The Catholic Leader - 21 April 2019 - Issue 5548

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The Catholic Leader, April 21, 2019
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By Mark Bolwing
A BRISBANE pro-life campaigner
has not discounted further civil
disobedience, after the High Court
dismissed his appeal to laws that
prescribe 150-metre “safe access
zones” around abortion clinics.
“I don’t think it is right to simply roll over and
accept this,” Graham Preston said of the laws
that are now in force in Queensland, New South
Wales, Victoria and Tasmania.
Mr Preston was one of two complainants who
appealed to the High Court that they had been
denied their right to freedom of political com-
munication.
On April 10, the High Court dismissed the
appeal, saying state laws served a legitimate
purpose.
Mr Preston, who faced three charges
for his protests in Hobart in 2014
and 2015, was found to have been
within a no protest zone, car-
rying placards reading “Every
child has the right to life” and
“Everyone has the right to
life”.
He also carried an enlarged
photo of an eight-week preborn
baby.
Mr Preston was convicted and
fined $3000.
A second person, Kathleen Clubb,
had previously been convicted after trying
to hand a pamphlet to a couple outside an east
Melbourne clinic in 2016.
The pair both argued the laws preventing them
from protesting outside clinics in Tasmania and
Victoria were unconstitutional.
The High Court ruled the laws about
no protest zones served a purpose
– to protect women attending a
clinic and seeking a termination.
“The burden on political
communication imposed by the
protest prohibition is slight,”
Chief Justice Kieffel said.
Three of the seven judges
hearing the case said the pur-
pose of the law outweighed any
freedom of speech concerns.
“It’s very disappointing… but we
are not despairing,” Mr Preston said
about the ruling.
“From a freedom of speech point of view it is
a very bad precedent.
“And from a pro-life position it is even worse,
because not being able to be there to offer help
to people is tragic.
“On the day I was arrested in Tasmania I was
holding a sign that said ‘everyone has a right to
life’.
“Lives are going to be lost because of this
decision.”
Mr Preston said he respected the law and the
state, however, “we can make an idol of that and
as Peter and John said, ultimately we must obey
God rather than men”.
“And that’s the tricky line a Christian has to
walk, as to when the state crosses that line and
we must be prepared to disobey,” he said.
“That is always the case with civil disobedi-
ence.”
Mr Preston is due to appear in the Brisbane
Magistrates Court next month after a protest
against abortion in public, but not inside an abor-
tion clinic safe zone.
Life advocate: Graham Preston.
Pro-lifers lose High Court appeal
CATHOLIC organisations have accused the
Federal Government of acting immorally by ma-
nipulating funding streams through an Amend-
ment Bill that would trap developing Pacific
nations into further debt.
Catholic Religious Australia said the Export
Finance and Insurance Corporation Amendment
Bill was “rushed” and would have a punishing
economic effect on underprivileged nations in
the region.
“There’s been a dramatic shift in Australia’s
overseas aid towards the pacific,” CRA Justice
Committee member Loreto Sister Sr Libby
Rogerson said.
“A lot of that aid is now in terms of loans,
rather than straight aid, and there’s a real worry
that you just trap developing countries in another
form of debt, and it’s not necessarily very help-
ful in the long term.”
Sr Rogerson said a reduction in bilateral aid
programs would affect the poorest countries.
“There will be significant reductions in
our bilateral aid programs with Bangladesh,
Cambodia, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Nepal,” Sr
Rogerson said.
“Our overseas development aid to Pakistan is
going to fall by about thirty-five per cent and it’s
a very, very needy country.
“It’s really about the moral humanitarian issue
for us.
“We’ve now cut our overseas aid below the
UK, below Canada, below a significant number
of countries.
“When a large number of developing countries
are trying to increase their overseas aid, we have
systematically reduced it over the last few years
and we’re nowhere near the 0.7 per cent that the
UN recommends.”
Despite the manipulation, Australia’s total for-
eign aid to the Pacific will increase from $1.3b
to $1.4b – about a third of the total overseas
development aid.
Sr Rogerson said the majority of the funds
would support the development of high priority
infrastructure like telecommunications, energy,
Funding cuts in Pacific and Asia will hurt the poorest countries
and transport.
“These are beneficial to the country, however,
they are in direct competition with what China is
doing in the region,” she said
Australian Council for International Develop-
ment chief executive officer Marc Purcell said
aid was “being directed away from the extremely
needy countries in Asia and Africa in order to
bolster our defences against China”.
Caritas Australia chief executive officer Paul
O’Callaghan said the government had cut the
Australian aid budget for the sixth year in a row,
bringing it to a new historic low.
“As a further blow, it’s taking $500 million
out of what remains to fund a type of loans
scheme which has previously been found to cre-
ate debt traps for vulnerable countries,” he said.
“At the same time they’re decreasing funding
for much-needed aid programs in countries like
Cambodia and Bangladesh.”
CRA president Josephite Sister Monica Ca-
vanagh said cutting aid to developing countries
“strikes at the heart of a country which prides
itself on the ‘fair go’ and on ‘giving a hand up’”.
“This is a source of shame and I call on fair-
minded Australians to ask their ministers and lo-
cal members to re-think the amendment bill and
act with compassion and generosity,” she said.
– Nicholas Holt
Hurting the poor: Rohingya refugee children gather in a playground at the Kutupalong refugee camp near Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. “There will be
significant reductions in our bilateral aid programs with Bangladesh, Cambodia, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Nepal,” Sr Libby Rogerson said. Photo: CNS