In my view the Prime Minister has shown her secular ethics in such matters as the coming National Disability Insurance scheme and her efforts to see that the less well off in Australian society get a better deal than they did in the Howard era.

Julia Gillard has done that in the era of an economic collapse caused by the failure of the neo-liberal administrations of western governments led by George W Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard, all proclaimed Christians, to control private bank debt creation.

Steve Keen's Debtwatch site (article 28/12) shows that the ratio of private debt to GDP grew alarmingly in the twelve years of the Howard Government. That growth priced many young families out of the housing market, a situation aggravated by the First Home Buyer's Scheme.

At the same time Howard/Costello sold our valuable assets to the big end of town to make their budget look good. Do you really believe we have benefited from the sale of those assets?

Wall Street speculation, and banking fraudsters, produced the GFC and it took the efforts of Wayne Swan, Lindsey Tanner, Julia Gillard, under Kevin Rudd to minimize the effect of that crisis on the Australian scene. Three of those four are more guided by secular ethics than they are guided by religion.

They rescued the Australian Banks from collapse on or about 16 September, 2008. Maybe the government should have taken them over then because the banks are still trying to behave as they did in the Howard era.

Financial institutions are a service and such service costs should always be kept to a minimum as the institutions are a parasites on the body of real productive industry and the general population.

Do you think Mike Smith of ANZ makes decisions that are worth $4,040 per hour (assuming he works 50 hours per week for fifty weeks of the year)? If you think he is worth that then, what in your opinion, is a heart or brain surgeon worth, of the people who develop vaccines?

>>More specifically, the Prime Minister's unwillingness or inability to articulate an alternative moral model to Christianity … led to a perception amongst voters that these are purely pragmatic political choices by the Prime Minister and are largely devoid of moral content. >>

That perception is unquestionably correct.

>>… the Catholic Opposition Leader whose Christian views seem embarrassingly devoid of compassion.>>

I don't think Abbott's views are devoid of compassion at all. I think they're often wrong-headed but that's a different matter.

Full disclosure:

I have a slight, a VERY slight, preference for the Libs winning the next election. However I would not celebrate if they won and I would not mourn if they lost.

In fact by and large I don’t think it makes much difference which side wins. The rhetoric and atmospherics may be very different but on substantive policy issues there is little to distinguish the ALP from the Libs.

I'm inclined to think the Libs may be marginally more competent than the ALP but I'm prepared for the possibility of being proved wrong.

Strange article.... Bit like complaining that the Heads of the Anglican or Catholic Churches in Australia have not enunciated a clear political and economic vision for Oz. Though not claiming to be a religious person, I would daresay that Gillard manifests a spiritual quality that so often failed to be seen in past prime ministers. Where was Howard's 'christianity' during the Tampa affair? Where is Abbot's 'catholicism" in dealing with innocent refugees on Nauru and Manus Island?

Yet even "Christian Schools Australia" acknowledges that Gillard's "vision is compelling, personal, detailed and inclusive. There are many points where the Gillard vision coincides with the vision of Christian schools in modern Australia: the belief that education transforms lives and, hence, communities. The view that quality educational opportunities must be available to all, which she sees as a moral imperative".

http://csa.edu.au/blogs/staff/745-a-compelling-vision-for-change

Another site summarises her in this way: "She has a strong vision of what this nation can become, and the physical and emotional strength and determination to achieve it. She is not without fault, not without error, but what she presents, far from warranting all the nastiness and vitriol that is heaped upon her by the Coalition and the media every day, and now the public through poor polling, deserves our admiration and support. She stands for making Australian a still greater nation". How about, if we just stand back and actually try to give her a "fair go..."

But, I guess we see what we want to see, and it is so easy to wear those judgmental blinkers...

Yuri

>"Julia Gillard's appointment as Prime Minister heralded an end to a sustained period of Christian leadership by her predecessors."

True. Christianity replaced by the Green Religion.

There is little in the history of civilisations to suggest that religion and morality are related, especially when it comes to nations and their heads. Indeed, the converse is demonstrably true.

The qualities which I would like to see in national leaders, but which are generally absent include: humility, generosity, compassion, empathy, altruism, fairness, honesty, openness, being a good listener and being a good communicator.

Irrelevancies include skin colour, eyeware design, gender, sexual preferences, country of birth, first language and dog ownership, to name a few.

Religion or the lack of it are totally irrelevant.

It's hard to know what different writers mean by "Christian ethics" when even such basic rules as the so-called golden rule — do unto others… — were taught and observed in cultures that preceded the crucifixion by thousands of years. There is also considerable evidence that many, maybe most of the "rules" that members of societies develop for their own governance are common across all social groupings, irrespective of their ethnicity, culture or religion. Perhaps certain specific injunctions such as don't have sex with people of the same sex or don't value the life of a pregnant woman over that of her foetus no matter how immature and far removed from yet having a life it is, are more religious, more Christian, than those "rules" which most societies develop for themselves without religious input. But it's not easy to think of lots of others.