Responsibility goes off the Air

31/07 Melinda Tankard Reist | DON'T humiliate kids for radio ratings.

THE lie detector incident on 2Day FM involving a 14-year-old girl who revealed she had been raped at age 12 was not a case of a radio stunt going horribly wrong as some have put it. It was horribly wrong before it even started.

Austereo's Kyle Sandilands and Jackie O had planned to interrogate a child about sex and drugs on live radio. That was ethically questionable even before the shattering disclosure.

A vulnerable girl, at risk and deserving of protection, became a media plaything. Listening to the audio of the girl's live-to-air ordeal is like witnessing a forced confession.

Another cultural practice the social engineers expect you to tolerate, no, respect and celebrate

21/07 The Australian Conservative | A Muslim woman phoned in during Jon Faine’s legal advice segment on 774 ABC Melbourne today and asked what she could do about her husband who, she said, has married another woman in Pakistan and returned to Australia with his new wife.

The answer from the radio station’s regular legal expert David Whiting amounted to: not much, short of divorce.

No Australian law prevents this practice it seems.

Living together kills joy of marriage: study

National Marriage Day - August 2009

Volumes of research demonstrate beyond doubt the positive contribution that intact, stable marriages make to the wellbeing of children and society. Marriage is the key. Australia needs to invest in it now if it is to deliver the best opportunities for its children in the future.

The inaugural National Marriage Day celebration will highlight the unique benefits of marriage and seek to lay the foundations for a renewed culture of marriage within our nation

Celebrate Marriage Week - 13th - 19th September 2009

Marriage Week is a great time to reassess marriage. A time to see that it is more than a piece of paper, a word, or a contract. Marriage is a relational institution that makes two people one entity - a great team.

Our marriages are not private matters. Our children, gain emotional security and a myriad of benefits from our marriage, our love and union. Our marriages matter to our extended family. They matter to our employers. They matter to society. They are the fabric that holds families together

Ping-pong children to play a new game

14/07 SMH.com.au | CONTROVERSIAL changes requiring courts to consider shared child custody will be reviewed by the Federal Government. Critics of the changes say they are creating a generation of "ping-pong" children who have to shuttle between parents.

"High-conflict families should not have shared care because the children end up as ping-pong children going back and forth," the chairman of the Family Law Council, John Wade, said.

The Howard government introduced changes to the Family Law Act in 2006 which required the Family Court to consider shared care where it was deemed to be in the child's best interests.

ACMA FINDS NETWORK TEN GUILTY – BUT NO PENALTY

10/07 FVA | “Today I received a letter from Damien Power of the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA – see attachment),” said Mrs Ros Phillips, FamilyVoice Australia national research officer.  “Mr Power said ACMA has upheld my complaint against Network Ten, which breached the TV Code of Practice during two episodes of the sleazy Californication series last year.

“But there was no penalty – even though I had previously complained about a similar Code breach by the Ten network,” she said.

Mrs Phillips said many parents are concerned that TV stations have been pushing the Code boundaries at a time when more and more studies are showing the negative effects of scenes of explicit sex, violence and even cigarette smoking on teenage minds.

Real justice is not about custody

07/09 Toby Hall, SMH.com.au | Something is rotten with our juvenile justice systems. Youth detention centres are bursting at the seams, incarceration rates are at a four-year high and more than 1000 young people are locked up across Australia every night.

The NSW pattern is similar; the nearly 5700 admissions in 2007-08 were almost 1000 more than the previous year. Overcrowding is so common that teenagers reportedly sleep in detention centre visiting rooms. Indigenous young people account for more than 56 per cent of juvenile detainees in NSW. We have a problem on our hands, and it appears the NSW Government knows it too.

The fact the Government classified a report on the state's juvenile justice network as "cabinet-in-confidence" for the first time in 20 years speaks volumes about the health of the system. That the report was finally released was cold comfort; that it shows rising numbers of young people in detention for minor breaches of bail, and longer gaps between incarceration and court appearances, indicts our state's approach to youth justice.

Putting young offenders in custody is not only expensive but ineffective. More than half of those released reoffend.

Coffee thrown at city bikie paramedic

06/07 The Daily Telegraph | PARAMEDICS trying to get to injured and sick people in crowded city streets are being abused and attacked by ignorant passers-by. The attacks - which paramedics said were occurring on a daily basis - have even included coffee being thrown in their faces.

... Paramedic Scott Webster told The Daily Telegraph violent reactions were increasingly getting worse. "I don't know what it is about society but they just don't respect emergency services," he said.

... Rapid response bikes are only used for life-threatening cases and also slash response times. They are ideal for the clogged roads especially in peak hour. "We go to life-threatening jobs like shootings, stabbings and heart attacks," Mr Webster said. "Just one minute could mean the difference between life and death.

Stats hide mother of all guilt trips

Terror plot accused sold drugs, court hears

12/06 Larissa Cummings, The Daily Telegraph | FIRST it was parties at Bondi, now drug deals in Kings Cross have been drawn into the trial of five men accused of plotting a terrorist attack in Sydney. On his third day of evidence, Abdul Rakib Hasan told the Supreme Court his ex-business partner and one of four alleged co-conspirators Omar Baladjam sold drugs at Kings Cross before he was a devout Muslim.

Hasan, 39, said he met Baladjam in a prayer hall at Lakemba where they discussed opening a car battery repair business. He said Baladjam confided he used to work at a Kings Cross hotel and sold steroids but turned his life around to devote himself to raising money for Islamic charities.

Training tomorrow's leaders

There is a great need in this nation to assist those students and recent graduates who demonstrate a high potential to become influential leaders for Christ across strategic areas of our nation including politics, law, media, science, education, arts and philosophy.

The Compass program, an eight-day course in Christian worldview, aims to address this need.

For more information and to register interest for 2009, please go to www.compass.org.au .

Lyle Shelton
National Chief of Staff , Australian Christian Lobby