey showed that 50 per cent of Australians believe religion is important to their lives. A significantly greater number believe in God. In the face of this, is less than an hour of SRE per school week too much to ask? In fact, is it enough?

9. Why is St James Ethics Centre being favoured for this? Why was a multi-faith group of primary educationists not invited to write it? Can other providers offer the course? If not, why not? Why is it being offered to all students, including SRE students, as a ‘complement’ to SRE when it was supposed to be for non-SRE students only?

10. Be warned: if the Government allows this course to continue after the trial, it will jeopardise religious education in public schools, and without such a religious component, public schools will cease to be inclusive of all children. We Anglicans have always been committed to public education. Any decline of SRE would make public schools less attractive to Christian parents and will accelerate the shift to non-government schools.

There are more reasons, not least the vital part which SRE plays in keeping alive a knowledge of God in our society. There will be many challenges ahead for Christians in the society of the 21st century, but few more significant than this.

Written by Dr Peter Jensen, Archbishop of the Anglican Diocese of Sydney, Southern Cross Magazine, April 2010.

Reverend the Hon. Dr Gordon Moyes: I ask the Minister for Planning, representing the Minister for Police, is he aware of the recent figures by the New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research [BOCSAR] showing that Sydney has emerged as the rape capital of New South Wales, and that the number of sexual assaults in Sydney increased by 12.1 per cent last year, which is more than twice as fast as the State average? Is he aware that the bureau’s figures show that 4,311 sexual assaults were reported in New South Wales in 2009, which represents an increase of 239 sexual assault cases? In particular, is he aware of a recent case in which a man was charged last month with raping two women in the unisex toilets of exclusive Sydney nightclubs, the Ivy and the Piano Room? Given the increasing number of sexual assaults taking place in hotels, pubs and clubs, will he take decisive action by introducing a tougher approach to reduce the number of rapes and sexual assaults that occur in those types of premises?

The Hon. Tony Kelly: I will refer the question to the Minister for Police. My understanding is that this is the first time 17 out of 17 major crime categories either remained stable or have been reduced. When I was the Minister for Police and during the term of my predecessor, we were always hoping to get 17 out of 17 for major crime categories being reduced or becoming stable, but the best we were able to achieve was 16 out of 17. The statistics represent a major achievement by all involved in the justice system—the courts, the police and those involved in caring for victims. It means that the years of working together are starting to achieve results.

Although recently released crime statistics show that rates of sexual assault are stable throughout the State, I am aware that the statistics also show there has been a recent increase in incidences in the Sydney region. The New South Wales Rape Crisis Centre has suggested that these increases may be due to more incidences being reported. The Government has noticed that as clean-up rates have improved in recent years, people have become more inclined to report offences. The Rape Crisis Centre manager, Karen Willis, was reported in the Australian as saying:

The state government and the police have done a terrific job in introducing reforms in the way these incidents are handled, which appears to have encouraged more women to come forward.

The reforms to which she refers were aimed at improving the legal system so that it works better for victims. Karen Willis, the New South Wales Rape Crisis Centre and other groups should take some of the credit for reducing the incidence of rape.

Last year, in the most significant crackdown of sex offences in a generation, the New South Wales Government implemented the recommendation of the Sentencing Council’s report into penalties for sex offences by creating new offences and increasing penalties to protect the community from sexual abuse and exploitation. The new laws doubled the maximum sentence for possessing child pornography from 5 to 10 years and introduced a life sentence for aggravated sexual intercourse with a child under 10 years of age. The new laws will prevent courts from taking into account good character, reputation and a lack of criminal history as mitigating circumstances in relation to offenders who use those factors to gain people’s trust in the commission of their crimes. By hardening the sentence regime and toughening sexual assault offences, the Government is sending a message to sexual predators that they will not escape unpunished.

Reverend the Hon. Dr Gordon Moyes: My question without notice is addressed to the Minister for Mineral and Forest Resources. Is the Minister aware that residents of the upper Hunter Valley are suffering from serious health problems caused by damaging pollution due to open-cut mining? Is the Minister aware that the local medical study conducted by Dr Tuan Au found that one in six local children have a lower lung function compared to the national average? Given the alleged link between asthma and pollution in the upper Hunter, according to the ABC Four Corners program, will the Government commission an independent study to examine air pollution in the local district? Will the Government put the interests and wellbeing of local residents before mining conglomerates? Will the Minister for the Central Coast and the Minister for Health spend some time living in the upper Hunter and listen to the concerns of local residents?

The Hon. Ian Macdonald: The Four Corners program has had a small amount of coverage here and there. Some of the claims made on that program have received some public amplification. I gather that the Department of Health is looking at some of those issues. In the past week in the Hunter, some very respected medical practitioners have given expert commentaries about some of those issues and have stated that the claims in that program were somewhat over inflated. We, of course, are always concerned about these issues and that is why there is considerable monitoring, and more enhanced monitoring will be conducted in the valley in the future. I do not like the term “mining conglomerates” used by the member. Many of the companies are not conglomerates but are smaller vehicles. The point is that they play a major role in employment in that region with 47,000 and up to around 200,000—

Dr John Kaye: Do they have any coalmines there?

The Hon. Ian Macdonald: I am in favour of coalmines; they are good—look at the structure of Rixs Creek Mine. Mining plays a major role in that area and, as has been said recently, draws approximately $22 billion worth of direct income not including all the downstream income. I notice Reverend the Hon. Dr Gordon Moyes is wearing a little badge on his lapel, which is probably a product of mining.

The Federal Government’s decision to impose a sudden freeze on refugee claims by Sri Lankans and Afghans is a “betrayal of Australia’s commitment to fairness and humanity”, says the St Vincent de Paul Society. “This is a far cry from the values of compassion and social justice espoused by this Government at the beginning of its term”, said Syd Tutton, the Society’s National Council President.

Dr John Falzon, National Council CEO said, “We are unconvinced by the government’s justification for this policy reversal. We are deeply saddened to see both sides of politics trying to outdo each other in a tragic display of thinly veiled racism. In his excellent 2006 essay, Faith in Politics, Mr Rudd placed himself on the side of the ‘marginalised, the vulnerable and the oppressed’. We call on him to revisit and rescind this policy decision on the strength of this conviction”.

The Uniting Church Synod of NSW and the ACT has also expressed grave concern about the decision of the Australian Government to suspend processing asylum application by people from Afghanistan and Sri Lanka. During its 2010 meeting in Sydney, the Synod said the Government should “live out the ethical commitment of the Australian people to show hospitality to people fleeing persecution as codified in the United Nations Convention on Refugees, which all parties support”.

The Synod – around 450 representatives of the Uniting Church from throughout NSW and the ACT – said universally accepted principles of human rights demanded that every human being be treated with the dignity that was their birthright”.

Applications are now open for the 2010 Woolworths Fresh Food Kids Community Grants and we invite you to encourage community organisation in your local electorate to apply. This year, a total of $3 million is available and community organisations in your electorate could be awarded a grant of up to $5,000 to help fund their project. To be eligible for a Community Grant a community group’s initiative must: be designed for primary school aged children; encourage kids to lead healthier, more active lives; and take place outside of the school curriculum. The community group must be a not-for-profit organisation and have an ABN or be affiliated with a not-for-profit organisation that has an ABN. Organisations can find further details about the Community Grants and can apply online for the scholarship at www.woolworths.com.au Applications close on 2nd May 2010. Decisions about grant applications will be announced, and grant monies awarded, between July and August this year.

On behalf of Family First I speak on the Crimes Amendment (Child Pornography and Abuse Material) Bill. The object of the bill is to amend the Crimes Act 1900 to change the law as it relates to child pornography so that the defence relating to material produced for child protection, scientific, medical, legal, artistic, or other public benefit purposes will no longer be available, and the law is generally more consistent with Commonwealth offences relating to child pornography.

The bill also amends the Criminal Procedure Act 1986 to provide for the use of random sample evidence in proceedings for a child abuse material offence. It also seeks to amend the Criminal Procedure Act to extend to a witness in sexual offence proceedings the same protection as those afforded to a complainant in the proceedings in cases where it is alleged that the accused person has committed a sexual offence against the Crimes Amendment (Child Pornography and Abuse Material) Bill 2010 witness that is not the subject of the proceedings concerned.

In its 2008 report, “Penalties relating to Sexual Assault Offences in New South Wales”, the New South Wales Sentencing Council recommended that artistic purposes be removed as a defence to child pornography charges. In addition, the Sentencing Council recommended the establishment of a Child Pornography Working Party to evaluate and report on these issues.

In late 2008 the Government established its working party and appointed Judge Peter Berman, SC, as its chair. The working party included representatives across a broad range of government departments and interested parties.

The working party was asked to consider a number of issues that had arisen in the prosecution of child pornography offences, and in particular how to remove the artistic purposes defence from child pornography offences in the Crimes Act 1900 without infringing upon the rights of journalists and artists to depict valid situations involving children.

Under the recommendations, artistic merit can no longer be used as a defence for the use of images of children deemed to be pornographic. If the recommendations of the working party become law, any person producing, distributing or possessing such material could still argue artistic merit, but once the material is ruled to be pornographic the defence would lapse. The New South Wales Attorney General, the Hon. John Hatzistergos, said:

The working party’s report suggests that once such material has been found to be unlawfully pornographic, whether or not it is intended to be art is irrelevant. Instead, the report recommends adopting Commonwealth provisions, which require that once a court has considered arguments that certain material is art and reached the determination that it is nevertheless unlawfully pornographic, no further defence of artistic merit is available.

The definition of child pornography was recently broadened by the Crimes Amendment (Sexual Offences) Act 2008, which commenced on 1 January 2009. Child pornography is now legislatively defined as:

material that depicts or describes (or appears to depict or describe), in a manner that would in all the circumstances cause offence to reasonable persons, a person who is (or appears to be) a child:

(a) engaged in sexual activity, or
(b) in a sexual context, or
(c) as the victim of torture, cruelty or physical abuse (whether or not in a sexual context).

In addition, a new section was inserted that specifies any material that contains or displays an image of a person that has been altered or manipulated so that the person appears to be a child. During the second reading speech on the bill, the Attorney General explained the reasoning behind the further broadening of the definition when he said:

Images can also be manipulated to make innocent photographs of children appear in a pornographic context, or to make a person in a sexual context appear to be a child However, the Government makes no apologies for ensuring that all child pornographic images, whether real or pseudo, are covered by this legislation

Furthermore, it is important to reduce the amount of this abhorrent material available to anyone with access to a computer.

I commend the Attorney General for explaining that reasoning in such a way. I support the recommendations of the Child Pornography Working Party, given that this is a huge community concern for families and that children must be protected from such material. The working party recommended, “material that is otherwise offensive because of the way in which it depicts children should not be protected because its creator claims an overriding artistic purpose for it”.

The working party was of the opinion that the defence of artistic merit led to the impression that material that would otherwise constitute child pornography could be acceptable if the material was produced whilst acting for a genuine artistic purpose. The working party also recommended that in defining child pornography the legislation provide a list of factors that must be taken into account in determining whether material is offensive, and that the defences be amended to mirror existing Commonwealth legislation.

The bill now removes the stand-alone defence of artistic merit and, in its place, reworks the definition of child abuse material to include a list of factors that must be taken into account when determining whether material is offensive, which includes, amongst others, the existence of any artistic merit. The bill abolishes the artistic merit defence to a charge of producing, possessing or disseminating child pornography.

This corrects a major defect in the law that has allowed material depicting children in a manner that is offensive to reasonable persons to be openly circulated on the grounds of its alleged artistic merit. The change will make a very clear statement that would be endorsed by New South Wales families: Art is not an excuse for child pornography.

The bill also allows for random sample evidence in circumstances in which the quantity and gravity of child pornography makes it undesirable to adduce to the court in its entirety. The random sample evidence limits the exposure of those associated with the proceedings to viewing unnecessary amounts of child pornography but still allows them to understand a representative sample of the material.

The bill also extends certain protections currently afforded to complainants in sexual offence proceedings to witnesses in the proceedings who also allege that the accused person has committed a sexual offence against him or her.

I ask the Attorney General to consider taking the opportunity presented by the bill to improve the law on child pornography by amending the definition of a child for the purpose of these offences from “a person who is under the age of 16 years” to “a person who is under the age of 18 years”. There are several reasons to make such a change.

First is consistency with other offences in the Crimes Act 1900. While the general age of consent for engaging in consensual sex is 16, there are several sexual and other offences for which a child is defined as a person under the age of 18 years. This includes child prostitution, section 91C; sexual intercourse with a child under special care, section 73; recruiting a child to be involved in a criminal activity, section 351A; persistent sexual abuse of a child, section 66EA; and aggravated sexual servitude, sections 80C and 80D.

Each of those offences rightly recognises that a child is in special need of protection by the law until the age of 18. Child pornography should be considered to be one of those offences for which all children up to the age of 18 are in need of protection by the law. It is one thing for a child aged 16 or 17 to consent to sex; it is another thing for offensive pictures of a 16- or 17-year-old child to be taken in a sexual context and circulated. Such pictures may remain permanently available on the Internet. The bill would then bring New South Wales laws on child pornography into substantial agreement with Commonwealth law.

As pointed out by the Minister when introducing the bill, this substantial agreement would facilitate law enforcement, as offences involving computers and carrier services may overlap the Commonwealth and State jurisdictions. It is important that the same material be considered as child pornography in both jurisdictions. However, the Commonwealth offences treat any person under 18 as a child.

Therefore, I recommend that the Attorney General raise the age in New South Wales from 16 to 18 years. The bill provides a defence to an offence of child pornography if the material has been classified other than as “refused classification” under the National Classification Scheme. The definition of a child for the purpose of the National Classification Scheme is a person under 18. I believe this bill would be greatly improved if the age were lifted from 16 to 18 years.

In conclusion, Family First believes that children have a right to innocence. They have a right to grow up without any pressure of being sexually exploited in any way. It is fundamentally for this reason that I support the Crimes Amendment (Child Pornography and Abuse Material) Bill and I commend it to the House.

Family First supports the Parliamentary Electorates and Elections Amendment Bill 2010. The previous speaker has outlined all the details, particularly concerning the various options to enable vision-impaired voters to cast a secret vote. I will not go through all the provisions of the bill except to say that we support them without question.

We understand, however, that the previous attempt to cater for this need among visually impaired people by producing Braille voting forms was a costly exercise and really overkill because of the lack of numbers of persons who want to vote using the Braille voting form. The development of e-voting and i-voting is very important and I believe a lot more could be done in this way.

In the United States of America I attended the voting for the last presidential election, which elected Barrack Obama, and through a friendship with a person who was in charge of one of the local regional voting centres I investigated how electronic voting works in the United States. In fact, I was even given the opportunity to cast a vote for the various local representatives in the area based on the spurious evidence that for 22 years I have been an adjunct professor of an American university and they assumed somehow or other that I was an American citizen.

I used the electronic voting systems and found them really helpful. I believe we in Australia have to move from the paper ballot to other forms of electronic and i-voting very quickly. We are being left behind in this field. I think it would be so much quicker in every way.

The most important issue relates to people who cannot use normal systems because of lack of vision, but I would also include people with other disabilities such as those who cannot write, cannot read, or who suffer from disabilities such as dyslexia. Members have heard me speak on this issue many times in this House. We have taken steps and made some significant achievements in the Department of Education and Training in helping children and others with learning disabilities.

Only last night I spoke about the Macquarie University programs to help people gain accessibility, particularly those people who cannot speak, write or read. The bill is a step in the right direction. It is important for democracy that all persons in society have access to voting. It is essential that people with disabilities are treated fairly. Therefore I support this bill on behalf of Family First.

I speak on the Road Transport Legislation Amendment (Unauthorised Vehicle Use) Bill 2010, which amends the Road Transport (Vehicle Registration) Act 1997 concerning registered operators of vehicles and the detection of offences involving unauthorised vehicle use, and makes consequential amendments to certain other legislation. The bill is very important for the party that I represent, which is concerned about the values of the families of accident victims, who have suffered greatly over the years. My party instructed me to speak very forcefully on this issue and to support the Government in what it is doing.

The bill will amend the principal Act to enable photographs taken by certain approved camera devices to be tendered and used in evidence for certain offences involving unauthorised vehicle use, such as the use of an unregistered or uninsured vehicle; to confirm that generally only one person may be recorded as the registered operator of a registrable vehicle in the Register of Registrable Vehicles maintained under the Act; and to consolidate in one section all the provisions currently in the Act relating to the maintenance of the register.

The Roads and Traffic Authority estimate that 1.2 per cent of vehicles on New South Wales are unregistered and uninsured, which represents more than 65,000 vehicles. In 2002, 44 unlicensed drivers were involved in fatal accidents. Police assessed that 38 of those drivers were at fault, causing 44 deaths. In comparison, only 55 per cent of the 698 validly licensed drivers involved in fatal accidents were at fault. Those issues particularly concern the Family First Party because it has a deep and ongoing commitment to ensuring that children, many of whom are killed in accidents, survive. Of the 44 unlicensed drivers, the 18 who were disqualified or cancelled were assessed to be at fault in all fatal accidents in which they were involved.

The Motor Accidents Authority advises that personal injury claims caused by unregistered vehicles represent about 2 per cent of all compulsory third party [CTP] claims, cost on average $18.5 million each year, and add approximately $6 to the average annual CTP premium. In addition, unregistered vehicles are generally not insured against property damage. Accidents involving unregistered vehicles impose an unquantified cost on other road users through property damage and ultimately through higher insurance premiums.

The 2003 report by the New South Wales Audit Office entitled “Dealing with Unlicensed and Unregistered Driving” recommended that red light and speed cameras be used to detect unregistered vehicles. In all other jurisdictions, except the Australian Capital Territory, enforcement cameras are used to detect unregistered vehicles. Consultation on the reforms in May 2008 had been undertaken with the Motor Traders Association, the Motor Accidents Authority and compulsory third party insurers.

Consultations on the current reform have been conducted with the New South Wales Police Force, the Attorney General’s Department and the State Debt Recovery Office in relation to the camera detection of unauthorised driving and these agencies support the proposal. I will refrain from addressing the agreement in principle speech as it has already been said and I am sure it is absolutely correct. The key objective in using cameras to detect unauthorised driving is to ensure that all vehicles using the State’s roads are registered and insured.

This benefits the entire community in that it protects registration revenue and ultimately funding for road construction and maintenance. It will also reduce the costs on the insurance industry, and ultimately on motorists, from accidents involving uninsured vehicles. This legislation brings New South Wales into line with other States and Territories. On behalf of Family First I wholeheartedly support the Road Transport Legislation Amendment (Unauthorised Vehicle Use) Bill and I commend it to the House.

Today I will speak about an excellent organisation based at Macquarie University called Macquarie Customised Accessibility Services—M-CAS for short. Its Centre for Flexible Learning is doing wonderful, innovative work making university studies available to students with a wide range of print and learning disabilities. Directed by Sharon Kerr with a dedicated staff of 70, M-CAS is committed to providing its specialist services directly to students at Macquarie University and other universities, as well as to educational institutions throughout Australia.

It works this way: M-CAS disability liaison officers work closely with students from the start to find out what types of support they need and they then contact all the lecturers to obtain the required study and support materials of each course, which they proceed to convert into alternative formats for use with assistive technologies preferred by the student. Text can be converted into speech, complex diagrams can be presented in tactile forms, and information can be produced in Braille or other formats.

The philosophy of M-CAS is to recognise students as individuals who have their own access issues and needs and have developed their own preferred methods for learning. Various levels of support are required by students to achieve their independence as learners. There is no one-size-fits-all solution. As one student remarked:

I no longer actually have a disability once I am equipped with the same access to the study materials that all the other students have. I am competing on an equal footing, and that is great!

M-CAS also directly assists educational institutions across the country by ensuring that all recommended accessibility guidelines are met for its campuses. M-CAS is also able to assist with curriculum development and the review process. It can help with the testing of emerging technologies for students using assistive technologies and can provide resources such as checklists, guidelines and legislation overview, as well as provide training and support materials to university staff. M-CAS is committed to supporting all educational staff in their efforts to develop and deliver accessible curriculums in accordance with legislative requirements.

Most academic staff do not have specialist training regarding education for people with a learning or print disability, and many university lecturers have said that the work of M-CAS frees them to do what they do best, that is, prepare their course materials and continue their research. They can leave all the organising and technical conversion of course materials into the formats needed by students with a disability to the M-CAS staff. They know it will mean that their students will be able to participate fully in class, having access to all the same materials as other people.

The work of M-CAS benefits not only students. Business leaders with whom I have spoken are well aware that, with one in 20 people in the community having a disability, they now can reasonably expect to have a workforce reflecting the same statistic—and, with such accessibility to university studies that M-CAS makes possible, their future employees with a disability can be expected to have completed advanced education and to be as productive as employees without a disability.

That is good news for business. It also requires that initial commitment by management to make their workplaces accessible, along with the investment in assistive technologies, with the outcome being a win-win situation for everyone in the workplace and in the community.

I have toured the M-CAS headquarters and facilities of the cognitive sciences branch at Macquarie University; and I came away very impressed with the dedicated director and her staff undertaking this vital work. One student who is benefiting from the program is my friend Mr Jim Bond, the dedicated dyslexia advocate with whom I have worked for some years. Having not being able to read or write throughout his life, Jim is now thrilled to be completing an arts degree majoring in political science, made possible with the wonderful assistive technology and liaison officers at M-CAS. That is a real accomplishment for Jim, and for all other students who suffer from such learning difficulties.

I commend Macquarie Accessibility Services for the excellent work it does for students with a learning disability and all the institutions involved in their education.

All my life I have lived in the fast lane. When I was 26 I led a remarkable community activity that involved over six thousand people each week. In praise of what happened, the local newspaper wrote an editorial about my efforts entitled “The Human Dynamo”.

In different forms that level of activity was repeated over the next forty years. A time and motion study was made of my activities many years ago and its conclusion staggered me. For one, I discovered the researcher who stayed with me for four weeks continuously, calculated that I spent 114 hours every week on my work. I changed my methods of work from that time on. From putting more hours into my work, I developed ways of putting more work into my hours.

For more than fifty years I have given on average over 14 speeches, sermons and lectures every week, including on television and radio. Every one I prepared and typed personally. Interviews, recordings, chairing meetings, and the like, was a daily way of life. In Parliament in retirement, similar activities still occur.

That is living in the fast lane. Every year I used to fly to over 100 destinations. I do not do that now. I have learned to take some time in the slow lane. This last week was in the slow lane.

I did not work on the computer at all. I wrote no articles and gave no speeches. I made no broadcasts nor gave any interviews. I did not attend a meeting. I did not Tweet or correspond on the Blackberry.

I caught a train and travelled for thirty hours non-stop. I caught a couple of boats and walked a great deal. I swam a little. I talked a lot with my wife only. We prayed for five elderly friends who are doing it tough with illness and frailty. We prayed for some young adults in stressful situations.

Now I am refreshed. It is exactly one year to the state election. From now until then, it is the fast lane.

Rev the Hon. Dr Gordon Moyes AC MLC

The Federal Government has stated that it intends to increase the population of Australia. It is estimated by Treasury that the number of Australian citizens will reach 35 million by 2049. The Federal government has identified that, to meet the challenge of the increasing population, major cities will have to increase their urban density. For this reason, the Federal Government has recently hinted that it is considering taking the initiative, and might extend its responsibilities to include housing development, land release and infrastructure — functions currently controlled by State and Local governments.

Australia’s capital cities will have to expand considerably to house new migrants. Increased urbanisation, when not accompanied by appropriate town planning, is associated with higher rates of chronic disease. Despite the migration drive, Australia’s population will continue to age, and by 2056 one in four Australians will be over the age of 65 years.

According to a paper published in the Medical Journal of Australia, increasing urbanisation is associated with higher rates of obesity, asthma and depression, unless it is accompanied by appropriate town planning that provides adequate pedestrian amenities, limits pollution, ensures public safety, encourages social cohesiveness, and allows access to fresh food.

An important finding was that major metropolitan teaching hospitals operate on a bed occupancy rate of 95% or above. The report noted that hospital overcrowding was the most serious cause of reduced patient safety. It is clear that, even at Australia’s current population of only about 20 million people, the public health system is struggling to cope with demand.

The Garling Inquiry concluded in 2008 that the New South Wales health system is in a state of crisis. An independent analysis by the Australian Medical Association has concluded that Australian public hospitals are dysfunctional, operating at full or above-full capacity, and urgently in need of increased capital funding. Australian health services are already heavily burdened. Health professionals must engage with governments to ensure that appropriate plans are put in place to accommodate the increased burden of disease that will accompany a more populous Australia.

An obesity expert from the United Kingdom believes Australia has overtaken America as having one of the unhealthiest diets in the world. Dr Tim Lobstein is the Director of Policy and Programmes for the International Association for the Study of Obesity. He is in Western Australia with Jane Landon from the National Heart Forum to host a number of public lectures on obesity for the Public Health Advocacy Institute.

Dr Lobstein says Australia’s diet has changed dramatically over the last 20 years. “We’ve found that your diets here in Australia are more fatty and oily than American diets, and we thought America was one of the worst in the world. You’ve overtaken America. Your diets are now 40 per cent calories from fats and oils and that’s a pretty shocking statistic – you should be down nearer 20. Your sugars are high, alcohol is about double what’s the recommended level of intake, and your fruit and veg are a bit under par”, he said.

Both Dr Lobstein and Ms Landon are particularly concerned about the diets of Australia’s children. He estimates about 90,000 kids in Western Australia are overweight or obese. “It means each family practice in Western Australia has probably about 2,000 overweight adults and 200 overweight kids to deal with, and they don’t really know what to do because losing weight is a real battle.”

The challenge, according to Dr Lobstein, is whether Australia can beat the trend. Failure to do so will compromise the health of our nation.

Reference: Deborah Pelser, Super size me: Is a big Australia good for our health, Medical Journal of Australia, 12 April 2010.

May 31st is the 108th anniversary of the signing of The Treaty of Vereeniging that ended the Boer War in 1902. This year the celebration falls on Sunday 30 May. It is likely that most living Australians’ only cultural reference to that war may be the film Breaker Morant, which tells the tale of Lieutenants Peter Handcock and Harry “The Breaker” Morant being executed by the British for war crimes committed against prisoners and a German missionary.

The movie was a legal drama that did not educate its viewers about the background of the war itself, which was fought between the British and the Dutch Boer settlers in South Africa. The pre-federation population of Australia had a very high proportion of British immigrants who had strong ties to “The Mother Country”, and many thousands of Australian men volunteered to fight for Britain. And many Australian women paid their own passage and expenses to go serve as nurses. As a matter of interest there were also more than 43,000 Australian horses sent to the war that never returned.

In Canberra there are beautiful structures commemorating the service of our countrymen and women in wars throughout our history, and there is even a memorial to our most respected adversary – that being Kemal Attaturk, the Turkish commander at Gallipoli. But there is no national memorial to those who died in the Boer War serving between 1899 when war broke out and 1902 when it finally ended. This is an inexplicable oversight that will soon be remedied by the efforts of the descendants of those 23,000 men and women who fought, served or nursed, and the 1000 who died. The National Boer War Memorial will be constructed in Anzac Parade, Canberra based on the winning design of the competition currently open to artists, sculptors and designers across the land.

The rest of New South Wales has not been so lax in their observance of the war. There are 124 memorials to honour those who served in the Boer War. St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney will soon be installing a plaque to honour the service of Mary Julia Anderson who served in the 3rd Victorian Bushman’s Contingent from March 1900, nursing in Rhodesia, Mafeking, and Springfontein. The Australian medical care was known to be of such excellence that British soldiers had labels sewn into their uniforms directing that, if injured, they wished to be sent to the NSW Army Medical Corps field hospital rather than to the British. This became so widespread that there was a British Parliamentary Inquiry resulting in NSW practices being adopted by the British field hospitals.

If you are interested in attending any of the commemorations across the state contact your RSL or Local Council what events have been planned. All of our history is worth knowing, remembering, and honouring. The National Boer War Memorial Association website has many more stories, reports, photographs, war diaries, correspondence and descriptions of memorials: http://www.bwm.org.au/site/Home.asp

14 April 2010.

Parliamentary Leader of Family First NSW, Dr Gordon Moyes AC, is urging the public to make submissions to the government’s independent Food Labelling Review if they share his concern over the genetically modified (GM) foods now coming into the Australian food supply.

Dr Moyes explained, “Consumers have the absolute right to know what they are buying to feed their families, and appropriate standards for labelling of foods, which will be monitored and enforced, are crucial.” Just last week it was announced that a GM soybean rejected by the EU and India has been approved for Australia because the tests run by the company that sells it says it is safe.

“What incentive does any company have to report truthfully? Has Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) never heard of ‘conflict of interest’, or know that bias can influence perception, or that data can be made to say anything? We need people guarding our population not yielding to pressure from multinational agribusiness!” claimed Dr Moyes. In contrast, an independent study revealed that the GM soybean had the same toxin as a GM eggplant that was rejected by the Indian government because it caused liver damage in rats.

Dr Moyes added, “The only GM food crops currently produced in Australia are canola and cotton but nearly all processed foods contain some GM products. And that is happening because Food Standards Australia New Zealand permits manufacturers to use a wide range of imported ingredients like GM soybeans, canola, corn, rice, sugarbeet, and potatoes, with absolutely no requirement that the foods be labelled to inform consumers. That is shocking, and needs to be addressed urgently.”

Dr Moyes believes strongly that every family has the right to know if their food comes from GM crops or animals fed GM crops, either directly or indirectly, and to make the choice of whether or not they are willing to take that risk. It should be a basic requirement that manufacturers disclose fully any use of GM ingredients no matter how small a proportion of the food.

Dr Moyes stated, “The public health of Australians is paramount, not multinational commercial interests. The precautionary principle says that if a policy has any suspected risk of causing harm, then in the absence of scientific consensus it simply must not be enacted. The greater the potential risk means the greater is the requirement for strict standards of independent evidence. Lacking that I say label all GM food clearly so the public can avoid it!” Make your submission at www.foodlabellingreview.gov.au by 14 May 2010. END.

15 April 2010.

Rev Dr Gordon Moyes has expressed his serious concerns relating to the announcement of the Federal Government that the processing of new Sri Lankan and Afghani asylum seekers will be suspended, effective immediately.

Dr Gordon Moyes, a Parliamentary Leader of Family First NSW, is concerned that the suspension of processing could lead to the indefinite detention of asylum seekers, including families and children who are already in distress and under vulnerable conditions.

“This policy shift takes us at a dangerous path and one that is in complete violation of Australia’s obligations under international law in particular the Convention on the Rights of the Child. We have seen hundreds of people in prolonged detention suffering from poor mental health. Indefinite detention has dire consequences for a child’s physical and mental wellbeing. While in detention, children see attempted suicides, self-harm and abuse”, said Dr Moyes.

According to Australian Human Rights Commission President, Cathy Branson QC, detainees cannot get adequate access to crucial support services such as legal advice, health and mental health care, and religious support, and that staff and detainees are already under significant strain.

Ms Branson said, “We also hold particular concerns about the impact of this change on families with children and unaccompanied minors. There are already significant numbers of children in immigration detention on Christmas Island. The suspension in processing will mean that any new families or unaccompanied minors arriving could be subjected to prolonged periods in detention.”

Although Dr Moyes has acknowledged community concerns about the recent arrival of asylum seekers by boat, he has reminded both the Federal Government and the Opposition to take a more humane approach. He stated, “Family First supports a strong system of border protection. But it has to be a fair system that treats asylum seekers humanely.”

“Family First supports providing additional resources to ensure detention time are kept to an absolute minimum. Asylum seekers should then be transferred to low security facilities that are more like a home than a prison until their claims can be fully processed. We believe the claims assessment process should be reformed to ensure fast and fair processing of asylum seekers to promptly determine the substance of their claims for refugee status”, Dr Moyes concluded. END.

Morocco is situated at the top of the African continent close to Europe. It has both Atlantic and Mediterranean coastlines, and a rugged mountainous interior. Culturally it has a rich culture developed from Arab, Berber, European, and African influences.

The population of about 33 million is predominantly a mixture of Arab and Berber. While Arabic is the official language and over 99% of the population is Sunni Muslim, the remaining 1% are Christian or Jewish. There are an estimated 25,000 foreign Christians living in Morocco including Catholic, Russian Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, French Protestant and Anglican Church members, with Catholics being the most numerous.

In the past there has been little obvious persecution of Christians by the government. However, things have recently changed. It has been reported that since early March this year the government has been campaigning against the Christians in Morocco. One instance was by the expelling of about 45 expatriate Christians, or not allowing them to return from abroad. This was not directed at any particular ethnic group or nationality, as it included Americans, Europeans, New Zealanders, Africans and Asians.

They were apparently expelled for ‘proselytising’, which is in violation of Moroccan law. While all of them admitted to having conversations about religion with Moroccans, they denied they were guilty of proselytism as defined by the Moroccan Penal Code Article 220 which cites “the use of seduction” to convert Muslims to another religion. None who have been expelled have been charged before a court nor been given any access to legal counsel. They were simply escorted to the border and expelled. But according to Moroccan law if someone has had legal residency for more than 10 years he or she cannot be expelled without a court order.

According to witnesses in Morocco, many of those expelled were from the “Village of Hope”, an orphanage that opened 11 years ago housing more than 30 Moroccan children in a family setting. The orphanage had a strict policy of not proselytising. Every staff member and every visitor had to sign a pledge ‘not to defame the king of Morocco, not to defame the religion of Islam and not to engage in proselytism’. It was known clearly to the government that Christians would run the orphanage when it was issued all the required legal papers.

Large numbers of local people from the village came to the orphanage to protest the expulsions of the foreign staff. Fearing that local villagers could be harmed if things got out of control the staff decided to obey the expulsion order. Other sources state that in the same week the government started a campaign against other Moroccan Christians with people being called in for questioning all over the country and being detained for up to 24 hours. One church leader said the pressure on the indigenous Moroccan church had not been this great in the last 25 years, and could offer no reason for it happening now.

Please note that the Moroccan church has specifically asked not be mentioned in any appeals made to the Moroccan authorities, but they are in dire need of our awareness of their plight and our ongoing prayers for Christians in Morocco and all Islamic countries to have the freedom to practice their religion, to be treated as full citizens under the law and to live in peace with their neighbours.

The Australian Religious Response to Climate Change is holding an inaugural Eco-Awards Dinner on 5th June 2010, World Environment Day, to formally recognise and promote environmental achievements within faith communities.

The ARRCC is a multi-faith network of people from various parts of Australia, established in November 2008, with the purpose to help galvanise religious responses to climate change. Its principal activities are raising awareness about climate change in faith communities and empowering practical action. Energised by spirituality, the ARRCC network has a sense of responsibility to care for the Earth and to serve the vulnerable. This focus includes both being agents of change in faith communities and bringing faith-based perspectives to the broader climate movement.

Your support for this Eco-Awards Dinner will contribute to the recognition of achievements and the encouragement of others to take up the challenge of climate change. The dinner will be formal in nature and include attendees of many Australian faiths including Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Jewish and Christian. This event is an opportunity for faiths to celebrate diversity of our contributions on these pressing issues that affect every person on Earth. For more information about the Eco-Awards Dinner, visit www.arrcc.org.au

Parents are right to be concerned over the future of scripture classes being taught in NSW public schools. The NSW Government is conducting a trial of non-Christian, non-religious ethics classes as an alternative to scripture classes.

Ethics is the study of how we behave, how we develop our personal morality, the basis of judgements we make on right and wrong, and our understanding of justice and virtue in the context of how we live. Ethics is fundamental to every major religion and every sacred scripture.

I majored in philosophy in University including honours in Ethics. I have taught ethics to undergraduate students at Wesley Institute, taught graduate students at Emmanuel School of Religion in Tennessee as Adjunct Professor for the past 22 years, and lived the ethics I have taught.

These ethics are based on the Christian scriptures. The NSW Government is proposing teaching children right from wrong, how to behave, and justice and virtue without any reference to the Christian ethics. What will be the basis of this behaviour without any given norms as found in scripture? Which of the Ten Commandments do parents not want their children to follow?

And who will be the teachers of these ethical standards? In scripture classes children are taught the Christian standards by accredited Christian teachers. Parents know this even if their own ethical standards have been less than what they were taught.

The new curriculum is not based on scripture, does not refer to religious teaching of good and bad, right and wrong, and will be given by unknown people in what they are calling a “values-free” environment.

This is not a trial based on ethical standards. It is a secular humanist attempt to replace Christian values taught in scripture classes. We should be positive and affirm the place of scripture classes in schools to enable children to grow with Christian ethics, and that they should get an understanding of the Bible, the basis of so much of our shared language, literature, history, legal precepts, societal foundations and personal behaviour.

Please sign the Petition and forward it to me and I will present it to the Parliament. The Government, in an election year, will listen to the strong voice of the people.

Rev the Hon. Dr Gordon Moyes AC MLC