Original sin: “One of Queensland’s largest hospitality companies had an ‘unreasonable’ employment contract that legally allowed not to pay fines to staff for 20 years,” reports The Financial Review.
Reading a few paragraphs on, Fair Work Commissioner Jennifer Hunt says it was “hard to understand” how an employer for so many years could knowingly abstain many employees from fines.
Call Obadiah cynical, but your columnist has no trouble understanding how someone would want to take advantage of others. It’s called sin.
Reader Feedback: Should Obadiah use “conservative” and “progressive” to describe people for and against same-sex marriage for blessings in the church? That’s while writing news, with the old-fashioned aim of being objective.
Of course, objectivity is one of those lofty goals one never achieves. But as a Christian, Obadiah is used to not living up to the ideal but still striving. It is the path of a sinner.
Certainly, some readers ask, Obadiah might say “Biblical” to represent those with a conservative outlook. A lot of readers ask that.
That usage could be a winning argument if we were only read by those with a conservative – against same-sex marriage – stance. But here’s an increasingly difficult fact to take into account. Those favoring same-sex marriage are beginning to use the word “biblical” to describe their position. For example, progressives use “Biblical obedience” to describe their point of view in the slow split in the United Methodist Church.
Which probably infuriates more than a few conservatives. It’s part of an old game of church politics – not letting “the other side” have “good” words for itself.
Obadiah finds all this exhausting. So he uses “conservative” and “progressive” to keep things simple. Better suggestions are, of course, welcome.
A good reason to have voted liberal: Obadiah is delighted to live in a country where his local Liberal Party candidate is a woman who wears a hijab in her corflute photos. He seriously considered voting for her on that basis alone. But it’s a secret ballot!
A good reason to vote for Labour: Obadiah believes that the low-paid heroes of Covid, the cleaners and supermarket shelf stackers on the front lines, deserve a reward. And while Obadiah knows Albanian support for a 5.1 percent increase in the minimum wage has quickly ‘reduced’, he thinks it’s a good idea.
The Day After: On Sunday, we were all in church with people who voted differently than us. Unless everyone in your church voted the same way, Obadiah believes that will be rare.
Even in churches that appear on the National Church Life Survey as 90 or 95 percent coalition voters (yes, there are), the presence of so many conservative parties in this election will have divided their votes.
Yet we will have prayed, read the Scriptures, and have been encouraged to follow Christ—just a normal Sunday.
Australia is not a one-party state for Christians, unlike other places with a House of Representatives and a Senate.
Farewell Scott Morrison: The former prime minister selected Habakkuk 3:17 as the first scripture read to the Horizon congregation in what he described as his last words as prime minister. He swallowed the tears as he read: “Even if the fig tree does not bloom and there is no fruit on the vines if the olive crop fails, and the fields produce no food, even if the flock disappears from the fold and there are no cattle in the stables (wipes away a tear), yet I will be victorious in the Lord.”
It is arguably the most anti-gospel verse in the Bible—and a great poem to fall back on in difficult times.
Slacktivism is a great new word that means thinking that online activism will change the world in whatever direction you want. A similar equally disdainful expression is “keyboard warrior”. But here’s one way to change the world, serve science and improve Australia with just a few clicks. Go to Flutracking.net, and as the URL says, help researchers track how flu spreads.
