While he has tried to distance himself from the previous industrial reforms that were a vote loser for John Howard, this issue will not go away.

What was Abbott thinking when he pulled the ‘written promise’ stunt during a radio interview last week?

When you bring back to public memory a similar swifty that Mark Latham tried a few years ago you release all the wrong stenches of campaign gimmickry that become very hard to dissipate.

While Abbott is trying to neutralise a big electoral negative, the idea that a conservative party can simply ‘adjourn’ any serious industrial (and consequently economic) reform will disappoint many.

Abbott is by instinct a political street fighter, so waving the white flag, on such a significant issue, makes voters suspect.

Abbott promising never to resurrect Work Choices (or reform under a different name) is like KFC undertaking to remove chicken from the menu.

Then we have Gillard.

Our PM wants a ‘community forum’ to reach consensus about climate change, even though we have not one but two houses of parliament, namely the House of Representatives and the Senate, that the public pay millions of dollars a year for, to make such decisions!

Have I missed something?

What we will not see in this campaign is courageous leadership.

We will have, up to our eyeballs, risk-free, anaemic mutterings of future change ‘if only’ you will vote for us.

It is all about Labour trying to sneak in again for another 3 years and then pray like crazy they maintain some policy consistency with interest rates and unemployment in check.

For the Liberals it is all about reclaiming their rightful place in government (or so they think).

That however won’t be enough for a change of government. At least not this election.

Despite the disquiet over Rudd’s removal and the tardy handling of the mining tax, the Australian public don’t seem to want to change horses just yet.

I predict we will see Labour returned to power, but only just.

By Robert Apps

PS This post was put together before the leader’s debate last night. The debate was, consistent with the campaign so far, uneventful.

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If you can read this message drear

Forsooth you may assume

That some poor soul hath scribbled here

As he await his doom.

Rudd v Turnbull

It then quickly changed to

Rudd v Abbott

Labour has now changed its jockey and it will now be

Gillard v Abbott

Both parties have now seemed to settle on their leaders.

The election will be won by the party the electorate judges it mistrusts the least.

It will be a hard decision.

While historically Gillard comes from the Left of Labour and Abbott comes from the Right of the Liberals, they are, of necessity, trying to reclaim the middle ground.

Gillard is now harder on the boat people and Abbott wants to raise taxes to fund a more generous maternity leave scheme.

How the mighty are fallen!

You really have to wonder how Peter Costello is feeling in all of this.

When he retired from Parliament, Rudd was going to be PM (at least) through the Millennium.

Now Rudd will be reduced to handing out ‘how to vote’ cards in his Brisbane electorate.

Costello has missed his opportunity again.

The election is now anyone’s race given the goodwill that Labour has squandered in only its first term after so long a time in the wilderness.

While Abbott is never dull, he does have a tendency to recklessness and whether he can hold it together for the next 5 weeks is anyone’s guess.

If Abbott can’t maintain discipline during this campaign the public will rightfully wonder if he can handle the Prime Ministership.

What are we to make of all of this?

The Bible clearly states that God raises up and brings our leaders down. This has happened with increased frequency lately!

Man gets to choose but God has the casting vote.

Democracies also reflect the character of its electors.

We have had superficial changes of leadership because we as a society are shallow and prone to the immediate and attractive. While the major parties carried out these changes they were all motivated by their perceptions of the mood of the public.

Perhaps the days of the long reigns of our PM’s are over.

We keep changing our leaders whenever their feet of clay are exposed.

Robert Apps

These are questions Australians are asking every day. As followers of Jesus Christ, what should our attitude toward environmental matters be?

If we are going to answer the questions of our day, we need to have a Christian view of environmental protection. Let’s start by looking at the secular view.

Secular environmentalism

The secular environmental protection movement is primarily grounded on one key premise: Naturalism.

Naturalism is an exclusive commitment to natural causes in explaining the origins of the universe and man. Since the supernatural has been ruled out, the only mechanism for the development of all that is, is chance.

This means the Naturalist environmental activist must assume that the universe was not carefully designed. Instead, he must assume that all progress is predicated on a process of disasters—a process he must bring to a halt in order to survive.

The Evangelical response

Evangelicals have tended to respond to environmental activism in strong, reactionary terms. Environmental activists are often scorned and given derogatory labels such as “tree hugger” or “radical green.” While these labels can accurately be affixed to certain elements of the extreme fringe, it is important that Evangelicals respond to bad ideology, not react to it.

Developing a Christian view

What is the Christian approach to environmental protection?

There are four key tenets that need to be affirmed:

1) God designed the environment.

Jeremiah 10:12 tells us that “It is [God] who made the earth by his power, who established the world by his wisdom, and by his understanding stretched out the heavens.”

Our environment is not the fragile remains of a series of chaotic accidents. Rather, Christianity holds that our environment was carefully designed by a wise God.

This is why a Christian world-view tends to look at the environment as a robust, self-adjusting, self-healing, and resilient organism such as the human body rather than as a fragile, temperamental, and sensitive machine¹ such as a pendulum clock.

2) God owns the environment.

As the designer and creator of our environment, God has a right to what he made. “In his hand are the depths of the earth; the heights of the mountains are his also. The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land.”²

3) God is in control of the environment.

God made our environment, and he will destroy it. And until then, what he made is “stored up for fire.” It is “kept until the day of judgement.”³ Many in the environmental protection movement have predicted man made global catastrophe. In a sense, we could say that man will not get off that easy.

4) God has made us managers of the environment.

No sooner had God finished making our environment than he set mankind in place as its managers. He told us to fill it, to subdue it, to rule over it, and to have it for food.⁴

This is not a licence to abuse our environment. It is a command to manage it well so that it will continue to function as it should.

The implications

The four tenets outlined above place a heavy weight of responsibility on believers. They confirm that it is not acceptable for a Christian to shrug off environmental matters as unimportant.

On the other hand, these tenets also make it impossible for Christians to approach environmental issues in the same way others do.

A Christian view of environmental management mandates that believers not only abstain from environmental extremism, but also engage in proactive, practical management measures.

Some have packaged this as “creation care.” That works.

Perhaps it could be more diplomatically⁵ labelled “environmental management.” This focuses on objective elements that all members of society can agree on while allowing Evangelicals to speak to the issue proactively and from a biblical paradigm.

What steps should we take?

What steps should believers take? Perhaps the most pressing need is for a change of attitude among conservative Evangelicals in Australia. Opposition to proposed laws and regulations should be coupled with a solid commitment to our environmental management responsibilities. If we are not in favour of one method of environmental management (such as an emissions trading scheme), we should be willing to consider and support alternate methods.

Conclusion

As believers, we don’t face the future with anxiety as non-believers do. Instead, we have a confident hope because we know that all creation rests in the powerful and loving hands of the creator.

We rejoice to know that from him and through him and to him are all things.

To him be glory forever!

Amen.⁶

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^{[1] It is ironic that it is difficult to find anything more natural than a machine to illustrate the point since a machine inherently assumes a designer.}

^{[2] Psalm 95:4-5.}

^{[3] 2 Peter 3:7.}

^{[4] Genesis 1:28-29.}

^{[5] The term “creation care” frames the issue in a way that draws it into the creation/evolution debate. While this is a debate that needs to be had, merging the two debates could easily distract from the issue it is attempting to address, namely, environmental management.}

^{[6] Romans 11:36.}

I generally avoid politics in my posts—not because I don’t have anything to say, but because I have a bit too much to say, much of which is not worth saying.

But many Australians have been shocked by the events in Canberra last week. These events have opened up a good opportunity for us to learn about our political system, and that’s good.

It seems many Australians assumed that our political system was primarily a populist one in which the people elect a President Prime Minister. I suspect this came from a) the movies and b) the historically recent Western mentality that “the people” have a moral right to run the country.

How does our government work?

While we as a nation have been deeply influenced by the American experiment as a Constitutional Republic, we are in fact a Constitutional Monarchy and Parliamentary Democracy.

The chart below is taken from here and lays out the structure of our form of government.

Our Parliament operates under the authority of the Constitution Act (s. 1) and is made up of the the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the Crown.

Who is the Prime Minister?

The popular notion of an elected Prime Minister is mistaken. The Prime Minister isn’t even directly represented in the chart above. While many countries vest the executive power in a President, in Australia it is vested both in the Crown and in the Ministry.

1) The Crown consists of the reigning monarch of Great Britain (Queen Elizabeth II at the moment) through her appointed Governor-General.

2) The Ministry consists of the Prime Minister and his personally selected Ministers (collectively known as “the front bench”).

How does one become the Prime Minister?

If the Prime Minister is not elected by the people, how do we decide who will be the Prime Minister? And who do the people elect?

At election time, the people of Australia elect Members of Parliament (MPs) under s. 24 of the Constitution Act.¹ These MPs negotiate to form parties and alliances as they choose.

Usually the majority of this negotiation occurs before an election takes place so that the Australian people have a good idea of how things are likely to end up should they elect a particular combination of candidates. However, some of the negotiation routinely occurs after the election (such as forming coalitions, forming alliances with independent MPs, etc.).

Once the MPs have formed into parties, they then select their leaders (again, this is usually done long before the election, but does not need to be). Whichever party/coalition has enough elected members to form a government will then take power and whoever happens to be their leader at the time will become the Prime Minister and will select the Ministers and Cabinet to be appointed by the Crown.²

The response

It seems many Australians were taken off guard by last week’s events. One Christian minister said “[Rudd] was our Prime Minister and WAS elected by the Australian public into that role.” An American reporter described the events as a “coup [d'état].”

Such irresponsible statements are foolish and ill-informed.

A democratically elected group of MPs selected a new leader. They had every right to do so and, in fact, every responsibility to do so if they believed it was in the best interests of the nation.

Was it in the best interests of the nation?

Believe it or not, I’m going to avoid giving my opinions about this here (but no guarantee that I won’t break down and do it in the comments!).

I will clarify this though. Many cynics are suggesting that what has happened has been unhealthy because now a bunch of faceless faction leaders are in charge. This is simply not true.

The men who ousted Kevin Rudd are the same men who gave him the support he used to set up his government in the first place. In other words, they always had this power. For various reasons, they came to the conclusion that a new leader should be selected.

This system, far from being bad, is actually very good. Our Prime Minister is accountable not only to the people at election time, but also to the other elected Members every day.

In the United States, a president can run amok and the combined, bipartisan voice of both the Senate and the Congress is required before he can be removed. Here, accountability is real and sometimes—as Rudd discovered—swift.

Additionally, these “faceless” men are not unaccountable. They are men who are in turn accountable to their own party branches. They are men who, within the party, have garnered the respect and cooperation of the MPs we elected.

Conclusion

I am thankful to be part of a nation that has one of the strongest forms of government in the history of the world. It is a form of government that combines the stability of a monarchy, the protection of divided powers, the limitation of a Constitution, the leadership of a Prime Minister, the representation of a parliament, and the accountability of democracy.

Let us pray for those who walk the corridors of Parliament House as they seek to use their authority for the good governance of the nation.

It seems that the only group of people with less patience for Rudd than the electorate was his own party.

It still amazes me how quickly an elected Prime Minister was so quickly discarded in the space of a (relative) few hours.

The resentment that Rudd had nurtured against himself inside the ALP was so palpable that he barely had 20% support of his colleagues when he needed it most.

The ALP moved swifter than Mossad, the CIA and the former KGB in eliminating a perceived threat to its imminent electoral prospects.

I think Tony Abbott was right when he said that Rudd deserved the judgment of the electorate rather than to be hunted down at night and stabbed by his own.

No prime minister deserved such treatment,  as Abbott pointed out in parliament that afternoon.

I do want to give tribute and honour where it is due.

Rudd, facing annihilation at a party room ballot, went with dignity without forcing a vote, and in the interests of the unity of his party.

What I found particularly moving was Rudd’s presence on the back bench during Question Time in the House later that day with a new Prime Minister sitting at centre stage.

It took character and guts for Rudd to do that and I believe those kind of magnanimous overtures will not be soon forgotten.

It is easy for any of us to be critical of others, but when you see such people fall it is never pretty.

All of us have clay feet.

We all make mistakes, we all go back on our word.

It’s just the consequences sometimes that are so excruciating.

Rudd was, during his first couple of years in office, virtually Australia’s most popular Prime Minister of all time.

Public opinion however changes more frequently than a rainy day in Melbourne. Those who are loved today can be loathed tomorrow- and vice versa.

So be consumed with the truth that God loves you, despite your sins, limitations and failures. So much so that He spared not His only Son.

That reality will free you to do what he has called you to do, regardless of what others think about you.

PS I was a bit irritated when Rudd, during his farewell speech thanked ‘God’ and and after calling God ‘him’ then qualified it with ‘or her’. With Australia now getting its first female prime minister, can’t God still be masculine?

Messi is considered the natural successor to Diego Maradona, and if you have ever seen him play, you will know why.

Take a look at this YouTube comparison of both Maradona and Messi to show why he is so highly regarded (if you like soccer of course).

Messi wears the coveted Number 10 in Argentina’s World Cup team currently competing in South Africa.

I caught about 20 minutes of Argentina’s game against Korea on Thursday night.

In that short time I was captivated by the creativity, deft touch, and at times, the sheer audacity of Messi as he teased his opponents with his free flowing skills.

The soccer field is Messi’s natural habitat.

He is utterly at ease executing one piece of inspiring play after another.

Maradona is now national coach of Argentina. While this guy  has had as many scandals as Michael Jackson no one can doubt his God-given skills on the soccer field.

It is interesting that Maradona has given Messi almost free reign on the soccer field this World Cup. Messi has been freed from playing the conventional positions and is thus has the liberty to create opportunities for his team to score.

Of course you have to be a Messi to enjoy that kind of liberty. Only a handful of players have that kind of freedom. Their brilliance demands some extra space to express itself.

I was also impressed that Messi, despite his brilliance, was a team player.

Messi used his unusual abilities to further his team’s interests rather than simply trying to go for goal himself every time.

Let me glean a few good lessons from the mesmerising Messi:-

1. Exceptional individuals (whether in society or in the church) need to be allowed to thrive rather than constantly trying to be equalised with everyone else;
2. The body of Christ is made up of exceptional members (how could they not be since they are gifted by the Holy Spirit?) and each should be able to thrive doing what they do best for the benefit of the whole body;
3. The importance of the ‘team’. No matter how good the Messi’s and Maradona’s of this world are, they still need 10 other players on the field otherwise they have no hope of winning. Behind every Spurgeon, Wesley or Whitfield is a thousand unknown faithful believers serving behind the scenes. God uses and has a place for all of us.
4. Innovation (and dare I say change) always involves some risk. It is unavoidable so make sure you are really want to innovate or change before taking the plunge.

Much has been said about Rudd’s retreat from his proposed Emissions Trading Scheme and his dismantling of the national insulation roll out.

I remember the first 12 months of Rudd’s term of office. It seemed whatever he said or declared, the national press cried ‘Hosanna’.

Rudd possessed the youth that had eluded former PM John Howard for some time.

He claimed conservative economic credentials but also drive for the future, eg, ratify Kyoto and faster broadband (wouldn’t that be nice).

Rudd even promised to throw in an education revolution to boot.

Australians loved their new prime minister and wanted the affair to continue.

We just couldn’t get enough of our new man.

Rudd managed to outmanouvre two opposition leaders in Brendan Nelson and Malcolm Turnbull with unprecedented popularity polls that seemed to never end.

But then the ‘climate changed’ and for some reason or another more of the public didn’t want an ETS and so Rudd abandoned the policy.

It wasn’t the fact that Rudd made some compromises on policy that explains why he has dropped so low in the polls.

Every successful politician (no matter what party they represent) needs to compromise if they want more than 50% of the vote.

So this is not a particular weakness of any particular party or political philosophy. It is human nature.

No, it was the brazenness of Rudd’s u-turn that raised our collective ire.

Rudd had cast his ETS position in such absolute moral terms that his backflip seemed, well…… just plain immoral.

The voting public are happy to be wined, dined and even bribed (my 32 inch flat screen is getting too small so another stimulus payment would be welcome), but just don’t take us for complete fools!

Everyone saw the price Malcolm Turnbull paid for his commitment to an ETS, while Rudd wanted to divest himself of a potential vote loser without penalty.

For what it is worth, I think Rudd will probably survive the next election but it may be the last one he ever contests as Prime Minister.

It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the ALP, particularly by the way Rudd’s first term has been handled.

Like every elected official, Rudd and his team deserve and need our prayers.

While governing at the best of times must be notoriously difficult, returning prolonged public goodwill and support for flagrant policy back flips may well cost Rudd his legacy.

Treating others the way you would have them treat you works at home, school, work- even in national politics.

Jesus was right after all.

Warning: it’s got a bit of sarcasm… ok… a lot of sarcasm. If that’s the sort of thing that bothers you, please stop reading now. Otherwise, I trust it will be thought provoking and helpful.

CONSPIRACY THEORIES, PART I

You may have been duped by all those media reports on 9/11 about the “terrorist attacks” on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, but of course anyone with a brain knows that the US government organised the attacks in cooperation with Al-Qaeda.

Oh, and did you know that the world’s most powerful people are all part of an alien race of lizard people? Even Princess Diana said so (just before she was murdered)…

For some reason, conspiracy theories seem to breed in the human mind quicker than cockroaches in a city apartment. Of course, some conspiracy theories have been proven to be true and are widely acknowledged as such. And then there are lizard people.

A universal tendency

If conspiracy theories were limited to one religion, nationality, or socio-economic group, we might find some external reason for our attraction to these theories, but the facts are actually quite opposite.

Conspiracy theories seem to gain acceptance across the religious/non-religious spectrum; across educational barriers; across age ranges, political attitudes, and economic differences. In other words, it’s not just Christians, Anglo Saxons, poor, or right-wing people who are prone to conspiracy thinking. It’s a universal human trait.

Not only that, conspiracy thinking gains acceptance across all fields of study. There are conspiracy theories about history, theology, politics, science, technology, business, and just about every other area of human study and existence. In other words, the human tendency to create and believe conspiracy theories expresses itself in whatever we do. It’s universal.

More questions

But the fact that we humans have a universal problem which has universal expression doesn’t answer any questions. Actually, it raises more questions when we understand that humans are fundamentally depraved creatures.

Why are humans drawn to these theories? What drives this tendency toward conspiracy thinking? We’ll explore that at a future point. Right now, I just want to identify three traits that tend to characterise conspiracy theories.

Three traits of conspiracy theories

1) The first and key element in a conspiracy theory is that there tends to be repression of evidence.

You’ll hear a conspiracy theorist say things like “Of course we don’t have the documents. Why would the conspirators allow those to survive?” or “If you were part of a grand conspiracy, would you leave any evidence to incriminate you?”

These types of statements are just another way of saying “There is no proof. And that’s our proof!” Sounds stupid, doesn’t it? But this use of no evidence as evidence for a theory is modus operandi in conspiracy thinking.

2) Second, conspiracy thinking is generally based on limited and anecdotal testimony.

A quick look at any one of the many websites devoted to conspiracy theories will reveal pages and pages of detailed—though usually unprofessional—analysis of a few small pieces of evidence (a picture, a video clip, a sound clip, a written testimony, etc.). The only thing better than unprofessional analysis of the limited data is the analysis of a disenfranchised professional like “Dr. Conventional-Medicine-is-Evil” who is a “FULLY QUALIFIED MEDICAL DOCTOR” but who began to question the system after his daughter got the flu from another doctor’s child… blah blah blah.

At the end of the day, the person who gave the testimony is rarely available for elaboration (usually due to abduction by the responsible government agency, religious organisation, alien race, etc.) and often doesn’t even agree with the theory under discussion.

3) Finally, conspiracy thinking tends to view conspirators as extremely smart and extremely dumb at the same time (a corollary to this third rule is that those who believe conspiracy theories are extremely smart while of course those who are duped by the “official version” are extremely dumb).

This third characteristic is best illustrated by the government’s ability to keep their interactions with certain “unidentified flying objects” hidden from generations of citizens all the while being unable to keep said flying saucer from hovering in Granny Smith’s back yard long enough for her to snap a (grainy) photo.

Another illustration is a couple of NASA guys’ ability to con the whole world into believing they were on the moon while they were actually sipping Coke and telling jokes in a desert studio, all the while forgetting to check to see if the shadows were all going in the same direction.

Well, that’s a real (if somewhat satirised) picture of the characteristics of conspiracy theories. What drives humans to think this way? We’ll look at that next.

Acknowledge God’s role in your influence. King Nebuchadnezzar, a man who held the power of life and death in his hand, failed to acknowledge the Creator and he was reduced to a debilitating form of insanity.  If God has given you a position of influence – remember that He gave it to you.

Remember that people are watching. The Scriptures admonish us to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.  I’ve always thought that the serpent and the dove are strange bedfellows.  Christians with influence are prime targets for investigative journalism. We’ve had our fair share of leaders professing to have Christian values (or to be Christian) only to be found to be living a duplicitous life.

You can’t please everyone. The Scriptures give us Joseph and Daniel as two examples of God-honouring men with great influence.  Both men held high positions in pagan kingdoms.  Their faithful service was attacked – not because of demonstrable personal failure but by the actions of salacious and scheming individuals.  Let God be your defence.