pathways, DECEMBER 2007
An open letter
The Honourable Kevin Rudd MHR
Prime Minister
Parliament House
Canberra ACT 2600
5 December, 2007
Dear Mr Rudd,
As President of Catholic Religious Australia I congratulate you on your election as Prime Minister, and express some of our hopes for a new government. Catholic Religious Australia represents some 8,000 Australian members of Religious Congregations at work both in Australia and internationally, in many cases with marginalised people.
We hope that in leading Australia you will speak to what is good and just in people's hearts.
The changes which the Australian people want from you may bring uncertainty. But they also invite us to do better as a people and nation. We want you to address questions that stir uncomfortably beneath the preoccupation with economic prosperity and wealth creation. These questions touch the respect due to the human dignity of all Australians, and particularly of the most marginalised.
We look to the Federal Government to lead us to a more just relationship with Indigenous Australians.
We want to see formally recognised the unique place of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in this country. Beyond the necessary symbolic acts of recognition and an apology for past injustices, we hope for programs that will address the gap between Indigenous and non Indigenous Australians in life expectancy, access to health care, housing, education, and workforce participation.
Indigenous Australians hunger for this healing and reconciliation. Through your leadership we Australians will come to own it and give effect to it.
Although we understand why the Government intervened in the Northern Territory, we are gravely concerned about how it has intervened. Respect for the dignity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people entails acknowledging their right to make decisions that affect their own lives.
To ensure this respect, the Government must consult with and involve the communities. Catholic Religious who have long served indigenous communities offer you their assistance in this enterprise.
Religious Congregations in Australia have over many years accompanied and served those who have most recently arrived in Australia, especially asylum seekers, refugees, and humanitarian entrants.
We will be proud of an Australian government that respects the dignity of asylum seekers by receiving and processing them according to international humanitarian law. We long
to see a migration intake that acknowledges our needs for people with employable skills, but gives preference to those in greatest need.
We will cooperate generously with programs that welcome refugees and humanitarian entrants, and also offer our assistance in addressing the complex needs of new arrivals.
Our agencies are heavily committed to provide social services, health care and education. Our studies show that entrenched disadvantage is often geographically concentrated, so that particular communities score highly across the spectrum of indicators of disadvantage.
We hope to see policies that take into account the complexities of disadvantage, and which give appropriate weight to the responsibility of communities as well as of individuals. These policies will encourage initiative and enterprise while ensuring the basic needs for all.
We are delighted that your government has so swiftly moved to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, given the serious ecological crisis facing the planet. The earth is the patrimony of all people. Our own institutions will seek to host sustainable pilot projects for new technologies.
Since many of our congregations are international, we cherish the vision of a single human family. We appreciate the strength of our own democratic institutions which allow free and fair elections, and a peaceful transition of power. This contrasts with the struggling and fragile democracies or repressive regimes under which many people in our region live.
We long to live in an Australia that engages deeply with the rest of the world, and in particular with the peoples of the Asia-Pacific region.
We have long lived in communities that relate closely to those of other nations. So we want Foreign Aid and Diplomacy programs that give priority to peace making, that restore volunteer programs based in service and accompaniment and not simply in self interested national promotion, and that respect deeper aspects of human dignity as well as "poverty reduction".
We look forward to constructive dialogue with you and with representatives of your government on these matters, and on a range of other concerns held by the Religious in Australia.
Yours sincerely,
(signed) Mark Raper SJ AM
President, Catholic Religious Australia
Provincial of the Australian Jesuits
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