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Faith, Leadership and Politics

In Canberra several hundred Christian leaders had the opportunity to hear and interact with the leaders of the two main political parties. Both Prime Minister John Howard and Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd were allowed to address the audience with a thirty minute address, followed by four or five questions each.

In Canberra several hundred Christian leaders had the opportunity to hear and interact with the leaders of the two main political parties. Both Prime Minister John Howard and Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd were allowed to address the audience with a thirty minute address, followed by four or five questions each.

The event was a first in Australia, with both leaders professing a Christian faith, and the event telecast to well over 700 churches around Australian. Perhaps as many as 100,000 people throughout the nation took part in the live event.

With Christians still making up a majority of Australians, and many becoming more politically aware and active, both parties have been keen to target the Christian vote.

This event was meant to showcase the faith of the leaders, and provide them with a chance to explain how their government would address concerns of the Christian community. Jim Wallace and his team from the Australian Christian Lobby are to be praised for all the hard work in making this event possible.

Assessment

So how does one evaluate the just-held forum? The short answer is that the two leaders both gave fairly safe, fairly predictable and fairly standard presentations. The talks, and the answers to the approved questions, revealed very little new information. Anyone following the two men over the years would not have really gleaned anything new here.

John Howard did announce a policy on protecting families from Internet dangers, but this had been hinted at previously. He did say a national ISP-level filtering scheme would be introduced, but on an opt-in level.

While any moves to protect children and families from Internet porn and other nasties are welcome, this could have been given a stronger direction, as in an opt-out plan. That is, it should apply to all, except for those who want to opt out of the filtering system.

Surprisingly, Mr Rudd said nothing about porn or the Net, even though in the past Labor had suggested an opt-out ISP-level filtering arrangement. Many believers are concerned about these sorts of issues, yet the Opposition Leader said nothing about them during the night.

Also, the talks and answers were all fairly safe and constrained. Nothing really controversial or risky was mentioned. This was in part because leaders in election mode tend to be quite careful, and partly because questioners were hand-picked by the organisers. Thus no unpredictable questions were allowed. And fair enough. But the result was some fairly standard political speeches and answers to questions.

In the speeches, familiar territory was traversed. One would have liked to ask more pointed and probing questions about these addresses. For example, Kevin Rudd expressed concern about the humanitarian crisis in Iraq today. One would have liked to ask him if he had been equally concerned about some very real humanitarian crises in Iraq under Saddam, or whether this was just a case of selective outrage.

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