While some in the media might like to believe otherwise, recent interventions in the industrial relations debate by senior figures from the Anglican, Catholic and Uniting churches are not unprecedented.
Compared with how religious leaders have acted in the past, the behaviour of various churchmen in expressing "concern" about the coalition's policies is positively mild. As yet priests haven't told their parishioners how to vote, as happened in the 1950s when the Democratic Labor Party split from the ALP. Nor have archbishops led anti-government protest marches, which was what occurred in the referenda campaigns on conscription during the First World War. There's nothing new about religion and politics mixing in Australia.
What is unprecedented is that on industrial relations reform the churches seem to have reversed their traditional role as guardian of the underprivileged. Rather than defending the poor, the low-skilled and long-term unemployed the ones with most to gain from liberalisation of the labour market some religious leaders seem intent on protecting the entrenched privileges of the union movement. When it comes to the ACTU the interests of its members come first, and reducing social disadvantage is a distant second.
Before religious leaders talk about the prosperous economy and about how there is no need for change, they should consider the facts. Behind our record low unemployment rate is the reality that Australia has a smaller proportion of those of working age than the United States, Britain or even New Zealand. There are up to 2 million Australians who want to work but are unemployed, or who would like to work more than they do.
The best way to get an individual out of poverty is to give them a job. But for as long as this country continues to have one of the highest minimum wages in the OECD many unemployed are condemned to a life of welfare dependency. Current minimum wage rates exacerbate poverty because there is no incentive for employers to hire someone who, for example, might have poor literacy skills or who has a disability.
If this is an industrial relations system that is working well, as is argued, then one wouldn't want to see a system that was broken.
When pronouncing on the ethics of employment law, churches could at the very least acknowledge there are complex public policy matters at stake which might not necessarily produce simple solutions.
Whether the social safety net should be provided through the industrial relations system or by tax transfers is an issue that doesn't easily lend itself to a "yes" or "no" answer. The extent to which religious authorities have lost their moral compass is revealed by the fact that while they present industrial relations as a clear black and white issue, some regard acts of terrorism as merely "morally ambiguous".
Those religious leaders who have criticised the coalition's policies have also failed to recognise that the attitudes in the Bible towards the regulation of personal labour are not clear-cut.
In the parable of the talents, Jesus talks of the rewards for those servants who work hard and take entrepreneurial risks. In contrast, the servant who did no work was "thrown into the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth". Of course the Bible can be used to support almost any political position, but in Australia often when the media presents a religious perspective on public policy it is usually one informed by a left-wing interpretation of Scripture.
Earlier this week, on ABC Radio, Treasurer Peter Costello perceptively noted that involvement in the political debate by religious leaders who had a left-wing orientation was welcomed by the media, but conservative religious commentators were condemned as "a danger to democracy as we know it".
The ABC in particular has become obsessed with the rise of the "religious right", while ignoring the dominance of the "religious left" in the public debate. The Treasurer was absolutely correct when he defended the freedom of religious leaders to comment on government policy. Importantly, he also added that "just because [a claim] is made by an Anglican archbishop doesn't mean it is right".
The coalition's industrial relations policy deserves to be debated on its merits. And religious leaders repeating left-wing orthodoxy while relying on "scriptural authority" need to be treated with scepticism.
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