Tag: Social Justice

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Social Impact

Calls for action to reduce over-representation of Aboriginal people in custody

The Uniting Church WA wholeheartedly welcomes the Premier’s commitment to reducing the over-representation of Aboriginal people in custody, and calls for further action.

The Uniting Church WA (UCA WA) welcomes recent news that Premier Mark McGowan will make reducing the over-representation of Aboriginal people in custody a key priority of this Government. The Uniting Church Western Australia has a long history of advocacy regarding prison justice and the over-representation of Aboriginal people in custody.

The UCA WA believes that Western Australia’s high incarceration rate, particularly the persistent and growing over-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the justice system necessitates an urgent overhaul of Western Australia’s policies relating to the criminal justice system. The UCA WA has advocated for improvements to the West Australian justice system, including calls for an end to mandatory sentencing, ending the practice of imprisoning people for unpaid fines, and reforms to the processing of women and vulnerable people, for more than 15 years.

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Social Impact

We entered the bubble for people in poverty

Canberra is a bit of a strange place. Beautiful surrounds with an abundance of wealthier-than-most public servants, along with a somewhat Truman Show-like perfect design and apparently an invisible semi-permeable dome over the entire place (aka the Canberra bubble).

But if Canberra is peculiar, then Parliament House is another universe altogether. Like a self-sufficient satellite orbiting afar, once inside, lost in endless corridors and its mirrored layout, I wondered at times if we were still on planet Earth.

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Social Impact

Kairos: reaching out to those impacted by the justice system

Kairos Prison Ministry Australia is an interdenominational International Christian ministry reaching out to incarcerated individuals, their families and those who work with them; to bring sustainable meaning and Christian hope in the place of loneliness, isolation and despair.

Kairos Inside is a three to five day short course run in the prisons and Kairos Outside is a weekend (free of charge to guests) for women who have been impacted by the justice system, including having had or still has a member of the family in prison.  The team provides a safe environment over a weekend where guests are given an opportunity to interact with other families without shame or judgement.

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Social Impact

Faith-inspired response to climate change

In the week of Sunday 7 to 14 October, Christians from the Uniting, Anglican and Catholic Churches, as well as other traditions joined their efforts with a global faith-inspired response to the climate crisis. This comes as good news after the disturbing Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)special report, Global Warming of 1.5°C.

The report details how action to address climate change is urgent.

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Social Impact

From the paradise of the fair go

This week, from Sunday 14 to Saturday 20 October, is Anti-Poverty Week. Rev Sophia Lizares, Chaplain at UnitingCare West offers Revive readers this reflection. UnitingCare West is a Uniting Church WA  agency providing care and support to many of WA’s most vulnerable people.

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Social Impact

Ping Pong-a-thon to end modern slavery

There are more slaves on Earth today than at any other time in history.

‘Slave’ is a word that sounds so ancient… so distant. It evokes images of bare backed men working in fields under the watchful gaze of slave masters and women cooking and cleaning for wealthy families in far off lands.

But today, slavery is much closer to home. While the majority of slavery in our world today revolves around labour exploitation, across Asia, slavery often looks like a little girl (or boy), born in rural poverty, sent to the city at age twelve or thirteen on the premise of finding work to help her family survive. With no other options, she survives by selling the only thing she owns, her body, for the pleasure of men.

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Stories & Feature Articles

Learning lessons and making peace

As a General Practitioner in the medical field, Dr Sue Wareham has long held compassion for her fellow human beings. When she began learning of the effects and scale of global nuclear weapons in the late 70s and early 80s, she became passionate about ridding the world of them.

Since then, she has worked tirelessly to campaign for the abolishment of nuclear weapons through the Medical Association for Prevention of War (MAPW) and the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). Sue has been awarded an Order of Australia, and last year, ICAN was recognised with a Nobel Peace Prize.

Dr Sue Wareham will be one of the speakers at the upcoming conference, ‘Making Peace: exploring the practice of peace in today’s world’, held from Saturday 10 to Sunday 11 November, at St George’s Cathedral, Perth. The conference is organised by the Social Justice Commission of the Uniting Church WA, and will be held over the centenary of the Armistice of the First World War.

Sue has been involved with MAPW since its foundation in 1981. She said the aim of the association is to draw attention to the health implications of warfare and armed conflict.

“We draw attention particularly to the health impact on civilians, partly because civilians form the majority of the victims of war these days,” Sue said. “When we go to war, modern warfare is often  an attack on civil society itself. So it’s absolutely imperative to find other ways to resolve conflicts.”

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Social Impact

Review: Never again

Never Again: Reflections on environmental responsibility after Roe 8, edited by Andrea Gaynor, Peter Newman and Philip Jennings. UWA Publishing, 2018

The Roe 8 Highway extension and the related Perth Freight Link was a hugely contentious public issue in the lead-up to the 2017 WA State election. Never Again outlines, purely from the perspective of the project’s detractors, the reasons why they believe it should never have happened and, as the title suggests, why it should never happen  again.

Whilst it is narrowly focussed on the Roe 8 project, the implications of the discussion broaden its scope. Significant questions (and solutions) are raised about the state of our democratic  processes, transport planning, environmental protection and respect for Aboriginal culture and heritage. Some of the chapters, contributed by an impressive array of leading academics, give serious pause for thought across all of these issues. There is also an account of activist strategies, legal proceedings and citizen wildlife monitoring revealing how politicised the project became.

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Social Impact

South West Forests need protection

View from the Bicentennial Tree in the Warren National Park, a 15 minute drive from Pemberton in south-west Western Australia on a misty and smoky morning.

The 42nd Annual Synod of the Uniting Church Western Australia, held over the weekend, called on the State Government to place high conservation value forests in secure national parks for the survival of threatened species.

The Uniting Church has a long held concern for the environment alongside its strong social justice stances arising out of its Christian belief that God, as the Creator of the universe, calls us into a special relationship with the creation – a relationship of mutuality and interdependence which seeks the reconciliation of all creation with God.

The Synod decided that given the uniqueness of the South-West forest ecosystems, the vulnerability of numerous threatened species endemic to the region, the relatively small areas of uncleared forests remaining and the need to mitigate against further damage to the climate system, the remaining South-West forests need to be protected from logging activities.

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Social Impact

Uniting Church WA calls to reinstate ‘SRSS Safety Net’ support program

An Ethnic mother and daughter are indoors in a hospital. The girl is holding a teddy bear for comfort. The mother and doctor are talking about the girl's checkup.

The 42nd Annual Synod of the Uniting Church Western Australia, held over the weekend, committed to taking the next step in advocacy for people seeking asylum, calling on Australia’s leaders to restore dignity to people seeking humanitarian protection.

The Synod agreed to write to the Federal Government expressing concerns at the restriction of access to the Status Resolution Support Service (SRSS). Removing the service leaves families at risk of destitution and homelessness, and the church is calling for full access to be reinstated.

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