Anglicare Christmas Address

Prime Minister and Mrs Howard, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen:

It is not generally known that the Prime Minister and I were at the same time articled clerks in the legal firm of M.Rosenblum and Co, Elizabeth St, Sydney. It is typical of us both that as he was passing speedily and effectively through his legal studies, I was comprehensively failing mine. I can say that he showed kindness to a struggling teenager. I know that I appreciated him then, and I am now able to say, in this public gathering, how much I admire and appreciate him now. Prime Minister and Mrs Howard, on behalf of all present, please accept our gratitude for your presence here tonight, especially in this 150th Anniversary of the beginning of Sydney Anglicare.

Do we still need Anglicare? What would be lost if we abandoned the whole enterprise? Is our society now so prosperous that it is actually more difficult to be poor than to be rich?  Has the Government taken over the field to such an extent that the voluntary organisations are merely marginal hobby outfits?

Only the hard and ignorant could say such things.

Do we still need Anglicare? Let me ask: do we need friends and neighbours? Do we need love? If you abolish Anglicare as it now exists, our society denies part of its heart, the compassionate heart which is central to ‘Australian values’. Government policy is immensely important, but bureaucracy is no final answer to local and personal need.  We aim to be there for those who need a friend - for single parents, and the disabled, and the hungry, and the prisoners, and the refugees, and homeless and the elderly, and the others who turn to us for help. We aim to ‘be there’, as friends and family and church and neighbours are there – and sometimes, tragically, are not.

Are we competing with friends and family and church and neighbours? On the contrary: our aim is to strengthen community, not weaken it.

The Biblical command to love helps us to see that broken, failed or even non-existent relationships are so often at the bottom of social deprivation and unhappiness. When we think of society in this way we begin to see the misery, loneliness, hunger and spiritual needs which still exist all around us. No government can meet these needs – though it must have an abiding concern that they are met. You cannot legislate that people will love each other.

What we see in particular in modern Australia is the hunger for satisfying relationships, and whatever emergency aid is given, whatever still may be needed in terms of clothing and housing and food, we so often see at the root of the problem the collapse of a family or a church or a community. 

When a homeless child is found on the streets, there has to be love and care which offers practical and lasting assistance. But this child represents a fractured relationship – perhaps generations of such pain. What can we do about both the immediate and the underlying problem? We act in love, and we love.

We have seen some timely and powerful reminders recently about the importance of the Christian heritage of this nation. It is not enough to build a commonwealth on the ideas of the Enlightenment and humanism. As the education Minister, Julie Bishop, said in addressing the problem of the lack of civility in today’s world: ‘Arguably, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” forms the historical bedrock of our society’s expectation of civil behaviour.”’ 1

Likewise, from the other side of political thought, Clive Hamilton has remarked: ‘to the extent that their field of concern is the deeper aspects of life, and to the extent that they articulate values that transcend individualism, materialism and selfishness, it is from religious thinkers and activists that progressives might learn to speak to the concerns of Australian citizens. Only by understanding those deeper yearnings and appealing to those deeper values can we develop a new politics of meaning’. 2

You could say that the problem raised by both thinkers are those that the Christian message was designed to address. Anglicare does not exist simply to provide aid; it exists to do so in a way that will strengthen family and friendship and community – to help relationships.

At the heart of Christian teaching lies the issue of relationships. The human problem, the cause of our woes, is that we have rejected our proper relationship to God. From his side, he has actually been born amongst us at the first Christmas, so that we may be reconciled to him, through Jesus Christ. By the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, there comes the possibility of forgiveness and peace with God. Stemming from that restored relationship comes an immense power to do good in the suffering human community.

As a nation, we need to attend to our relationships, our relationship with God and our relationships with each other. That means thinking again about the individualism which has served us so poorly; about the egalitarianism which has declared war on fraternalism; on the things which make us unwilling to sacrifice for the good of others. In short, on our lack of Christian love.

Do we still need Anglicare? Thousands of people every week need Anglicare to be at the front line of their lives. As good as government agencies may be, they can never take the place of the community galvanised to care. Please do not hesitate tonight and from now on to offer Anglicare vigorous and generous support as one of the authentic ways of being a neighbour to those in need.  You may also rightly expect that Anglicare will not offer merely the immediate help.  Its Christian stance will make it go deeper, and enact and commend the Christian message, that God’s sacrificial love lies at the heart of the Universe.

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