Maintaining the Christmas spirit

Dear ,

Christmas is almost here, and even if you are not religious, it should hold more than the secular promise of a break from work, and time to unwind with family and friends.

We used to mark dates as BC, Before Christ and AD, Anno Domini, In the Year of our Lord, making the presumed date of the birth of Jesus the Christ the dividing point between the old world and the new. This made a lot of sense theologically, as being the difference between the old covenant, or testament, between God and man, and the new one, and with it came a new understanding of man’s relationship to God, as well as what God was, and man’s relationship to man.

Then it was decided that in a multi-faith, and in the West, increasingly secular, world, the religious denotation was inappropriate, and the convention of BCE, Before the Common Era, and CE, the Common Era, was adopted.

This changes very little. It still acknowledges that something very important happened around 1 AD, and it gives that something a primacy in how we frame the world, and that something is very much a liberal Western worldview.

I suspect most people miss it, even though it is laid out in plain sight once a year, but what we celebrate each year is an event which in its earliest tellings, and ongoing manifestion, was revolutionary, and subversive.

As my favourite lines from the Song of Mary (per the Book of Common Prayer) say:

He hath shewed strength with his arm: he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
He hath put down the mighty from their seat: and hath exalted the humble and meek.
He hath filled the hungry with good things: and the rich he hath sent empty away.

Whether we are Christian or not, we in the West are the heirs to this tradition, particularly those of us who are classical liberals or libertarians. It is embedded in our legal system, in our social system, in our notions of relations between countries, and how you run an economy.

At the heart of it is the belief that every single person, no matter who they are, or where they come from, has an inherent worth, irrespective of how rich, poor, smart, dumb, beautiful, ugly, amusing, boring and so on, they are.

Most of Western civilisation is an extension of that simple principle, and it manifests itself in concepts like freedom of speech, belief and association; the right to own property; the rule of law; and the right not to be unlawfully detained.

This is a radically different concept of personhood from that of any other religious tradition, except possibly the Jewish one, and any other civilisation. And it is the world view that the AIP, a secular organisation, exists to foster and support.

Unfortunately that world view is under challenge in today’s West, and we have seen the rise of identity politics and postmodernism, which privileges particular groups over other groups and individuals, and denies objective truth (another core concept from 1 AD), seeing truth as relative, and a function of power relations rather than external absolutes. In Australia, the Greens, the majority of the Labor Party, and some parts of the Liberal and National Parties, adhere to some form of identity politics and cultural relativism.

The worst thing about this Christmas is that after the next federal election, it appears that those forces will be in the ascendancy, and this is not a good thing for the country, our standard of living, the cohesion of our society, and the resilience and health of our citizens.

Nevertheless, you can be sure that we will be up for the fight. We don’t carry a brief for any group, we carry a brief for each of you in your magnificent individuality, and the society that you create spontaneously between you.

And speaking of fights and religion, the government responded earlier-on this month to the Religious Freedom Review conducted by Hon Philip Ruddock and a panel of experts. We made a submission to this review, and the government agreed with us on a number of points.

I will do a separate report, but the government agrees there should be legislation ensuring religious freedom, and proposes that blasphemy laws should be removed from the various state statute books, although it doesn’t appear they accept our contention that some of the “hate” speech laws which have been enacted are essentially anti-blasphemy laws.

They also agree with us that members of a religion should be able to express views in line with that religion without fear of penalty. However, issues such as whether religious institutions ought to be able to favour the hiring of employees who support their morals and ethics have been hand-balled to the Australian Law Reform Commission.

This issue has the feel of 18C about it to me: a timid government unwilling to stand-up for principles because it fears they are unfashionable, yet failing to win the support of the fashionable crowd, and losing the support of their own base. You can download the review from here, the government’s response from here, and our submission from here.

Early in the New Year we will be releasing the latest edition of our housing affordability index. Thanks to the efforts of our new intern, Nick Umashev, it will be much better than our first effort (download here). Our index is different from the others around in that we actually look at loan repayments, rather than just multiples of average earnings, or raw prices.

Looked at this way, which is the way house purchasers do, there is an affordability issue, but not one of the usual suspects, like negative gearing.

Labor has just released a new housing affordability policy. More on this in the New Year, but would you believe that after deciding the problem with high house prices is too many investors, they are now proposing to subsidise investors to build new dwellings? The solution to too many investors is more investors? A harder riddle than the one that pops out of your bonbon next Tuesday, I’ll bet.

And speaking of Christmas festivities and presents, our petition to the state government to retain the Cilento name on the Children’s Hospital has gained 7,602 signatures, all properly authenticated by Change.Org’s system. You might recall that the Queensland government’s dodgy public consultation had 18,000 signatures against, with most of them coming from a handful of IP addresses, including one in the minister’s office.

If you haven’t signed yet, please consider doing so before Christmas – make it your present to us. The survey is at https://www.change.org/p/queensland-health-minister-keep-lady-cilento-s-name-on-our-children-s-hospital.

And finally, a season’s best graphic posted on our Facebook page. When you treat people with dignity and respect, the “hungry and meek” are exalted, and the “poor filled with good things”.

Merry Christmas and a happy New Year. Look forward to seeing you at events next year, or just pop into our office at 50 Logan Road (ring me first though, just in case I’m out and about).

Appreciate all your support.

Regards,

Graham Young
Executive Director