Markets & Justice

Markets & Justice
Freely operating markets yield a just outcome?

White Australia Has A Black History

White Australia Has A Black History

Tuesday 21 October 2014

Wants, needs and responsibility in the light of the #ACOSS report and what is required of us


I have discovered to-day a blog called The Thin Bread Line whose author is David MansfieldHe has written here ...

We had family around for lunch the other day.
My three year old grandson went straight to the freezer and helped himself to an ice-cream. Helen intercepted him in time and told him to wait until after lunch, only to have him plead, ‘But Grandma, I NEED it now!’
Whoever invented the refrigerator with the freezer section at the bottom has a lot to answer for.
Of course, we can easily mistake our needs for our wants and justify our wants as our needs and in the process accumulate piles of unnecessary baggage, both around the girth and in the garage(s)!

As I was driving home from preaching at a Sydney church last Sunday I heard on the news about a report just released by ACOSS (Australian Council of Social Services). There are now one in seven Australians living below the poverty line of $400 per week. The statistics are grimmer for children and grimmer still for people from non English speaking backgrounds.
My work brings me into daily contact (mainly via email) with Christian leaders who serve communities in Africa and Asia where people live on less than a dollar a day, where children, in frighteningly large numbers, suffer from water-borne diseases, malnutrition and starvation. Some of these children don’t reach their next birthday.
While the famine in South Sudan deepens, the predictions of another Horn of Africa catastrophe are gathering pace and frequency.

PLEASE READ FURTHER AT THE THIN BREAD LINE


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