JASON STEVENS should be playing for the NSW Blues against the Queensland Maroons at the Olympic Stadium tonight – he won’t be but tomorrow he has perhaps an even more important assignment at the 2004 Hillsong Conference at the Sydney SuperDome.
What is the Hillsong Conference you may well ask?
Jason Stevens is not your average rugby league player. He plays the game harder than most, has played around 10 test matches for Australia, and eight or nine Origin matches for NSW. He is one of the stars, playing at prop forward, in the Cronulla Sharks. He is not unknown to the judiciary, or referees……but that is the lot of most props!
But he is also the most active and open Christian in Australian sport today. Tomorrow he and around 40 other Christian league players will be star attractions at the 2004 Hillsong Conference – being attended by around 20,000, yes 20,000, Christians many of whom belong to the Hillsong Christian Church at Baulkham Hills and Waterloo in Sydney.
Surprisingly, the number of active Christians among top level rugby league players is on the rise. The number who openly profess their faith is growing as well.
Now I have given the Anglican and Catholic Churches a hammering on this site for behaving badly. They deserved it. I have heard some harsh things to say about rugby league players behaving badly as well. They deserved it too…………………but the work of prominent Christians in sport such as Jason Stevens ought to be acknowledged.
Tomorrow he will be joined at the Hillside Convention by Paul Osborne, the former Canberra Raiders star player and now ABC Radio league commentator, whose Christian commitment is well known in the nation’s capital.
Jason Stevens has his own website, on which he answers questions mainly from young fans. He spends a lot of his spare time working with vulnerable kids.
He has also written a book, “Worth the Wait – True Love and Why the Sex is Better”. It deals with his publicly professed commitment to abstaining from sex until he is married. Team mates, opponents, the media, and fans, constantly rib him about it, but he takes it all in his stride, and good luck to him.
Other prominent league players and personalities with a very public Christian commitment include Matt Rogers (now sadly lost to the Wallabies) who titled his autobiography, “On a Wing and a Prayer”, former Kangaroos, Rod Wishart and Brad Mackay, and one of the game’s all-time greats, Steve Mortimer, who recently spoke very movingly about the importance of his Christianity (he’s one of my mob, an Anglican) in dealing with the crisis at the Bulldogs leading to his resignation as CEO.
There are other current players who are active in their own churches, but none as open or as active as Jason Stevens. I know the AFL has a number of stars who are very active in promoting Christianity and we see Matt Hayden’s faith on display every time he scores a century.
In the secular society in which we live, and a society in which the mainstream churches have let so many people down, and have done so very badly, and all too often seem to be “disconnected” with the real world, Christian sportsmen and sportswomen doing good working the community deserve to be praised………….and so do Muslim sportsmen such as the Bulldogs star, Hazam El Mazri.
Indeed, if there is a Calathumpian sportsperson doing good works that deserves acknowledgement as well!
But isn’t it interesting that just about all the prominent sportspeople who are Christians, and prominent singers, actors etc, are almost all attracted to the evangelical or “happy clappy” churches?
Its no coincidence, of course, that these same churches are experiencing massive growth in numbers – up by 18 per cent according to the last census – at a time when just about all the mainstream churches (with the notable exception of the Catholic and Anglican Dioceses of Sydney).
It’s also no coincidence that the great majority of the 20,000 or so at the Hillside Convention are in the under 40 age group.
There are mainstream church communities working hard, and successfully, to connect with young Australians………………………but the reality is that the relevance of the mainstream churches in today’s society is diminishing.
Jason Stevens deserves to be encouraged for the work he does among young Australians, not just promoting his faith, but also in helping them to address and overcome the challenges of the age.
There are thousands of other young men and women – Christian and non Christian alike – doing the same.
But at a time when the image of rugby league has rightly taken a hammering, the Jason Stevens of our community deserve more recognition than they receive……even if they happen to play for the Blues.
I get very wary of Christians in politics these days. I know one or two who reek of hypocrisy! (Especially when their publicly trumpeted commitment to family life and values differs from their personal philandering).
But I think that even non-believers would encourage sportspeople like Jason Stevens who are happy to lend their standing to good causes, and to offer themselves as role models.
However, as an Anglican, it appals me that my Church, and the other mainstream churches, have a pathetic record in utilising them to rebuild the standing of the Church, and reverse the downward slide in its relevance.
Some of the attitudes of the evangelicals worry me……………but if they are helping our young people through the difficult and challenging world in which we live – and they are – then who am I to complain?
July 07, 2004 | Jeff Wall
Jason Stevens – not your average rugby league player.
July 05, 2004 | Graham
Housing Summit a bit flat
It appears that my warnings about the Housing Summit were more dire than they needed to have been. The only recommendation of any substance to come out of it was a call for a national Housing Ministry. This is really no bad thing.
Chair of the Summit, Professor Julian Disney, claimed on ABC Radio National that the Summit had been a great success and showed how unified the various participants were. In fact, I think the opposite is the case. If there had been unity, then some of the schemes being advanced would have got up – such as the Australian Housing Trust.
In fact, rather than unity, you had the welfare and housing lobbies pulling in opposite directions. One has to remember that ACOSS and Shelter are part of the Services First coalition, which wants better services not tax cuts. Yet the HIA wants to cut taxes, claiming that they make up 30% of the price of a new home. The two views aren’t compatible.
As it is it might not matter that much. Material presented to the conference by Professor Anne Harding showed that “housing stress” has actually declined since 1998. She also found that one-third of those suffering housing stress lived in NSW – presumably Sydney – and that it most affects renters between the ages of 30 and 39. Not only that, but it most predominantly affects sole parents. This supports my argument that the issues are not related to a long-term problem with housing stock, or necessarily related to housing at all. Single mothers are perhaps always going to be in housing stress, but maybe it cures itself once the mothers return to work.
In another presentation, US import Barry Zigas had an interesting graph which showed that in the US, housing was most affordable in the last 13 years in 2000, having been least affordable in the same period in 1994. His graphs appeared to show that the problem is cyclical. They also seemed to show that the interventions he was recommending were at a peak now, yet so was a lack of housing affordability. If this is the case, why should one assume that the prescriptions were fixing the problem at all?
There are some real solutions to the problem, and they are ones that a National Housing Ministry should address. None of them is politically easy. The first is to release more land to the market, with a more realistic pricing structure. There are real impediments in some jurisdictions to timely release of land because of the way that services for catchments are funded, not to mention planning laws that make it difficult to bring land to market. However, poor urban planning can also lead to expensive patterns of development which might keep the price of a block of land low while inflating the costs of occupancy because of the need for a car to travel long distances to work, shop and play.
Another solution is to radically ease up on the rate of immigration to Australia. The Howard government has kept very quiet about it – it doesn’t sit well with their tough on refugees policy – but they have been very generous in the number of migrants who are granted entry each year. The planning rate of the Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous affairs is over the highest rates of the Hawke-Keating era. More immigrants equals more buyers and renters equals upwards pressure on housing prices.
Yet another solution is to adopt policies which encourage us to have fewer children and form fewer households.
A federal ministry of housing could look at all these solutions, and others, more rationally than the states individually on their own, or housing summits. So my pessimism was misplaced. Despite the ominous press releases, the summit topped out at a sensible conclusion after all.
July 05, 2004 | Graham
An empire in the mind
Gary says that he and I are having an argument about the word “empire”. I’m not sure that either of us has directly used the word in debate against the other, but I take it as being encapsulated in the word “imperialism”.
Gary appears to think that the US is acting in Iraq to extend an empire. In saying this, he has taken the use of the word past “imperial”. I can have an “imperial” bearing, without being an emperor, because the word bears a symbolic meaning. But I cannot run an empire without having one. Some may use the word “empire” symbolically too, but in the current argument I think it makes the word not only useless, but unrepresentative of what it is that Gary is charging.
The US does not run an empire. Its government is restricted to the Union. It does exercise influence beyond the boundaries of that union. Most of what people refer to as US imperialism has to do with the export of US culture and of US political ideals. This cannot properly be described as Imperialism, even though it is a staple of much academic discussion that it is.
Empires have certain characteristics. They consist of a number of separate and distinct semi-autonomous units; and control is centralised and is exercised, if necessary, irrespective of the democratic wills of the people who inhabit the various units. They are a form of governance. There has to be some bilateral relationship between the governed and the governing. All the great empires exhibit these characteristics. Even that most modern of Empires, the British one, fulfilled these conditions in a light-handed way. The Roman Empire fulfilled it in a very heavy-handed way.
So-called US Imperialism lacks both the attributes of governance and force. Neither is it predominantly of the US. The US has no governance relationship with any countries outside the 50 states of the Union. It may have relations, but these are persuasive only, and fall into the category of alliance at best. Allies are not part of an empire. So, it fails the test of empire on both counts.
Insofar as the “imperialism” is to do with culture, it is always voluntarily accepted by the people whom it “subjects”. No-one has ever been compelled to watch Hollywood movies (apart from by their kids) – we like to watch them. Insofar as it has to do with political ideals it is not even uniquely US ideals. Henry Thoreau described the US as being an idea rather than a place. This far away from when the term was coined we lose the sense of the excitement with which the US was viewed as the “New World”. The US is an Enlightenment experiment. It is a real life test tube for the ideals of liberalism, and the ideas which spread from that experiment are not uniquely US ideals, but European ideals as well.
Gary and others refer to “US imperialism” because they want to stigmatise the ideas that have been tested and developed in US culture. They want them to be seen as spreading not because they are good in themselves, not because individuals voluntarily want to adopt them, but because they are a pernicious and aggressive growth on human society.
I dispute the use of the words “Imperial” or “Empire” in this context because using them makes it easy to misrepresent the values that the US stands for and their utility and rightness for all of us.
We live in a “post-colonial” age, which is a term that Marxists like Gary have been quick to use, but it is not one that they really accept. While they say the world is post-colonial, they expect major powers to still behave as though the world were colonial. Gary indulges in academic fundamentalism when he quotes all those texts at me. This is what T.E. Lawrence says, and here is what Rashid Khalid thinks. He might as well say that because this is what Alexander the Great did when he came to Mesopotamia, then that is what the US will do.
These histories can give us insights into what modern powers might do, but they cannot prescribe what they will do – that is absurdly deterministic historicism. Their events arise from the context at the time. That the US has handed governance to the Iraqis and that it is the Iraqis who are, for example, trying Saddam Hussein speaks for itself. The US didn’t come to conquer or to occupy. They are not colonising the country.
Gary’s imperial colonial view doesn’t comprehend that in today’s world, even if a country were given to imperialism, there would be no point in being imperialistic – a modern economy cannot be run on the command basis that an empire requires. We live in a network world. It is striking that it was three of the Anglo-Celtic countries which led this action, but they are not part of any sort of empire in the real sense of the world. They are, however, part of a network, where the nodes share common world views and will act in reaction to what the other nodes do.
Our network is based on our inheritance of a particular way of thinking about human beings and their relationship to each other and the state. These are ideas which have travelled first with the soldiers of the Greek and Roman Empires, and then the empires of the various colonialists of Europe, but while they have been with empire, they have not been of the substance of empire, anymore than the flea is of the substance of the dog.
If there is an “empire” here it is one of the mind, and it is one which has its own unique meaning of “empire” which cannot be used in the sense that Gary is using it because it is an empire based not on imposed governance structures, but on a common humanity.
July 05, 2004 | Jeff Wall
A meanness of spirit we can well do without.
THERE is a meanness of spirit in government – and particularly local level government – that is unhealthy and contrary to the Australian tradition.
I saw it again over the weekend in a “Sunday Mail” story on the move by councils to ban, or severely restrict, “memorials” placed at fatal road accident sites by the bereaved.
One of my earliest memories is the large red and white triangle painted on the road between Pittsworth and Toowoomba. When I enquired of my parents what it represented I was told it marked the spot where someone had been killed in a road accident.
Every time we went past the spot, my thoughts went back to when I was first told what the triangle represented. I guess I first noticed it when I was about four or five years old so we are talking about close to 50 years ago……….but I can remember it as if it was yesterday.
I subsequently discovered – when I was old enough to write to our local State MP Sir Alan Fletcher – that the triangle was placed on roads where there had been a fatality to warn motorists to drive carefully, but that the practice was discontinued in the late 1950’s.
It would be interesting to know why.
The memorials, either in the form of a cross, or small plaque, often with flowers, we now see on highways and even some urban roads, are placed by relatives to mark the spot where the life of their loved one was taken away.
But do they also have the effect of reminding passing drivers that the spot may be dangerous?
Let’s deal with the first purpose. If a parent, or a partner, or another close relative gains some comfort, or even closure, from the bereavement they have suffered by placing a memorial at the site, then why should authority interfere?
Interfere it does, in councils such as Calliope and Toowoomba, and interfere it intends to in other local authorities.
I have never lost a relative, let alone a close relative in a road accident, but I did endure the tragedy of a nephew dropping dead at school from a heart attack at the age of 12. I was asked to speak at the funeral – easily the toughest speech I have ever had to make or write, but I think it was one of my best because he, and his mother, deserved nothing less.
My sister and brother in law made a presentation to the school Corey attended – as a lasting memorial. That provided them with some comfort in their bereavement.
I was driving to Toowoomba one day – for a race meeting, I recall – when I noticed a young couple tending to a memorial on the Gatton bypass. I stopped and spoke with them. Their daughter had been killed at the spot in a car accident some time previously, and they certainly gained some comfort from the memorial cross, and regularly freshened flowers, that marked the site.
Provided the memorial is maintained properly, and not an obstruction, what is wrong with allowing relatives to mourn, and remember, loved ones in this way?
Is it not possible that the site of a number of such memorials on one stretch of road might register with motorists that careful driving is important?
Despite all the radar traps, speed guns, booze buses and the like – and improved roads – our road toll still remains too high. All too often the victims are young Australians.
I can only imagine how tragic the loss of a son or daughter in a road accident is, especially when the fatality takes the life of more than one family member.
Surely local government – the level of government supposed to be closest to the people – can have a heart and allow simple, maintained memorials to mark the site of a tragic loss?
Or have we become so heartless, so mean, that deaths on our roads are mere statistics?
I hope not!
July 03, 2004 | Unknown
Get Ye Home and Up the Duff: The Howard Government and Women
It has often been claimed that those who preceded John Howard and Associates in power were banished because they were distant from most Australians.
Although the alleged aloofness of Paul Keating’s Labor is sometimes argued to have been chiefly economic, their commitment to supporting the advancement of groups such as women has frequently, if paradoxically, been cited as evidence of exclusiveness.
Gary Johns, long ago the federal member for Petrie, championed this claim, hopefully under the influence of the intoxicating substances that accompany defeat, with the suggestion that Labor too readily heeded the opinions of, amongst others, “feminists” and the “disabled”.
Heavens knows, Australian blokes running the country shouldn’t be forced to listen to broads or the wheelchair-bound; think of what your mates would say if they saw you.
Unfortunately, with feminist issues deemed a “minority” concern, they returned to relative obscurity or vanished, and with defunding so have many of the organisations that advocated for them, whether as external bodies or internal units within the bureaucracy.
Currently conservatism rules with “no backchat young lady” as only sisters who agree are welcome. Despite the fact this is not unusual for an institution dominated by males; good results rarely emerge from “yes, John, whatever you say; three bags full, John”.
Dr Tahnya Barnett Donaghy of the University of South Australia has said, “this skews gender discourse within government, where only those (i.e. groups like Mission Australia) who are considered in line with government policy are listened to”.
Under Howard’s leadership, the inclusiveness that pays attention to women’s progress only when they’re headed to the maternity ward or the kitchen has been somewhat restored, and it better deliver sons and meat and three vegetables.
This is the Get Ye Home and up the Duff, Woman policy, with Minister for Health and Ageing Tony Abbott administering But Not Till Ye Be Wed or Ye Be a Wanton Wench.
At the time we’re getting the Government’s anti-domestic violence brochure this might be uncharitable, however, while mostly constructive, the booklet has a nuclear family bias that leaves the reader wondering where the Government thinks most women learn that abuse is acceptable and somehow their fault.
In any instance, financially independent women are surely in a better position to respond to violence at home, and, although by no means guaranteed, less likely to be victims because bullies prefer to pick on those who are vulnerable in some way. Mind you, petty tyrants are capable of fettering the free and eroding the confidence of the self-assured.
The $3000 baby payment will, with good reason, be appreciated by mums whose babies held out for the new financial year, however, it’s another instance of the Federal Government giving assistance to some women due to a certain behaviour; this time becoming mothers, but in different contexts being mothers and wives, but not wives and mothers who work outside the home, as the Family Tax Benefit (FTB) Part B and cuts to the child-care subsidy attest.
Even if Dr Sarah Maddison pointed out in The Courier-Mail on 2 July 2004 that amendments to FTB Part B “should mean fewer two-income families are penalised”, she also determined “the old-fashioned white-picket fence ideology is still firmly place”.
Such initiatives illustrate that the social engineers in Canberra are busy creating the kind of society they want, so they can turn around and say it’s the one the majority desire because of the way most of us are living. That is, for example, if working outside the home achieves little for mums financially fewer will and before long it can be heralded as the norm.
Of course, in the days when women sublimated their talents and ambitions for someone else’s expectations they got despondent, forgive my indulgence, not unlike the depressed and frustrated housewife in the Marianne Faithful song that’s on the compact disc playing while I write this article:
“Her husband, he’s off to work and the kids are off to school, and there are, oh, so many ways for her to spend the day. She could clean the house for hours or rearrange the flowers or run naked through the shady street screaming all the way”.
Women don’t often, literally at least, scamper around local roads without clothes on, but they do get motivated and, hopefully, politically aware and active. Another term of Howard, and then Costello, and feminism could fire up again, more resolute than ever.
Well, wishful thinking and slightly extravagant, but we’ll have to depend on it if the Coalition wins the next election.
Here’s a link to an article that also features in a slightly different version in the latest edition of Bust. Quite funny, a bit silly and stereotypical, but sometimes,alas, true.
July 02, 2004 | Graham
www.johnhowardlies.com – follow-up
Maybe they like the attention, or perhaps they are plain obstinate, or maybe even just being boof-headed, but the “team” behind www.johnhowardlies.com have struck back at my post with this letter to Crikey!.
It’s not surprising, given his Liberal Party credentials, that Graham Young would seek to defend (this morning’s sealed) the Prime Minister and excuse his lies as being “human” and “in public office”.
What a shocking concession. Graham misses the point entirely.
First, the entire reason for cataloguing the mistruths, lies and misrepresentation is that is not, and should not be, acceptable behaviour and even less acceptable for those in public office to lie. We are more than sick of the decline in the political discourse where misrepresentations, distortions and straight out lying is now all too familiar. Honesty has given way to “spin” which now appears to have made way for actual untruths and lies. The current Government have offended so much that it now is being passed off as almost expected and acceptable behaviour. Well we don’t think it is.
Second, Graham is a more than a little hypocritical to use Crikey, a site that regularly uses anonymous sources and has built its strong news breaking reputation through its anonymous (for how long?? – Ed) National Political Editor, Hillary Bray, to condemn our anonymous status simply as a means of promoting his own site and views.
We want the focus of the public debate to be on honesty and trust in public life. That is the issue. Who we are is not relevant. Afterall, the site simply catalogues in one place the statements of the Prime Minister and his Ministers.
The traditions of Westminster and Ministerial responsibility have all but disappeared. That we are standing up and saying enough is enough is important and the issue. Who we are is not.
To which I have responded:
We may not know the identity of the “team” at John Howard lies, but based on their response to my article we are beginning to know some things about them.
They are selectively honest. In my article I never once “defend” or “excuse” John Howard for any lies he may have made as they claim.
They are also hypocritical. Apparently it is significant to the worth of what I say that I have “Liberal Party credentials” but their own credentials have no bearing on the worth of what they say and can therefore be hidden.
Self-righteousness is another characteristic that comes to mind. According to them “the entire reason for cataloguing the mistruths, lies and misrepresentation is that is not, and should not be, acceptable behaviour and even less acceptable for those in public office to lie.” So, should we assume that this is just the first site, to be followed soon by www.marklathamlies.com, www.andrewbartlettlies.com and www.bobbrownlies.com? Or is such outrage selective?
They are the ones who miss the mark in their criticism of my “use” of Crikey to “promot[e]” my “own site and views”. Of course I send press releases out, just as others do. I assume the person who had me on a bulk email list and spammed me with the John Howard Lies URL did so as part of the “team’s” efforts to promote their own site – I don’t criticise them for that.
I have no control over what media outlets carry references to my site, but even if I did, I would have no problems allowing Crikey to publish just because Hillary Bray is anonymous. We know that Stephen Mayne stands behind whatever is published on his site and that he is prepared to lay his body and wallet on the line to defend it. Either that or retract and apologise. Crikey! is not anonymous!
What we don’t know is who stands behind www.johnhowardlies.com. If the “team” is serious about their dedication to “honesty and trust in public life”, then they will give us that detail. Otherwise we will be justified in viewing their efforts as being little more than the production of a hate site. If they had themselves been upfront and honest there wouldn’t have been a story.