Australia is at the crossroads

We are spending billions of taxpayers’ money on dangerous weapons and despatching military forces well beyond our shores in the vain hope that all this will make us secure. Meanwhile, millions of Australians are facing homelessness and rising food insecurity, whilst mental illness and gambling addiction rates are of epidemic proportions; the ravages of climate change are gathering pace and glaring indigenous disadvantage persists in health, education, employment, infant mortality and suicide. Additionally, we remain indifferent to the plight of 117 million people around the world who have been forcibly displaced.

We need a new national narrative that focusses on the security needs of PEOPLE rather than the interests of military establishments; one that is less intent on beating the drums of war and more attentive to the cries of the poor and the Earth.

It is time to rethink our past and future; to acknowledge the wounds of indigenous dispossession and colonial violence; to remedy the wrongs of the past; and to call into question the fear that has made us deputy sheriffs of imperial powers.

Pax Christi believes it is time to embark on a journey of renewal that is cultural, even spiritual, as well as ecological, economic and political.