ACL compiles a daily media monitoring service of stories of interest to the Christian constituency relating to children, family, drugs and alcohol, marriage, human rights, religious freedom etc.



Visit the ACL’s website each day to see what’s of interest in the news. Please note that selection of the articles does not represent ACL endorsement of the content.



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Charities & NFP

For app creator Jeffrey Tobias, the giving just got easier

Cheryl Jones - The Australian

The Cancer Council NSW, the Smith Family and Legacy are among 350 charities that have signed up to an app that let's the public make donations from their smartphones and tablets. The numbers making donations through the GiveEasy app is growing as people warm to “digital fundraising”, an alternative to traditional methods based on mail and street collectors.

Children & Family

Is same-sex parenting better for kids? The new Australian study can’t tell us

Mark Regnerus - The Public Discourse

The Australian Study of Child Health in Same-Sex Families has been getting copious positive press coverage. Unfortunately, it has some serious methodological weaknesses—it studies only the lives and experiences of the LGBT elite.

Drugs & Alcohol

Washington becomes second US state to legalise sale of marijuana for recreational use

Ben Knight - ABC

People have queued for hours after the US state of Washington became the second in the country to allow the legal sale of marijuana for recreational use. America's biggest social experiment since Prohibition began six months ago when Colorado became the first US state to allow marijuana to be sold to anyone over the age of 21.

Human Rights

State Labor promises to override any changes to Racial Discrimination Act if it wins election

Josh Gordon - The Age

State-based anti-discrimination laws will be introduced to override any move by the Abbott government to water down the Racial Discrimination Act if Labor wins the November state election.

School naughty corner and disciplinary suspensions in schools may be human rights abuses, say South Australian academics Dr Anna Sullivan and Professor Bruce Johnson

Tim Williams - The Advertiser

The naughty corner and disciplinary suspensions in schools may be human rights abuses against children, according to South Australian academics who will present their concerns to a national summit on child behaviour.

Indigenous

Indigenous kids more at risk of death, injury and abuse: AIHW report

SBS

A new report has found Indigenous children are nearly eight times more likely than non-Indigenous children to be the subject of substantiated child abuse or neglect.

Aboriginal leaders reject call to halt English lessons

Justine Ferrari - The Australian 

A prominent literacy academic responsible for training English teachers has challenged the need for Aboriginal children in remote communities to learn English and the assumption that their reading and writing skills need fixing.

Marriage

Same sex marriage: Liberal-aligned students want free vote for MPs

Daniel Hurst - The Guardian 

A group of Liberal party-aligned university clubs has added its voice to calls for the legalisation of same-sex marriage, arguing government MPs should be granted a free vote on the issue.

Prostitution & Sex Trafficking

Sex-worker advocates fear bill would increase risks to safety

Josh Wingrove - The Globe and Mail

Canada’s proposed new prostitution law will make sex work more dangerous, critics warn, by banning certain advertising, exposing sex workers to criminal charges and driving the sex trade further underground. Bill C-36, tabled after the Supreme Court struck down Canada’s existing laws in part because they threatened the safety of sex workers, is designed to instead target clients by criminalizing the purchase of sex.

Refugees

Claims of Tamil persecution in Sri Lanka a myth, says Bob Carr

Jared Owens - The Australian

Labor's last foreign minister, Bob Carr, has ridiculed refugee advocates’ “urban mythology” about endemic persecution of Tamils in Sri Lanka, saying the previous government “couldn’t find a single case” of returned asylum-seekers being abused by authorities.

Other

Judge compares incest and paedophilia to past attitudes towards homosexuality, claiming they might not be taboo anymore

Louise Hall - SMH

A Sydney judge has compared incest and paedophilia to homosexuality, saying the community may no longer see sexual contact between siblings and between adults and children as “unnatural” or “taboo”.

Focus on jobless need, Anglicare tells Abbott

Judith Ireland - SMH

The Abbott government needs to focus on individuals and what is going on in their lives, rather than forcing them into intensive job searching, if it is to fix long-term unemployment, one of the country's biggest providers of community services says.