Baggas' Blog

Well the phoney election campaign is in full swing already. And tonight we saw what could be perhaps considered the first ‘debate’ of the year between the two leaders. Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott fronted a packed room in Canberra full of many of Australia’s key Christian leaders – ranging from Brian Houston of Hillsong, through Catholic Cardinal George Pell, and many other denominations – Baptists, Anglicans, Salvation Army, 7th Day Adventist, Assemblies of God, Coptic and Serbian Orthodox and many others. Was great to see Australian Christian leaders from such diverse backgrounds and beliefs united together under the one roof. And of course there were tens of thousands of us gathered in churches across the breadth of our nation watching via the webcast.

I won’t comment much on the politics or policies discussed, but I’ll give my impressions of how the 2 leaders came across.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd (Labor) was no surprise – he’s a smooth speaker although uninspiring and a little sleep inducing. Although this was a faith based forum and ostensibly Rudd was speaking to issues of faith, he didn’t really engage with the issues from a Christian or religious perspective. Rather he just used this as a brief hook into trumpeting his party’s policies and their particular version of recent political and economic history. We learnt nothing new about Kevin today, and nothing he said changed my opinion of him any further than it has already altered over the last 3 years.

Opposition leader Tony Abbott (Liberal) came into this (as he will the election proper) as a bit of a dark horse in my mind. I’ve never really seen him speak for any length of time, only in sound bites. The question will be if he can rise above the sound bites and convince the public of his qualities as a leader and as a person. Based on tonight, I think he needs to work on his oratory. His delivery was not great to start off with, a bit stilted, although he did get a lot better as he warmed up. I thought he engaged his specific audience of Christians a lot better than Rudd. He quoted scripture and dwelled more extensively on what it means to be a Christian in politics. This formed a much larger section of his speech in contrast to Rudd’s litany of policies (although he did get to that eventually). Abbott at least talked about his own Christian faith (including references to him as ‘The Mad Monk’) which Rudd failed to do. Abbott answered the questions in most cases just as clearly, and often more succinctly, than Rudd. However he failed to convince in his answer to the climate change question – I don’t think climate scepticism is going to win votes – he really needs to jettison this kind of equivocating language, even while he advocates a policy that may be less economically risky/or damaging.  But I said I wasn’t going to comment too much on the policies so I’ll leave it at that (just take the hint Tony – scepticism is not a vote winner).

I think Abbott had more to lose and gain from this evening. Rudd played it safe, showed us nothing new, and perhaps just further clarified people’s already formed (or forming) opinions of him. Abbott at this stage reminds me of one of the contestants in the early stages of Australian Idol – he’s got interesting potential, still seems a little awkward on the big stage and needs some coaching to hone his performance. He hit a few good notes and seemed to play to this specific audience better than the cut-n-paste speech of Rudd (change a few paragraphs and he could have made it to the athiests convention) but he also faltered at times. We’ll just have to wait and see how he goes in the final rounds and if he polishes his performance sufficiently to beat Rudd (or perhaps the wildcard contestant Julia Gillard – somehow I can’t even imagine her addressing a gathering like this?)

Very interesting weeks and months ahead in this country…

One disappointing note though – the questions did not give sufficient focus to global poverty. Really who cares about the Lord’s Prayer being said in Parliament or even the definition of marriage when billions of people are starving and dying from preventable diseases? I don’t want to say these issues aren’t important but surely they pale into insignificance compared to the level of suffering on a global scale? Poverty was tacked on to the end of the climate change question and neither candidate really addressed it (although Rudd at least did give foreign aid a brief mention in his speech). If only our developed world, our leaders, our churches, our people would wake up to this issue rather than blissfully ignoring it 99.9% of the time. Very sad that this wasn’t emphasized.

Ob1 posted a link to this video on his blog, and I agree it is a scary thing to watch…

Similar thing in yesterday’s local paper here in Rockingham… they have photos about a bunch of people they asked what they thought about Rudd’s proposed ETS – almost all didn’t have a clue, and another said she thought it would be good for “jobs and young people”

Personally if I was so ignorant about an issue I wouldn’t want my photo in the paper proclaiming my lack of knowledge.. I wonder what the paper’s editors are getting at here (because they do this every week – people showing how little they know on various issues) – are they purposely trying to demonstrate how ill-informed and indifferent our community is? Because if they are, I don’t think the message is getting through… The difference between the Palin video and Australia is that these people in the video are passionate about their ignorant opinions, whereas ignorant Aussies could care less… both are a bad thing, but I think the Palin fans are more scary…

If The World Could Vote

I really feel like the result of next week’s US election will have a profound effect not only on the USA but on the entire world. After watching Obama’s inspirational “infomercial” today on You Tube I am even more convinced of just how important this election is. Wish I had a chance to vote myself, but I’m afraid the closest I might get is the website above, which gives people from around the world a chance to vote, and then tallies the votes by country… and the results are overwhelming as to who the world’s choice is. Check it out, and cast your vote!

My only question is – what’s up with Macedonia? Perhaps next Wednesday John McCain may be considering retiring there…

I’ve seen noted before the eerie similarities between the current US presidential race and the final season of The West Wing (my all time favourite show). Today I discovered an interesting Australian blog about US politics, Kan Da Shan, who in this post, goes into some detail listing the similarities…

Always a sucker for a good quiz, Christianity Today have put up a Church & Politics Quiz. Many of the questions are very specifically geared at the USA and are fortunately issues we don’t seem to ever encounter here in Australia (like having national flags in the sanctuary and the notion of our nation as being somehow “chosen by God”) but it’s still very interesting and worth doing.

For the record my scores were :

• Part 1 Politically Engaged or Disengaged : 29 – You scored between 10 and 32, which indicates that you believe the church ought to be Politically Engaged
• Part 2 Chaplain or Prophet : 27 – You scored between 10 and 32, which indicates that you believe the church should take a prophetic posture toward the government.

This all puts me close to the centre of their grid, but within the “Quiet Critic” quadrant, which I suppose is fair enough. Not the most precise quiz of this sort I’ve ever seen but still worth a look. The Out of Ur blog is hosting a discussion of people’s results but there’s not much there as yet.

The Global Ambition of Rick Warren

this is a great article from Time about Saddleback megachurch pastor Rick Warren, author of the Purpose Driven Life. Warren cops a bit of flack on the Christian web, both from conservative dogmatic types and from some emerging types, for being a bit of a lightweight, too compromising, not conservative enough, not liberal enough etc etc – but perhaps this is part of his success. He has managed to present the gospel message in a way that connects with the average person in a real and meaningful way. Although a very smart guy, he keeps his message simple and direct so as not to overwhelm people.

So I’ve always kinda liked Warren, but his story gets better. Not content with having a massive church and being a best selling writer (who gives away most of his earnings though), Warren is now moving more into the political sphere. Fortunately he’s not just becoming yet another of the divisive, condemnatory Religious Right – rather he seeks a more conciliatory, unifying approach to Christian involvement in politics. He seems to see the role of the church as being a force for good, making positive changes in the world, rather than just a defense against bad.

He says he is more interested in questions that he feels are “uniting,” such as “poverty, HIV/AIDS, climate change and human rights”

Interesting article about Warren, his global PEACE plan for Christian mobilization, and his upcoming political forum where he will have both Obama and McCain together for one of the first times this campaign.

On the Trail, One Aide Looms Over Obama – NYTimes.com

For a young, single, athletic, educated guy, this would have to be one of the best jobs in the world. This story from the NYT looks at Reggie Love, 26 year old personal aide to Barack Obama. If you’re a West Wing fan think of Charlie and you’ll get a rough idea of this guy’s job – assistant, friend, training partner. Better yet, read the article.

And not only does he have a cool job but he’s got a pretty funky name – Reggie Love.  Speaking of cool names, another good one I heard last week is the Australian Indy car driver Will Power. I once worked with a doctor who’s surname was Power – now that’s a name you can get creative with. I think if it were me I’d name one son William and the other Max. Anyone else got any naming suggestions for the Power family??

One thing you could say about the Howard government is that they were generally positively disposed to single income families and stay at home mums. Unfortunately our new, left(ish) Labor government does not seem to share the same priorities – they are all about trying to encourage mothers to get back into the workforce as soon as possible by focussing on child care and tax structures for double income families. I don’t have a problem with mothers going back to work if they want or need to but I do believe that those mothers (or fathers) who desire to remain at home with their children during those early years should be encouraged and supported in that choice. Sadly it seems the philosophy Rudd government is quite different. [Howard's high earners to face cuts - National - theage.com.au]