Lord, deliver us from this time wasting Green idiocy
The Daily Telegraph
18 Jan 2014
Pg.41
The Greens’ campaign to scrap the Lord’s Prayer from parliament is so exquisitely
Indeed, it is almost as though the Greens’ Marketing Sub-Collective had stumbled across a hitherto undiscovered rock-dwelling hermit who didn’t already regard them as a pack of inner city wankers and thus determined that they would have to ratchet up their brand messaging.
The most telling aspect of Acting Leader Richard Di Natale’s call this week to dump the Lord’s Prayer from the opening of each parliamentary session is that, prior to him making it, 99 per cent of Australians didn’t even know it was there and, of the tiny remainder who did, 99 per cent didn’t particularly care.
This is perhaps because the process of the Speaker reciting the “Our Father” and half the gathered MPs mumbling along has precisely zero negative impact on the rest of the country.
The question, therefore, is not really whether the Lord’s Prayer should be there or not but rather why would anyone with half a brain care?
The reason, as Senator Di Natale outlined to The Sydney Morning Herald, is that: “(When the prayers are read) there are a lot of people who are silent or who are thinking of other things.”
More expansive thinkers might be tempted to respond: “Well, yes. So what’s the problem?” Even a Fairfax poll had two-thirds of respondents saying it should be kept.
And even if the good senator’s fears are taken at face value, one might be tempted to respond with an expression he might also take exception to: Heaven forbid!
Just imagine the sinister threat of politicians having a moment of contemplation, or — an even more unthinkable precedent — being silent for a few seconds.
And for those who do recite the words, however half-heartedly, there is also the risk that they might subconsciously absorb such sinister exhortations as to be grateful for what we have and to forgive others’ transgressions. If these messages were taken to heart it would be the end of party politics as we know it — not to mention the Coalition’s border protection policy.
Fortunately for those who fear such a terrifying prospect, the prayer in parliament is not taken with the literal zeal it has in other times and places.
Rather, it is for most a quaint and salient reminder of Australia’s origins as one of the world’s most successful, tolerant and prosperous liberal democracies and its place in the canon of western civilisation in the Judeo-Christian tradition.
There is also the rather tiresome complaint that the reading of the prayer is somehow oppressive of or excludes the many Australians of other faiths or no faith at all.
Notwithstanding the almost imperceptible level of protest from citizens of other religions, this has clearly not registered as a concern for the thousands of desperate people who risk their lives to come to this country by boat, nor the millions more refugees everywhere from Syria to Sudan who would give their eye teeth for a home here.
It thus lies somewhere between perplexing and staggering that someone would want to purge such a benign part of Australia’s scarred but still incredibly blessed history, particularly someone called Richard Di Natale, whose name ultimately translates as “Richard of Christmas”.
Would he also want to expunge his own surname for visiting implicit oppression upon people of other cultures and faiths? Of course not.
