The Australian Christian Lobby opposes a plan by Victorian upper house MP Fiona Patten to extend the reach of the Racial and Religious Tolerance Bill to gender identity and sexual orientation.

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This week’s ‘Political Spot’ features an interview with ACL Victorian Director Rob Ward about the recent ‘Make it Count Victoria’ event and advances achieved for the Christian constituency through it. There’s also a special interview with Chris van der Spek, a young graduate of the ACL-Compass program for training Christian leaders.



The ‘Political Spot’ is presented by the ACL, and broadcast on Canberra’s 1Way FM and some other Christian stations.



Please click here to download the September 28 edition of the ‘Political Spot’.

Both the Government and Opposition ruled out drug injecting rooms for Victoria during last Friday’s Make it Count leaders’ event held in the lead-up to the November 27 election.

Despite Premier John Brumby’s last minute withdrawal because of his father’s sudden illness (and subsequent passing), the event attended by 140 high-level Christian leaders and ACL Supporters was a resounding success.

Education Minister Bronwyn Pike, stepping in for Mr Brumby, and Opposition Leader Ted Baillieu both ruled out copying Sydney’s controversial Kings Cross heroin injecting room.

Church leaders questioned Ms Pike and Mr Baillieu on issues ranging from tackling Victoria’s problem gambling to examining why some late-term aborted babies survive and are left to die.

Mr Baillieu re-confirmed a previous commitment to reinstate freedoms to religion stripped by recent changes to Victoria’s equal opportunity laws.

ACL’s Victorian Director Rob Ward also spoke to the ABC’s Stateline program about why ACL engages politics by putting on events such as Make it Count Victoria.

Video footage of Friday’s Make it Count Victoria will soon be posted on the www.victoriavotes.org.au election website which is under construction.

Media Notice

In what is believed to be a Victorian first, the leaders of the State’s two major political parties have both agreed to address Christians and answer questions from Christian leaders at the same event this Friday night.

In the lead up to the November 27 election, Premier John Brumby and Opposition Leader Ted Baillieu will speak to a wide range of Christian leaders at ‘Make it Count Victoria’, with their addresses and answers to questions to be filmed and made available online next month to Christians throughout the State.

The Victorian office of the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) is hosting the non-denominational event at Queen’s Hall, Parliament House, from 7.30 pm on Friday September 24.

ACL Victorian Director Rob Ward said the staging of the event follows on from the successful Federal ‘Make it Count’ events with major political leaders held in August 2007 and June 2010. Similar events have also been held prior to the Tasmanian, Northern Territory, West Australian and ACT elections.

Mr Ward said that ‘Make it Count Victoria’ will help the leaders of Victoria’s two main political parties to better understand some of the main issues which are of concern to the Christian constituency, as well as assisting Christians to make an informed vote at the upcoming election.

TIME: 7.30 pm, Friday September 24

PLACE: Queen’s Hall, Parliament House, Melbourne

Contact: Glynis Quinlan on 0408 875 979 or Rob Ward on 0408 348 352

ALL MEDIA ARE WELCOME TO ATTEND

TO REGISTER TO ATTEND PLEASE CONTACT GLYNIS QUINLAN

The topic of euthanasia is under the spotlight in this week’s ‘Political Spot’, following Greens’ Leader Bob Brown’s latest efforts to push for legalised euthanasia. Is all human life intrinsically valuable or should its worth be measured according to subjective criteria, such as whether it is pain-free?

The program features an interview with ACL Chief of Staff Lyle Shelton on this topic and ISP filtering, before crossing to Victoria for an interview with ACL Victorian Director Rob Ward about an upcoming ‘Make it Count Victoria’ event with the Premier and Opposition Leader.

The ‘Political Spot’ is presented by the ACL, and broadcast on Canberra’s 1Way FM and some other Christian stations.

Please click here to download the September 21 edition of the ‘Political Spot’.

The Victorian Greens should take note of the resounding defeat of Victoria’s euthanasia bill in 2008 and stop continually trying to push for laws which would put at risk the lives of vulnerable sick and elderly people, the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) said today.

ACL Victorian Director Rob Ward said that in August 2008 the Physician Assisted Dying Bill 2008 was comprehensively rejected in the Victorian Upper House by 25 votes to 13.

“The Greens need to get past their anti-life agenda and recognise that the Victorian Parliament has already firmly decided against euthanasia and it is a waste of parliamentary time to keep revisiting the issue,” Mr Ward said.

“Greens MLC Colleen Hartland’s motion seeking a review of the Medical Treatment Act relating to end-of-life medical treatment and palliative care options is very obviously just a back-door attempt to push the euthanasia barrow.

“Her move to get the issue referred to the Victorian Law Reform Commission is a particular source of concern given the Commission’s very poor track record in dealing with contentious social issues such as abortion and same-sex surrogacy.

“This is not a matter for a parliamentary committee or the Commission. The Victorian Parliament has already spoken on this issue - voting in favour of valuing life and affirming the role of doctors in caring for the sick, not harming them.”

Mr Ward said that, as a society, we should be seeking to ease people’s pain through better palliative care, not promoting killing as an alternative to helping them.

“We should also continue to stand firm in rejecting legislation that would send dreadful messages to the sick and elderly about the worth of their lives and which would put people’s lives at risk.

“For example, in Holland where euthanasia has been legal for some years, research indicates that around 1,000 people are killed each year without their consent.”

Mr Ward said that in every Australian state where a parliamentary committee has closely examined euthanasia – normally at the bidding of the Greens - the committee has rejected it on account of the way in which the laws to protect life are made inconsistent and dangerously subjective.

“As a society we should be affirming the unique and intrinsic worth of all human beings, no matter what their physical, mental or emotional state might be.”

Media Contact: Rob Ward on 0408 348 352 or Glynis Quinlan on 0408 875 979.

[caption id="attachment_1135" align="alignright" width="300" caption="ACL's Victorian Director Rob Ward on Stateline"][/caption]

A homosexual youth group is seeking damages from a Christian campsite in Victoria because it did not wish to rent its facilities to a group that promoted homosexuality to young people.

The case could have wide-ranging ramifications for Christian schools, churches, charities and other organisations wishing to exercise religious freedom to follow Biblical teachings on sexuality.

ACL’s Victorian Director appeared on Stateline tonight defending religious freedom. Please click here to watch.

In Victoria, the DLP Member of the Upper House, Peter Kavanagh, has courageously challenged the status quo on abortion by calling upon a Parliamentary committee to inquire into the post-natal deaths of babies born alive in Victoria after failed abortions.

In Parliament recently Mr Kavanagh (pictured) called upon “the Family and Community Development Committee to inquire into, consider and report on the post-natal deaths of babies born alive in Victoria after failed abortions, with particular reference to the 2007 Annual Report of the Consultative Council on Obstetric and Paediatric Mortality and Morbidity”.

Mr Kavanagh noted that on 20 May 2010 the Herald Sun reported on the recently released 2007 annual report of the Consultative Council on Obstetric and Paediatric Mortality and Morbidity which showed that 54 out of 181 late term foetuses who were aborted for “abnormalities” (at around 26 to 28 weeks) survived late term abortions but all of them in the period studied died “post-natally”.

He further noted that babies born after 26 to 28 weeks of gestation have a very high chance of survival if given even minimal care, and that the death of every one of these babies in the period studied therefore suggests that they were neglected to death, if not deliberately killed.

Recent media reports suggest that the number of late-term abortions in Victoria have sky-rocketed since abortion was decriminalised in the State. ACL is concerned about how many more babies are being born alive after botched abortions and left to die – and denied even basic care.

You may recall that during the 2008 abortion debate in Victoria, Gianna Jessen, an abortion survivor, spoke at Queens Hall in Parliament House in an event organised by the Ad Hoc Interfaith Committee and supported by the ACL. She told how she was saved from certain death by a nurse who, in the absence of the doctor, called for an ambulance to revive her after she arrived alive after a botched abortion in a US abortion clinic.

It is galling to discover in 2010, through a government report, that in 2007 – even before the new ‘open-slather’ abortion laws were passed - 54 babies in Victoria survived late term abortions but were not given any chance at life. We commend Mr Kavanagh for pursuing this issue.

Rob Ward, 29 April 2010

Over the last year or so, the media has made much of an apparent rise in violent attacks directed at Indians living or studying in Victoria. The Indian media reacted strongly and the Premier and other members of the Victorian Government have understandably bent over backwards to address this issue.

One action taken was to amend the Sentencing Act 1991 which now requires courts to consider when sentencing whether the offence was motivated by hatred or prejudice against a group with common characteristics. This consideration, which effectively targets crime that is based on a person’s identity, is a specific response to perceptions about racially-motivated crime.

The ACL strongly condemns acts of violence, whether randomly directed against an individual or against someone based on their belonging to a group such as a racial, religious or other group. A crime is a crime and it should be dealt with by the law based on available evidence. We acknowledge that crime, especially violent crime directed at members of an identifiable group, can have a negative impact on the whole group, not just the individual who is directly attacked.

A further measure to address crime motivated by hatred in Victoria is an inquiry by the Department of Justice, and headed by The Hon Geoffrey Eames AM QC. ACL is making a submission to the inquiry. The basis of the Eames inquiry appears not only to be recent attacks on Indian students, but a contentious report by the ‘ALSO Foundation’ called ‘With Respect’ (see here), which may create divisions within the community and may be used to advance the homosexual agenda.

Our contention is that while we agree that identity-based hate crime is wrong and must be condemned, the ALSO report calls for new offences to be created which could challenge freedom of speech as well as making it a crime to even say something which might “offend” a member of the gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, transgender or intersex (GLBTI) community. This goes much further even than the discredited Racial & Religious Tolerance Act 2001 in terms of limiting religious freedom.

The Eames inquiry is due to report to the Attorney-General in September 2010. We will be watching closely and will keep you informed.

Canadian television journalist Victor Malarek has asked the questions about Australia’s sex trade our own journalists and politicians have failed to ask.

Speaking at a forum in Parliament House in Canberra this week, Malarek ridiculed the idea of legalising brothels saying prostitution is the most dangerous ‘profession’ on the planet.

Politicians who had bought the ‘happy hooker’ lie that it could be safe and dignified were misguided, he said, in a message that he has also taken to forums and meetings with MPs in New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia over the past week.

“We seem to think in our minds that men have the right to a young woman's body because they have money in their pocket.”

“What 18 year old dreams of giving up part of their income to their loving pimp?” he asks rhetorically.

Malarek admits to being swayed by the legalisation arguments when he first started investigating the global sex trade but the more he dug, the more he realised this was folly.

If prostitution was safe, why then do sex trade lobby groups like Australia’s Scarlet Alliance recommend a panic button for prostitutes, he asks.

The multi-award winning senior reporter for Canada’s influential CTV W-FIVE program has done what most Australian journalists and politicians have failed to do and that is question the claims of the legal brothel lobby.

His latest book, The Johns – Sex for Sale and the Men who Buy it, contains a chapter on the legalisation of brothels in which Australia’s failed experiments in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria feature heavily.

Entitled A Gift to the Johns, this chapter is scathing about the Scarlet Alliance which was influential in convincing Australian politicians to accept the legalisation of brothels.

Malarek says Sweden has the best prostitution laws where the law comes down hard on men who purchase sex, rather than on prostituted women.

Swedish police, he said, had eaves dropped on traffickers in young women and had heard them saying it was no longer any use trying to do business in Sweden.

Malarek was also scathing on the pornography industry describing porn as “an inducer sending men in to the night”.

On this Sunday night’s Open House program (from 8 pm on most major Christian radio stations), investigative journalist Malarek lifts the lid on the $20-billion-a-year sex trade, and proposes a radical way of bringing change (interview time around 9.20 pm Eastern Standard Time).

Related links: ACL's Glynis Quinlin interviews Victor Malarek