As two Christians battle it out for the Lodge, religious leaders of all faiths are applying their own wedges on moral and ethical issues – with some calling for regular insider access to the winner.
Talk about troublesome priests. Here we are heading into an election and the Catholic Bishop of Parramatta is fuming about an "immoral" Howard government law he says risks breaking up families, drives workers’ conditions back 50 years and tries to make a god of the economy.
"There seems to be a real arrogance there," says Bishop Kevin Manning, who has landed in trouble with the government over the industrial relations debate before. John Howard dismissed his concerns in parliament and Tony Abbott, the devoutly Catholic health minister, has accused him of faulty logic.
But Manning has no intention of keeping quiet on WorkChoices. "I started work 50 years ago as a 14-year-old working in a grocery store. I had no rights whatsoever; you did exactly what the boss told you to do, you worked overtime [and] you got no pay for it. This bill is taking us right back to then. I think we have every right [to speak out] because the whole thing is immoral."
Industrial relations is just one issue that Australia’s religious leaders want debated in this election campaign, and they’re not planning to keep quiet. Climate change, Muslim migration, same-sex relations, foreign aid, Aboriginal reconciliation and housing affordability – the priorities depend on the church.
The big churches are sending detailed analyses of the issues to their clergy and organising meet-the-candidate sessions in key seats, and the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) is asking the big parties to spell out their policies on issues from prayer in parliament to homelessness.
In interviews with The Bulletin, one concern is high on the big churches’ list: Howard’s proudest achievement, a more flexible and productive economy, has come at the cost of family and community relationships. Despite strong employment and wage growth, the work-life balance is bothering the bishops.
Like Manning, the Anglican Primate and Archbishop of Brisbane, Phillip Aspinall, has also earned a whack around the ears for his criticism of the original WorkChoices legislation. Treasurer Peter Costello publicly chided the archbishop, pointing out that a theology degree did not make him an IR expert.
Despite this year’s "fairness test", which requires compensation if penalty rates or overtime conditions are changed, Aspinall still thinks the law doesn’t do enough to protect workers. He also worries that in intervening in the Northern Territory, the government has "not really listened to the extent that they could to local people on the ground". In short, he’s unrepentant.
"I won’t be taking sides in the election," says Aspinall, who believes the key question is how well the poorest in society are being looked after. "But as policies are released, if there are real concerns about their fairness and justice for groups in the community, then I am prepared to express a view."
Aspinall’s more conservative colleague, the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, Dr Peter Jensen, worries about relationships in society, and says neither party has come to terms with the contest between economic liberalism and conservatism.
Without taking sides in the IR dispute, he worries about the decline of unions. "I can’t see that it’s good for the nation that working people fail to unite together in guarding their workplace conditions," he says. The decline in community relations is not the government’s fault, "but it has to help provide the right ethos. A government that simply says to us, ‘look, we’re doing better than ever financially or economically’, is not actually saying what Australians only want to hear".
Jensen argues that if the wealth comes at the expense of family time and relationships "there’s a huge movement around Australia of people who say that it’s not good policy, and they’re suffering from it".
Both sides have to address this. "I want to know why a social conservative would vote for either party."
Religious leaders speaking out on political issues isn’t new. What is different is that the churches believe the politicians are listening. There are a few reasons. For one thing, there’s a more organised religious lobby. There is also a contest. While Howard has increased his vote in the past decade among Christians, especially regular churchgoers, that is now being challenged by Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd, who’s brandishing his own Anglican faith.
And even if the mainstream churches are struggling to keep their flocks, an estimated two million people still attend church every week and four million at least once a month. Mostly they voted conservative in 2004. Professor John Warhurst, a political scientist at the Australian National University, says Rudd has been working to win them back. Partly, that means undoing the damage wrought by Mark Latham, who sought to reduce funding to elite religious schools and was dismissive of religion.
Are there votes in it? "I think there are some votes," Warhurst says. "It’s not a big group of voters, but they’re one of the groups who make a difference. If it could contribute a 1% swing, then it’s worth chasing for Rudd and worth defending for the Coalition."
As Warhurst points out, religion has been very much in the news. Think of 9/11’s message on religion’s power, the growth of Pentecostal Christian groups, the advent of Family First in the 2004 federal election and the shift to churches running privatised government job and counselling services.
There has also been debate over the entitlements of same-sex couples, and conscience votes on moral issues such as the abortion pill RU486 and embryonic stem cell research. On that one, the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, suggested that MPs risked consequences for their church life depending on how they voted.
So when retired army brigadier Jim Wallace, who heads the Canberra-based ACL, invited Rudd and Howard to address a forum of church leaders and answer questions, both were keen to appear.
In a first for Australian politics, both men explained how their faith affected their thinking, before being quizzed by Catholic, Anglican, Pentecostal and Evangelical leaders. Broadcast on the internet, the forum was watched by an estimated 100,000 people.
Howard told the church leaders that his faith was exemplified by the parables of the Good Samaritan and the Talents, stressing the importance of the individual and free enterprise. Rudd declared that his faith was "garden variety" and claimed a social justice approach in which he cared for his family, but also for "my community, my country, our common humanity and this great ecosystem called the Earth".
Howard even flagged a bigger and more influential role for the church. "I want to fully involve the churches in advising me and advising the government," he declared. Last year, in parliament, he didn’t seem so interested, saying of his IR policy: "If we are to have a sensible debate on the merits of this legislation, my advice to every person on this side of the house is: let’s leave out of the debate indications by the clergy to either side of the argument."
Times have changed. The government is now behind in the polls – and Rudd would appeal to many Christians, thinks Wallace. "Those who have as their priority the social justice issues would be very much relating to him. He certainly related to the Christian constituency better than any Labor leader in the recent past I can think of.
"But I think people shouldn’t underestimate the reservoir of loyalty that’s there in a large part of that constituency for the prime minister. People see him as holding Judaeo-Christian values. He’s very strong on traditional Australian values. And he responded well to concerns the Christian constituency had on socially conservative issues like the importance of marriage, the need to make it between a man and a woman, and pornography." The question for Rudd, he says, is "can he hold the cap on those in his party with libertarian views".
While this battleground is Christian values, the point is that they are not only moral issues like abortion or stem cell research or gay marriage. They also include climate change (we are stewards of God’s creation) and industrial relations (an alleged threat to community and family relationships). It’s a spectrum from political right to left.
In this fight, the Coalition claims to be more attuned to Christian values. Abbott has pointed out that more Christians voted for them at the last election. An ANU study showed almost 50% of Catholics – the largest Christian group and traditionally Labor supporters – voted for the Coalition and 40% for Labor. Sixty per cent of Anglicans, the second-largest group and traditionally Coalition supporters, backed Howard, with a mere 30% voting Labor.
While Howard hasn’t worn his faith on his sleeve, he’s wooed a large spectrum of worshippers. He’s opened a giant Hillsong church in Sydney, transferred government job search and family relationship counselling to the mainstream churches, keenly backed Israel and introduced school chaplains. He’s also met the Exclusive Brethren, which Rudd dismisses as an extremist cult.
Perhaps sensing an opportunity, some key church leaders now tell The Bulletin they would like a more organised arrangement in their dealings with Canberra. They’d like the next government to host regular meetings between religious and political leaders, as former premier Peter Beattie had been doing in Queensland.
The interfaith group idea – it would also include Jews, Muslims and other religions – is also backed by the president of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, the Archbishop of Adelaide, Philip Wilson, and Hillsong pastor Brian Houston, president of the Assemblies of God (AOG).
It would be wrong to think there’s a common church position – some leaders say it’s a step in the wrong direction and that nobody would be able to agree on who should be on such a committee. There are also differences on the key political issues. Pell, for example, is dismissive of climate change. The 25 questions the ACL has sent to the main parties shows how varied the focus is. Many deal with personal morality: What will your party do to reduce abortions? Will you oppose de facto marriage status for homosexuals? Others are more to the left, on climate change, refugee policy and homelessness.
Bridging the range of issues is the big challenge for the Christian lobby, believes Rod Benson, a Baptist preacher and director of the Centre for Christian Ethics at Morling College in Sydney. "I think the ACL webcast was a turning point for Christians in Australia," he says. But Benson adds that the trick is to prevent the churches splitting as they have in the US along party political lines, with a Christian right focused on issues around sex and abortion and the Christian left on social justice issues like poverty. The ACL, which says it is funded 50-50 by the Pentecostals and the mainstream churches, has sought unity among the churches. "That’s certainly not easy to do," says Benson.
Not everyone agrees that the ACL is on a middle path. The Uniting Church decided against joining the forum with Howard and Rudd. The Reverend Elenie Poulos, director of the church’s social justice arm, says it didn’t want to see its message confused with the ACL’s.
"I think their priorities as I’ve been able to gauge them are really around issues such as abortion and family planning and marriage and same-sex relationships," she says. Some in her church would support that, but overall it believed the priorities were elsewhere. "Indigenous issues, climate change, human rights, peacemaking; they are the issues we think are most significant."
Poulos worries that "Christian values" are being hijacked by religious conservatives. She cannot understand why the Pentecostal groups – which grew by 25% in the decade to 2006 to about 220,000 worshippers – command so much political attention. (Those affiliated with the Uniting Church fell 15% in the same period to about 1.1 million.)
The Pentecostals, disparaged by some as happy-clappers, proclaim a popular message and a free enterprise philosophy that matches Howard’s. Its membership is much more active than that of most churches and they tend not to be critical of the prime minister.
Hillsong’s Houston has been sanguine about WorkChoices and, in official statements, has been more focused on personal morality issues. "While I think that social and moral issues such as recent debates on stem cells, civil unions and RU486 are not the only factors that determine how Christians vote, they clearly have an impact," he says.
But Houston adds that Christians have genuine concerns about the government’s response to social justice issues such as the dire conditions faced by some Aboriginal communities, as well as international aid.
Still, the focus on moral issues bothers Poulos. "What I’m most concerned about is the badging of Christian values as referring to a small bundle of issues around personal morality," she says. "And Christian values, when it’s used by a lot of journalists, becomes code for things like marriage and stem cell research. Whereas we regard basic Christian values being around peace and human dignity and healthy environments, which are far more core to the Christian faith than issues of personal morality."
She points accusingly to Fred Nile’s Christian Democratic Party’s arguing for a ban on Muslim immigration. "Policies like that grow fear and mistrust."
Like industrial relations, social cohesion is an issue about which some churches feel strongly. The ACL’s Wallace says he wouldn’t back a ban on Muslim immigration, but says the numbers should be debated. "We do need to be alert to the fact that extremist Islam doesn’t offer an ideology that’s compatible with democracy. It sees the church as being over the state." Wallace believes Australia does not need problems from accepting more Muslims "than would perhaps be sensible. We need to monitor it in terms of how successful we are in maintaining the social cohesion of Australia".
The Muslim community is not being wooed for its vote in this election, despite the 2006 census showing that it has grown by 70% to 340,000 in a decade. Nor are the Buddhists, who grew by 109% to about 420,000.
The Buddhists say they’re miffed by Howard’s failure to meet them. "Neither John Howard nor Kevin Rudd has visited a Buddhist temple or attended any functions," says Brian Ashen, president of the Federation of Australian Buddhist Councils.
Ikabel Patel, president of the Islamic Council of Australia, says Muslims are also worried about Australian values – they think the country has lost its "fair go" mentality. Disillusioned Muslims are more likely to consider voting Green or Democrat, he says.
"It seems now that suddenly the Judaeo-Christian leanings are being very, very strongly enshrined," he says. "I think its populist; it’s pandering to the majority." Rudd is the same as Howard. Patel says. "He’ll do anything – or not do anything – to make sure he doesn’t upset people." During this election campaign, he says, Australians should debate their role in the world. "We jumped very quickly on the bandwagon of invading countries. I’m not saying we’re not a generous country – we’re very generous – but I think we ought to make it our business to have a foreign presence in terms of aid, in terms of trying to sort out and resolve disruptions around the world, rather than be there marching with guns blazing."
The Jewish community is smaller at about 90,000, but influential. It is also important because in two seats, Wentworth in Sydney, held by Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull, and Melbourne Ports, held by Labor’s Michael Danby, Jewish voters could swing the result.
The burning issue among Jews tends to be the government’s support for Israel. Rabbi Jeremy Lawrence, of Sydney’s Great Synagogue, says Howard has been a stalwart and personal supporter of Israel and that has affected government policy and "certainly given great comfort to much of the community". But he says there’s no guarantee that a different Liberal leader would be as supportive, or that a Labor leader wouldn’t be. Lawrence does nominate climate change as the big issue he hopes voters will think about.
But it’s the Christians who dominate the religious field, even if the proportion of Australians describing themselves as such fell from 71% in 1996 to 64% last year. Never mind that most of them rarely sit on a pew, or that the moral authority of the big churches remains compromised from abuse scandals, they still add up to almost 13 million.
Gary Bouma, professor of sociology at Monash University, says there’s no question that religion is back on the agenda because the heyday of secularism is past. "[Secularism] didn’t provide an abiding concern for social justice, or deliver us from idiocy such as the Iraq War."
But Bouma says the churches are only one of many voices, and the family only one value base. "The churches are no longer major influences in society, they have a voice … but it’s not like they have a dominant voice. While WorkChoices is a problem for many, the churches are simply hooking on that bandwagon, not leading the cause." He says their concerns are different from those of workers "who are more worried about what’s going to happen to their job than the impact on family time".
ANU’s Warhurst thinks the churches still have some influence. "There is a wider group in the community who still prick up their ears at what the church leaders say." Politicians are certainly listening, and work-life balance will continue to be a issue.
Philip Wilson, Catholic Archbishop of Adelaide, believes there are broad social consequences. "The really big element of our lives is the relationships we have. If people find that in order to have the wellbeing they want they’ve got to work longer and longer hours, and they become alienated from their own families, we need to think about that."
Howard rejected Bishop Manning’s criticisms of WorkChoices in parliament last year, insisting there was no Catholic position on IR and urging MPs to ignore the clergy on the issue. Yet, eventually, he did introduce a fairness test.
Manning says Howard’s comments were "idiotic" and that the church does have an IR position, backed by the Pope. And while he welcomes the fairness test, he is sceptical of the motivation. "It’s because [they feel] they’re going to lose the election."
A lefty? Well, Manning is equally scathing of those MPs who voted in favour of stem cell research and the RU486 abortion pill. As for the issues the nation should be debating in the campaign, he’s adamant.
"I still think workplace relations is going to be a major focus. It’s hitting people right where they’re most vulnerable, people who are trying to raise families, buy a home, set up a decent standard of living. There’s a huge amount of discussion to take place to ensure there’s a real fairness there."