News for Prayer and Action

National Day of Thanksgiving (Australia) - 30th May 2009

It is a day for us to pause as a nation and say thank you to God and to each other for those many things we often take for granted but which really make our lives worth living.  Let us use this day to be a blessing to those who have been a blessing to us during the past year. -

Visit the NDOT website for the 2009 statements from the Governor General and Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition as well as a list of the people to be honoured and thanked.

Global Day of Prayer - 31st May 2009

Sex workers win apology from Salvation Army after threatening protest on Red Shield Appeal"

22/05 Live News |The Salvation Army has issued a public apology after a sex worker lobby group labelled one of the charity’s newspaper ads “discriminative”.
 
The Scarlet Alliance, which represents the interests of sex workers nationwide, took exception to an ad in today’s Daily Telegraph and threatened to issue a ‘red ban’ on the Red Shield Appeal which launched today.

"The very last thing we would want to do would be to distance ourselves from any person in need and so as a direct result we pilled the ad from our public media."

Sex workers storm Salvos appeal launch

22/05 Live News |As the Army band trumpeted, sex workers with placards and red umbrellas stormed the launch of its Red Shield Appeal in Sydney. The Australian sex workers association, the Scarlet Alliance, was protesting over the Salvos' ad in newspapers which drew attention to its rehabilitation efforts. The ad told the story of 'Rick', saying, "To get Rick out of prostitution, we had to resort to smuggling."

Scarlet Alliance president Elena Jeffreys said the Salvation Army had exploited the sex worker involved and was encouraging community discrimination against legal prostitution. "The Salvation Army has shamefully chosen to capitalise on stigma against sex workers in its advertising for their Shield doorknock," Ms Jeffreys, who was allowed to speak at the event, said before the apology was announced.

"This is a blatant use of the general community's unease and misinformation about the sex industry and will further stigmatise sex workers." Another member of the Scarlet Alliance, Kelly, said the Salvation Army failed to help sex workers when they needed help and 'Rick's story' was akin to kidnapping.

Addicts say abstinence sets them free

28/05 Miranda Devine, SMH Columnist | When it comes to drug prohibition, the biggest advocates are former addicts, if you can find any in NSW, where abstinence is a dirty word and the state requires its heroin users to be sedated on methadone for the rest of their lives.

Just ask addicts what they thought of the harm minimisation experiments of the 1990s, when police were instructed to turn a blind eye to drug use in Cabramatta, Australia's heroin capital.

"While it's so easily available its always a problem," says Reuben, 28, a former heroin and methadone addict who has been drug-free for four months. In the mid-1990s, he was smoking marijuana every day, when he and his friends started riding the train to Cabramatta to get heroin.

"I avoided it for a little while but it was so good, so pure, so easy to get. Police never told the dealers to back off. A 13, 14, 15-year-old kid doesn't know right from wrong.

"You use it because it's there and because the people around you use it."

Sam, a 30-year-old former heroin addict, is still angry when he talks about Cabramatta. "You couldn't ride on the train without people asking you 50 times [if you wanted to buy heroin]. Why did the government stop police from arresting [dealers]? There were no police whatsoever. It was a safe haven for heroin dealers. It isn't good for us … We need prohibition."

Paid Maternity leave?

11/05 Peter Stokes, Saltshakers |We at Salt Shakers always like to give credit where it is due, so congratulations must go to the Rudd government for their sleight of hand over Paid Maternity Leave.
The government gives 18 weeks paid leave ($9,774 - $543 x 18 weeks) with one hand and takes away $5,000 ('Baby Bonus) with the other. Thus they are really only giving 9 weeks paid leave. 

Those employees, of companies like BHP, who currently get employer-paid maternity leave + the baby bonus will also now lose out on the baby bonus.

On the other hand they should also be congratulated for giving stay at home mums more than working mums.
A full time parent will continue to get the 'Baby Bonus and the Family Tax Benefit Part B' which is estimated to be $12,000. 

There was a rumour that a paid maternity scheme would not be announced in this budget and the government received a lot of flak for that - so now they've announced a scheme that will not start until 2011.

Sex information for 2 year olds

04/05 Peter Stokes, Saltshakers | An updated children's book, 'Where Did I Really Come From?', first launched in 1992, now attempts to normalise having two lesbian mums, two homosexual dads, and getting pregnant using sperm donors.

Worse still, it is being pitched at kids from as young as two up to twelve and promoted on a NSW government web site.

Author Narelle Wickham defended the book saying, "It is just trying to normalise to children that there are many ways to conceive a child,"

A promoter of this book states, "The book includes simple age appropriate descriptions of sexual intercourse, donor insemination, In Vitro Fertilisation and Gamete Intra Fallopian Transfer, as well as pregnancy and birth.

Children's book features lesbian mums and sperm donors

04/05 Herald Sun | A BOOK that teaches children about lesbian mums getting pregnant using sperm donors is being pitched at kids as young as two. he controversial publication, Where Did I Really Come From?, also features a drawing of two gay men holding a baby, in a chapter about surrogacy.

The publisher's marketing spruiks the book, which includes in-depth descriptions of sexual intercourse, as suitable to be read to two-year-old children.

But angry family advocates claim the book targets children too young.

"It devalues the traditional family unit and at the very least desensitises us," Focus On The Family spokeswoman Deb Sorensen said.
In a chapter on assisted conception, the book tells children: "Sometimes, a woman really wants to have a baby but she doesn't want to have intercourse with a man.

"Some women want to bring up a baby by themselves, or with another woman, so the baby gets two mums.

"A woman may go to a doctor who will arrange to get some sperm for her, or a special man she knows may agree to give her some of his sperm."

Sex education book aimed at toddlers

04/05 Courier Mail | The controversial publication, Where Did I Really Come From?, also features a drawing of two gay men holding a baby in a chapter about surrogacy.

The publisher's marketing spruiks the book, which includes in-depth descriptions of sexual intercourse, as suitable to be read to two-year-olds.

But New South Wales Attorney-General John Hatzistergos has rejected reports the book is part of his office's Learn to Include program.

"There is no connection between the Attorney-General's office and the book 'Where Did I Really Come From'," Mr Hatzistergos said today.

"Nor is there any connection between the Attorney-General's Department and the book.

Judge James Barry rejects 'potential polygamy' of Muslim marriage

02/05 The Australian | THE Family Court has rejected the argument of a Muslim man who claimed his marriage was invalid because it was potentially polygamous. The man had argued before the court that his alleged marriage to a woman by an imam was invalid because it was potentially polygamous and therefore against Australian law.

However, the Family Court, sitting in Brisbane, has rejected the argument, ruling that the marriage was valid and that the wife's application for orders relating to their children and property should proceed.

Polygamy is illegal in Australia but Justice James Barry rejected the man's argument that the marriage was invalid because, as a Muslim, he could take other wives. Counsel for the wife argued there was no evidence in the case that there was an "underlying" law that characterised the marriage as polygamous. "I accept the force of these submissions," Justice Barry ruled in February, in the first of a number of rulings related to the dispute, which is yet to result in a final trial judgment.

Muslim matriarch Rabiah Hutchinson's suburban nightmare

02/05 Sally Neighbor, The Australian | THE Mudgee girl who became a surfie chick as a teen only to now be described by security agencies as the "matriarch" of radical Islam has spoken for the first time of her "nightmare" living under constant surveillance, branded a threat to national security and barred from travelling abroad.

Ms Hutchinson has spoken frankly for the first time about her 20 years on the frontlines of the global jihad movement, in a new book, The Mother of Mohammed. It began when she joined a student Islamic group involved in the resistance against then Indonesian president Suharto in the 1990s.

Through the student movement, she met cleric Abu Bakar Bashir, who later co-founded JI. She was employed as an English teacher at Bashir's Ngruki Islamic boarding school and became a close friend of his family. Bashir's wife Ecun remembers Ms Hutchinson well. "She was really enthusiastic, very highly motivated and energetic," she said. "And she was very direct. Rabiah will say anything. If she likes something, she says so. If she doesn't like it, she says so as well."

Ms Hutchinson became a mentor to younger women in the Islamist movement and a confidante of senior leaders such as Bashir's lieutenant Fihiruddin, also known as Abu Jibril. His brother, Irfan Awwas recalled: "Rabiah was very famous among young Muslims because she was very motivated."

In 1990, after divorcing her third husband, Indonesian-born Abdul Rahim Ayub, Ms Hutchinson travelled to northwest Pakistan with her six children to "join the jihad".

Islamist terrorism threat for at least a generation

01/05 WA Today | Islamist terrorism is likely to remain a direct threat to Australia for at least a generation, according to the white paper. The paper says Afghanistan will be "a potential source of ongoing instability in the region" and will require international help for at least a decade. It says of Australia's strategic interest in Afghanistan: "We cannot insulate ourselves from the consequences that would flow if Afghanistan were again to be abandoned to a brutal Taliban regime providing haven and support to terrorist groups."

The Bali attacks and the attack on the Australian embassy in Jakarta were perpetuated by people with links to the training grounds in Afghanistan. It says the terrorist danger in South-East Asia will probably diminish — but by no means disappear — because of the sustained counter-terrorism efforts of governments. But "there is no margin for complacency in our efforts to combat this threat".

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