Catholic Diocese of Broome

It is a wonderful experience to live in a democracy along with all that accompanies it, including freedom of movement, freedom of speech, freedom of religion and the freedom virtually to do anything you like subject, of course, to the rights of others. The right to vote and choose your government is something no citizen should take too lightly because with this right comes a serious responsibility. There is always a presumption that people will vote only after grave consideration of their choices but you have to concede that this is unlikely always to be the case. And while every system of government has its shortfalls, democracy still appears to be the best that humanity has yet devised if human dignity and human rights are to be in some manner preserved and the common good is to prevail.

In this country, after the last election, we are getting used to a new variation of a democratically elected government; the minority government. Unfortunately, the lead-up to the formation of this minority government was a painful time made all the worse by the antics of ‘The Three Amigos’ of Katter, Oakeshott and Windsor. Bathing in the dazzling lights of a frantic media they made a great deal of their new-found celebrity status. In the drawn out final act of the long-playing drama, Mr Oakeshott kept finding more excuses to blurt out yet another vapid paragraph leading up to his, by then, inevitable announcement as to which political party he would support. The democratic process is readily acknowledged not to be perfect but it is also, in the grandiloquent phrases of more than a few self-righteousness politicians, grossly tedious at times.

Sadly for this country many of the machinations of government are carried out as a matter of expediency rather than as a result of any ethical polity. Refugees and asylum seekers have been used by politicians as pawns to force particular political actions instead of extending a welcome into our homeland for these outcasts who are desperately in need of humanitarian assistance. Indigenous Australians were abandoned by both major parties during the election as apparently being undeserving of the kind of assistance that should be given in justice to rectify a horrid past marked by damaging and hostile relationships. Aboriginal people still suffer the lowest standards of health, housing and education and the highest rates of incarceration, self harm and interaction with the justice system. Pensioners and other people on low income remain largely ignored by successive governments, who nonetheless endorse the phenomenal incomes prevalent in business-Australia while treating the poor shabbily in our society, denying them a fair share of the wealth. Matters of abortion, euthanasia, embryo destruction for scientific experiments, drug abuse and prostitution are treated by our ‘pollies’ in such a manner that makes it difficult to take them seriously as custodians of moral worth or deserving of our vote.

As true believers in the value of democracy we must have faith in the system despite our opinions of some of the people representing us. We should remain ever hopeful that people who care and people of just principles will step up to the task of participating in good and honourable governance. We need to keep our ‘critical eye’ on the players and the process, and not hesitate to critique politicians and to pray for them. To critique them is to evoke transformation from without and to pray for them is to engender transformation from within. Then perhaps we will get the politicians we deserve.