Uniting Church on industrial relations
The religion report covered the Uniting Church’s submission to the senate last week. They interviewed Dean Drayton who I think made a lot of sense and had some valuable comments.
Dean Drayton: There’s a sense in which I think the government has read the fear in the Australian society that we do have here, sort of an ideological commitment to giving the employer greater power in the interests of freeing up the economy. What our beef is: is if the government wants to go in that direction, then look at the situation for vulnerable workers, and don’t let them pay the price of the system being freed up. We in fact were asked by the government not just to talk about the difficulties, but to frame some particular amendments to the legislation. So we did that, and we’ve circulated those. What surprised me, when I spoke to the Senate Inquiry yesterday, is that the Liberal members of the Inquiry were more attacking why we were there, the right we had to be there, rather than addressing the amendments which I know the government is clearly aware of. These were not trying to deny that the legislation will eventually go through, but to at least modify it in the interests of the vulnerable – and there didn’t seem to be any interest at all in following that up with questioning.
David Rutledge: This idea that God is on the side of the poor and the vulnerable, which I guess is the theological basis of the church’s arguments here: why do you think the church is having such difficulty getting that message through to the government – which, as we keep hearing, is a government where Christian beliefs are all too often driving public policy?
Dean Drayton: Well, it does strike one as ironic. But I think that the sort of Christianity that seems to lie behind what the government is doing is a very individual sort of Christianity. The push to have individuals having workers’ agreements, Australian Workers’ Agreements, it’s a removal of people from collective activity to being the individual before the employer. And that’s a certain sort of Christianity, but it’s not the full story. The full story is that we’re also not only expected individually to come to salvation to discover that God is a forgiving and liberating person, but that God has a word for the whole society, and it’s that word to the whole society that I don’t find in the government articulated very clearly.
Posted: November 23rd, 2005 under Social Justice, The Institution.
Comments: 1
Comment from Sheena
Time: 28/11/2005, 9:14 am
Right on, Dave. It has been a mystery how this government can claim to be Christian and ignore the pointed comments in the letter of James – “true religion is this – to look after the widows and orphans and keep oneself from being corrupted by the world” (that may not be an exact quote). To me, that seems to indicate a social justice agenda, and to be foreign to the policy of economic rationalism which seems to be this government’s bottom line.