How does this week's federal budget fare as a moral document? Simply: the rich do better than the poor, writes Stan Grant.
It is not a zero-sum game, of course. Defence spending will create jobs. But that's in the future and poor families don't have time.
We don't hear from theologians at budget time. It is wall-to-wall economists and political pundits. The commentary is more about numbers than people.For that, we turn to theologians like the Spanish-born Jesuits, Jon Sobrino and Ignacio Ellacuria. They speak of the poor as the "crucified people". It is not enough they say to speak of "under-development" or "developing countries" but of crucifixion.So, we don't speak of the crucified, we prefer the political speak of the poor or under-privileged.We see this played out devastatingly in Western countries where a cruel wealth gap is tearing at the fabric of society and condemning generations to poverty.
The West is still largely sunk in "the sleep of cruel inhumanity", ignoring, suppressing, covering the terrible realities of which it is largely responsible. The language of "crucified people" may help shake it in to wakefulness and action.Not that capitalism hadn't brought "some goods to humanity", he said, but "it has also brought greater evils and its processes of self-correction have not been enough to reverse its destructive course".
In Australia, a research report by the University of New South Wales and the Australian Council of Social Services last year found the
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