The so-called Christian vote entered the election spotlight at the weekend with journalists asking questions about atheism, Catholic leaders and the ACL voting guide. Julia Gillard also appeared to court the Christian community, recording an interview directed at churches.

Sunday saw the distribution, through churches, of an ACL brochure outlining the party platforms of many issue of interest to the Christian community.

Archbishop Peter Jensen was interviewed by Seven news on a poll which asked a series of social and religious questions about the leaders. The news story, which aired on Friday, indicated that although only 9 percent of Australians would be troubled having a catholic as Prime Minister, almost one voter in four had difficulty with a Prime Minister who didn’t believe in God.

15 percent also would take issue with a Prime Minister in a de-facto relationship.

Archbishop Jensen told Seven News reporter Chris Maher he thought the Morgan poll indicated people were interested in deeper issue such as values.

“One of the disappointments about the present campaign is how trivial it sounds” the Archbishop said.

On Sunday, Dr Jensen gave a half hour interview to the ABC’s Sunday Profile program, questioned by host Monica Attard about the Prime Minister’s declaration of her non-belief “I don’t see how we can avoid it. It’s interesting she’s done it. Her predecessor did it. And if it hasn’t been done before it’s often because assumptions have been made. Although I remember Gough Whitlam for example described himself when asked about this as a “fellow traveller”, in the inimitable Gough Whitlam way. So it is relevant. It’s not the most relevant thing about a person but it is relevant.”

But the Archbishop was at pains to say he was in no way wanting to influence Christian voters and in fact there was no ‘correct’ christian vote “It is perfectly possible even across the range of options to vote from faith and to vote differently. You cannot say to a Christian in Australia I think you must vote for such and such a person. It’s a matter of balance. You will work out which way you want to go. There are certain things about the genius of the Liberal Party which are very attractive to Christianity, there are certain things about the genius of the Labor Party that are very attractive to Christianity because they both come from Christian sources.”

At the same time, many churches across Australia were distributing a booklet from the Australian Christian Lobby, part of the Australia Votes campaign, which aims to inform Christians about the policies of the parties and the beliefs of the leaders. The booklet details the answers to several policy questions posed to the major parties. The Greens,however,declined to answer several of the questions posed by the ACL.

The lobby sponsored the ‘Make it Count’ debate earlier this year, which featured a telecast of speeches by Tony Abbott and Kevin Rudd. Mr Rudd was rolled as Prime Minister just two days after the event, so Julia Gillard agreed to record an interview to directly address the concerns of the Christian churches.

Along with an appearance last week at a Catholic event to honour Mary McKillop, the interview has been seen by some as a deliberate attempt to court the Christian vote.