ON THE REGIONAL PATH
TO POLITICAL LIFE
Nurturing Justice 14 (2007)
Last week I proposed a strategy to avoid the mind-numbing antics that are evident in our current election campaign. We need to grow up. We need to avoid childish and immature behaviour that perpetually draws attention to ourselves and own self-interest. So, I suggested a provisional "think big" list of "public justice" issues which will still be with us over the next decade. The aim is to challenge ourselves to think again about the way we fulfil our calling as Christian citizens. What does Christian citizenship mean? I am assuming we have to find a modus operandi for the reform of Australian politics that avoids the all-to-evident weaknesses of our current consumer-oriented, poll-driven, tabloid electioneering. If a coherent Christian political vision is to be generated, it will only come from a comprehensive approach to which argues coherently and forcefully for specific policies which promote justice. It's about politics for justice and good governance rather than politics manipulated for self-interest. Let me list again the twelve "issues". (You will notice I have reworded No. 2.) They are:
1. Overcoming
Incoherent Political Conduct:
2. Reconciliation
as a Rediscovery of the Nation's Calling to Justice:
3. South
West Pacific and Regional Relations to the North and West:
4. International
Relations:
5. Promoting
an Economy of Restraint, Care and Enough:
6. Climate
Change and Environmental Care:
7. Commerce,
Industry and Trade Unionism:
8. Issues
of "Body Politics", Marriage and Family:
9. Public
Morality and the Reform of Mass Media:
10. Health, Social Welfare and Education:
11. Electoral Reform, Proportional
Representation:
12. Local Government and Australia's
Constitution:
This week we comment briefly on No. 3. The next edition will be concerned with some thoughts about how we can understand the path of international justice (No.4).
3. South West Pacific and Regional Relations to the North and West:
This week, as the Australian media tells us about Australian successes at the World Athletics Championships in Osaka, the XIIIth South Pacific Games are being held in Samoa. Take a few minutes to surf the web-site http://www.samoa2007.ws. Note that, for instance, cricket is alive and well in the South Pacific. Note also that the site tells us that "Wallis et Futuna va participer pour la première fois à des compétitions de voile à l’occasion des Jeux du Pacifique Sud 2007." "Who is 'Wallis et Futuna'?" "Why is the report in French?" This is our region. Can we deny that we should be more aware of what is happening here, in our South West Pacific neighbourhood? Can we deny that we should be more aware of who is living next-door and the games they play?
Every so often I have the chance to speak to young people who have done the "travel overseas" thing. Some return with a lament - Australia seems so insular, they say. Australia is a country obsessed with its own self-interest. These young people return to discover their growing sense of embarrassment about their own country, about the way we have misunderstood our place in the world. They may be right. But it is worthwhile listening to the experience and emerging consciousness of such young people. It might aid our political education. They may help us see things about our nation's spiritual direction which we would prefer to ignore or leave in the "too-hard" basket.
Geographically, of course, Australia for most of its life, has been a long, long way from where the ancestors of the settlers lived. The descendents of the settlers, with the later migrants, are now the clear majority. But in the 200-plus years of settlement and the 30-plus years of increased Asian migration, we are still asking ourselves about Australia's place in the world, and the contribution that should be made in this region. No doubt, the colonial sense of being far away is still a big part of Australian self-understanding. And a profound historical irony opens up to many sensitive people, young and old alike. A serious injustice has been done by a nation tracing its "Christian heritage" to "settlement" while it has, at the same time, aided and abetted the profound spiritual unsettling of the indigenous peoples and leaving them feeling far away from their own ancestral lands even as they live on them.
Now read and ponder what one leading Tongan Christian, Lopeti Senituli, says in response to the efforts of Australian capital to patent the Tongan gene pool.
We really cannot afford to go back to the frontier days when it was open season on all things indigenous to the Pacific Islands including Australia. Instead we must build on the new foundations found in the Mabo and Wik decisions which the Australian High Court handed down in the early 1990s. That is the way forward. http://www.oikoumene.org/index.php?id=2623
This raises a most important question about the regional implications of the Australian Government's attitude to the land rights of indigenous people, but it not only about what goes on in Australia but about how policies of just respect (or unjust disrespect) have a way of making waves, ensuring their impact upon the region as a whole.
This sounds as if I am simply repeating my previous "big issue" - Reconciliation and Rediscovering a Nation's Calling for Justice - but as our Tongan brother reminds us, these issues cannot be separated. Australia, like all the nations of the world, is called to do justice in all of its life. Having said that, we cannot avoid the bequest of a prevailing Christian ethos among the island nations of the SWP, particularly in Polynesia and Melanesia. When we as Australia's Christians answer the call of God and seek justice within the Australian polity, then we are also called to join with our sisters and brothers among these island nations in the neighbourhood, who are likewise seeking for God's justice at home and abroad.
Bob Goudzwaard, an ecumenical economist, has noted: Paul once wrote that it is only together, with all the saints, that we can begin "to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ" and in knowing that this love surpasses our separate understandings (Ephesians 3:18-19). This is true with respect to the deep social problems of our time as well as for every area of human life as well.
If we are to participate in a Christian political movement within Australia then we cannot avoid participating in the political development of the wider South-West Pacific neighbourhood and being willing to serve in that by taking the lead from our SWP brothers and sisters. But it must be the way of service along the path of promoting public justice. To forget that is to forget God's call.
So let me suggest one question we can ask ourselves to clarify how we view ourselves as citizens of the SWP neighbourhood: what do we really know about our region? In what ways can we begin to show (ourselves) that we truly care for the South West Pacific? Why not put yourself on the mailing list for one of the pacific newspapers we can access on the web - the Solomon Star or the Fiji Daily Post? Let yourself be surprised at the Christian orientation of the editorials that remind readers of the Christian calling to do justice.
There is another issue that can help us focus upon the reality of our situation. It is population and the dispersion of population. Australia accounts for 55% of the population of the South West Pacific region which has roughly 45 million people. Is that surprising? (I suspect that many Australians will be amazed by these figures. I wonder why?) Indonesia has a population of 235 million and Malaysia has 27 million. We are a country of extremely large distances within our borders - an important facet of our national identity. Large distance gives the appearance of independence if not self-sufficiency. Most of our population is found in large cities, our two biggest cities account for almost 40% of our 20 million. But I have been suggesting that as well as thinking beyond our immediate urban neighbourhoods and thinking of the country as a whole, we also find a way of thinking about Australia in our region, to think about the regional neighbourhood in which we live. We will return to this next time as we explore International Relations as a focus for Christian political reflection.
Nurturing Justice
September 2007
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