Abortion

A survey undertaken at the Royal Women’s Hospital in Melbourne reveals “bad timing” as the main reason for an abortion. The analysis involved 3018 women between October 2006 to September 2007. For more: http://www.cathnews.com/article.aspx?aeid=11315

http://www.theage.com.au/national/report-reveals-abortion-reasons-20090118-7jz6.html?page=-1

School chaplains

Following through on a commitment Colin Barnett made prior to the last WA State election at the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) debate in Perth, the State Government this month launched a $19m pastoral care package that would provide all schools with access to chaplains and school psychologists. It represents a significant expansion on what was already in place. Education Minister Liz Constable said: “Pastoral care is the best way of maintaining the academic, social, emotional and physical wellbeing of students.” For the full press release visit: http://www.mediastatements.wa.gov.au/Pages/Results.aspx?ItemID=131152

Channel 10-Californication

The second series of Californication ended in December. Saltshakers and FamilyVoice have actively campaigned advertisers to pull their support from the program. By the end of the series, 49 organisations had removed their advertising. Saltshakers said many companies thanked them for alerting them to the situation.
Action: Please write to Channel 10 – POLITELY ask them not to put ‘Californication’ on television in the future. Tell them about the large number of companies who do not want their ads on the show! Ten contact details: http://ten.com.au/contact_us.html

Evidence Act

The Australian Financial Review reported January 12, page 5, ‘States lag on Evidence Act’ that the Federal Government has appealed to its state counterparts to implement changes to the Evidence Act so that individuals in same-sex relationships, like heterosexual couples, can no longer be compelled to give evidence in court against their partner. The Commonwealth Evidence Act only applies to Federal and Territory Courts, but the Federal Government is putting pressure on the States to amend their laws in line with the Federal changes. Federal Attorney General Robert McClelland said this “furthers the government’s commitment to remove same-sex discrimination in commonwealth laws.”

Prostitution

With a number of new Christian members in the WA Liberal Government, there are moves to change State prostitution laws passed by the State Labor Party and to adopt the Swedish Model, advocated by the Australian Christian Lobby and elements of the feminist movement, among others. Attorney General Christian Porter, who states that he is opposed to the Swedish Model has set up a working group to investigate new prostitution laws.

See the West Australian Article, January 6, page 5 here: http://www.acl.org.au/pdfs/load_pdf_public.pdf?pdf_id=1241&from=NATIONAL

Internet filtering

Within the next couple weeks, those participating in a Federal Government trial to filter internet content should be known. The Australian Christian Lobby and Saltshakers have been calling for greater filtering of content to remove pornography and other offensive material. Last week the Chinese Government issued a warning to Google and 18 other internet service providers to improve their filtering to remove vulgar material or face being closed down. Google quickly posted an apology on their Chinese website: “Search engines link to a sea of materials and our plan is to conquer mountains of technical difficulties and do all we can to reduce the amount of vulgar material,” Google said in the statement. “Google is willing to be a law-abiding citizen in China,” it said.

This prompted an email mail-out in Australia and the US asking the question: When is Google going to apologise to us?