From a netfriend:

Recent postings have raised issues of overseas aid and asylum seekers.

Governments of all colours are regularly berated for low levels of aid. While we can't be flies on the wall at Costello family gatherings, we are treated to Tim's statements and media beatups on their alleged quarrels. Imagine, two brilliant legal minds across the table expressing such opposing views.

Are we jumping on a bandwagon here?

Private individuals outscored government aid to World Vision by $20 million, jointly raising over $140 million. This is a pittance as we try to even imagine the plight of people blighted by drought, civil wars, "ethnic cleansing" and religious persecution.

But if we check our respective incomes, it's private individuals who should be hanging our heads in shame. For governments only have the money we give them from taxation, registrations and fines. Admittedly, the Victorian government is blurring the gap between taxation and fines in attempts to cover its financial ineptitude, but our combined national personal income is way beyond that of the governments that we have to support.

This may appear simplistic, but no government - not even if they gang up on us in self-perpetuating, competitive and points-scoring triads the way they do in Australia - can tax us more than we earn.

Having opened one can, in deference to South American parrots, let's make it toucans!

I believe vociferous condemnation of Christians in government ignores Paul's plea in Philippians 2. I'm so pleased for their sake that they are brothers and sisters in Christ - if they weren't we could really open up both barrels!

Regarding treatment of asylum seekers, Australia is one of a handful of nations with a population growth policy. The old European colonial powers are turning their backs on those they colonised, so we are under increasing pressure. I thought Andrew Denton's interview with Amanda Vanstone expressed her dilemma. Nobody wants to put people behind bars, but if people smugglers imagine that they can make piles of money from telling families that their children provide them with automatic acceptance to Australian citizenship, they have to be stopped. And the phone home factor from the detention centres to prospective seekers is proving to be a deterrent to these profiteers.

I believe that our governments need to recognise that we inhabit one of the world's least developed nations. If we could envision and enact developments for the north and west, we could sustain political and economic freedom for millions more people, and ease the pressure in the process.

But bureaucratic delays are an absurd part of the equation. I joined a community campaign here to secure residency for a Chinese couple (from Singapore and from Hong Kong, so they had no home country that would take them or their children.) Immigration was trying to oust them after twenty years, during which time they had developed successful businesses that were employing people of all races and been very active in the community. Thankfully we were successful, but staff could have been far more gainfully employed in weeding out the fake from the fair dinkum to reduce the backlog.

But more pertinently, if we personally have the guts to take strangers off the streets to live in our homes for as long as they wish, even if we have seen them pay the taxi that brought them to our front door, we may criticise. But if we are reluctant to do this, maybe we could improve on the conversation by remaining silent.

In the end, it's difficult to pray for those we criticise, and difficult to criticise those we pray for . We can choose to be advocate or we can try to be judge - with a partial view of the whole picture. We can't delude ourselves by imagining that we qualify for both jobs.

Come to think of it, only one person I know has feet big enough to fill those shoes. Nobody else comes to mind.

God bless us all,