Letters to the editor - June

AMS Staff | 26 May 2008

Font size: + - | print | email to a friend

Fair trade - good, bad or indifferent?

I was very interested in the fair trade articles (May, SC). We have just embraced fair trade here at St George’s, Gerringong. After a mission trip to Cambodia last year, a few of the teenagers who came on the trip decided that they would like to continue supporting the Tabitha foundation that we were associated with while building houses in Cambodia.
Tabitha also runs a program for women to teach them skills to start their own business and they make a wide variety of products.
The girls from our church are now importing the goods from Tabitha Cambodia and selling them each month at the local Rotary markets in Gerringong.
They do a great job and are making good progress with 100 per cent of the profits going back to Tabitha Cambodia.
Liz Glover
Gerringong, NSW

Jeremy Halcrow’s article ‘Fair trade under fire’ was an interesting examination of the pros and cons of the fair trade movement. As Christians, we are committed to loving our neighbour, and we know from many Scriptures that God has a special concern for the poor. So we should be committed to helping the poor when it is in our power to do so.
Is fair trade the best way to do so? I suspect it isn’t. It seems to me that price oppression of Third World producers happens as a result of monopoly distribution channels and also, as the article states, through subsidised exports from First World countries
Like the academics in Jeremy’s article, however, I believe a greater commitment to free trade will achieve far more than Fairtrade, which will probably only ever be a little boutique movement.
Craig Schwarze
Annandale, NSW

I consider myself green and left, and the problem I have with Starbucks’ participation in fair trade is not as you state – that they have somehow tarnished the process (‘Fair trade under fire’, May, SC). Rather it is the cynical way Starbucks has of approaching fair trade.
I worked for Starbucks in the UK in 2005. After Nestlé they were the second largest coffee buyer in the world. They promoted themselves as offering Fairtrade coffee and benefited from the feel-good aura of the words. But actually only a tiny percentage of the coffee they sold was Fairtrade-certified. There was none available for the popular espresso machines.
I would be only too delighted if market giants embraced the concept of a fair price for product rather than manipulating the market to hold people in poverty while selling the product at a massive mark-up.
Beth Parker
Engadine, NSW

I have just read your special fair trade feature “No fair share” (May, SC). This is an area anyone can be involved in as it just depends on where you choose to spend your dollar.
After investigating several websites to try to find out how to shop ethically, I came to the conclusion that there is no single directory providing suppliers of ethical goods. Sure I can go to Oxfam or Tribes and Nations to buy a bit of coffee or chocolate online, but there is still a lot of dollars left in my budget left out.
How does a Joe Public like me make ethical choices when I’m in the shops regularly? Can you advise?
Sharon Crocker
Camden, NSW

What the critic said
I read the articles with a growing sense of shame-faced exasperation—shame-faced, because how could I object to helping Third World farmers?—and yet exasperated that our diocesan paper should devote so many pages to the issue.
Economically, it was naïve. Trying to solve pricing problems on the other side of the world through our shopping choices may make us feel better, but it is unlikely to have much effect, except possibly to make the situation worse…
The continuing and frustrating opacity and complexity of the world is why Christian citizens who agree on the Bible and the gospel will, nevertheless, come to different conclusions about secular arrangements… So some of my brothers will conclude that the fair trade movement is important and worth supporting, whereas I think it is, on the whole, a misguided waste of time.
TONY PAYNE
http://www.solapanel.org

Thanks for exposing the sacred-secular divide (SSD)

Thanks for Brian Cowling’s brief article on the SSD divide. It is good to see someone in Australia tackling this issue.
Yet, in the ‘Sydney Anglican’ biblical world view, the beginning of the Bible is separated from history by a compromise with pop-science. Regardless of one’s opinion on these issues, this fractures the integrity of the ‘biblical world view’ we are proposing to share.
School students are more honest about this foundational problem than we are. I know because I teach Scripture. I see it every week. They can see Genesis can’t be aligned with the secular opinion of origins without sophistry. It’s hard to sell a boat with holes.
Good on you for supporting more Christians teaching in public schools. It is a crucial ministry. I teach only two periods a week and that is rewarding but draining. Professional full-time teachers need all the support we can give them.
I would also extend that to Scripture teachers. SRE is still protected by law in NSW. If we don’t use it, we’ll lose it.
Michael Bull
Katoomba, NSW

Christian schools with which I am associated are seeking to work against the SSD syndrome. Rather than the job of a particular individual, the sharing of the gospel and applying biblical truth to the whole of learning is the role of every teacher. Over more than 25 years, the success of this approach can be seen in adults who seek to serve the Lord in every aspect of their lives.
Philip Cooney
Wentworth Falls, NSW

What a great article! The intent to have the Christian world view flowing naturally out in all subject areas is what I think defines a school that seeks to be serious about being Christian. Of course one problem is the imperative that only Christians can do this. Maybe the next step is to ensure only Christians teach in Christian schools, a move resisted vigorously by many Anglican schools.
Bill Rusin
Via email

Click here to comment on this article for the next edition of Southern Cross