By Nigel Tapp
Eleven teenage girls from Tonga sang their way into the hearts of Synod staff last month at a special luncheon for visiting students and staff from the Queen Salote College, in Tongatapu. The students were in Melbourne for an exchange with Methodist Ladies College’s Middle School. They sang for attendees in the Synod chapel to ...
A VISITING delegation of Korean Church leaders has invited the Uniting Church to share in the spirit at the 10th World Council of Churches (WCC) Assembly in Busan, South Korea from 30 October to 8 November this year.
The delegation, which included South Korea’s first female Prime Minister Myeong-sook Han, took part in ecumenical services at United Theological College in ...
The Commission for Mission’s Justice and International (JIM) unit is continuing to lobby the Tasmanian Government-owned Hydro Tasmania to stop doing business with Sarawak Energy Berhad (SEB), which is accused of operating corruptly in Malaysia.
Hydro Tasmania is a government business enterprise and its consulting arm, Entura, is one of three Australian companies working with SEB on a project to ...
More than 1000 Tongan members of the Uniting Church in Australia, their friends and supporters gathered at Kurrajong at the foot of the Blue Mountains in June to take part in the annual Tongan National Conference (TNC). The theme of this year’s TNC – ‘The Power of God’s Love’ – was reflected in worship services, Bible studies, youth and ...
By Penny Mulvey
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is hearing private submissions from 1400 people in the lead up to the public hearings, scheduled to begin in October. These private hearings, normally before two commissioners, have been taking place across the ...
By Nigel Tapp
To say we are living in a confusing political climate would be something of an understatement. As events in Canberra take on the drama of a Shakespearean play, it would be easy to disengage from the political process. But ...
The synod has formalised its working relationship with the Seafood Importers Association of Australasia (SIAA) to “work together for the elimination of human trafficking, forced labour, debt bondage and the worst forms of child labour from the seafood industry.”
The moderator, Dan Wootton, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the SIAA.
The moderator has written a letter of lament to the Church as part of an information pack that was sent out to congregations, presbyteries, agencies, schools and other UCA entities late last month. The letter (reproduced in its entirety below) refers to the need to take stock and acknowledge as whole of church the grief and pain associated with the ...
Melbourne was the first Australian city to celebrate World Refugee Day, which began with a protest to free more than 1600 children held behind barbed wire and a call to end mandatory detention. The rally coincided with the Multicultural Arts Victoria’s Emerge festival, which celebrated its 10th anniversary.
The festival is part of the United Nations World Refugee Day ...
Imagine you live on the other side of the world and know nothing about Australia. Deciding to change that, you begin by reading the country’s founding document, the supreme law under which the society is governed – the Constitution.
At the conclusion of the 25-page document, you’d be forgiven for thinking ‘Terra Australis’ was completely devoid of human life ...
THE Asylum Seeker Project (ASP) has now officially joined the recently amalgamated Lentara UnitingCare.
Lentara, which was formed last year by the union of the longstanding Sunshine, Broadmeadows and Orana UnitingCares, will consolidate the ASP with its Asylum Seeker Welcome Centre in Brunswick to provide a strengthened asylum seeker service to the Melbourne community. ASP will still be based in ...
By Nigel Tapp
Like many Australians, Misha Coleman is frustrated by the language used to describe those who take to the water to seek asylum in Australia. ‘Queue jumpers’ and ‘illegals’ are terms trotted out ad nauseam by political leaders from both the right and left of ...
