DAY 4 - POLITCIANS FACED UP TO THE FACTS

18th September, 2012

PHILIP CHAN

It was a giant toilet last year. This year, a giant puzzle graced the front lawns of Parliament, spelling out: 2015 Halve Poverty. More than 30 politicians attended the media event, adding their jigsaw-shaped photo to the puzzle. It symbolises the team effort and support across the political spectrum, and that all of us have a part to play in finishing off what we started.

Politicians added their faces to a giant “2015” puzzle in an indication of their commitment to playing their part in halving poverty by 2015. PICTURE: Christoph Ziegenhardt (www.christophziegenhardt.com)

I have to say I am exhausted. It’s been a busy day of lobbying, speaking to politicians and brainstorming ideas for local action. We’ve been hearing many inspiring stories from the various lobby groups and the encouragement from politicians to keep on advocating.

Our group met with our local MP, the Hon Daryl Melham MP from Banks. We were pleasantly surprised at his support this year and shared some entertaining moments. He will be making a speech in Parliament on the issue and looks forward to attending a Micah ‘Finish the Race’ event.

I think it can be easy to become jaded, both amongst politicians and seasoned campaigners. We need to keep our fire for justice ablaze. We need to generate community backing on these issues and together with the leadership of politicians, ensure that aid is a national priority.

As we leave another successful Voices for Justice, we are like dispersed embers across the country. We need to continue to set alight our passion amongst our communities and politicians, until it becomes a wild fire that burns so brightly that it is impossible to ignore. 

~ www.micahchallenge.org.au

Phil Chan is a committed Micah Challenge campaigner

and participant at this year's Voices For Justice

and regularly attends St Barnabas Broadway in Sydney.

PICTURE: Christoph Ziegenhardt

DAY 3 - VOICES FOR JUSTICE

17th September, 2012

PHILIP CHAN

We’re finally here and there’s a hive of activity at Parliament House! After a morning prayer session on the front lawns, we’ve been busy today meeting with politicians, attending panel discussions and question time, which was unsurprisingly rumbustious.

Phil Chan, author of the blog with other Voices For Justice supporters outside Parliament House. PICTURE: Christoph Ziegenhardt (www.christophziegenhardt.com) "I am very proud of our lobby group who sought God and represented Christ’s voice at the heart of our nation, Parliament House."

Our lobby group had an extremely encouraging meeting with the Hon Laura Smyth MP, the federal member for La Trobe in Victoria. We were blown away by her overwhelming support for the MDGs and passion in helping the poor. I was particularly surprised at how friendly and frank she was during our discussion, sharing her experiences in the Asia-Pacific, where she saw poverty first-hand, and her activism on social justice before entering politics.

She was genuinely interested in what we had to say. She said it was important to cultivate community support on our policy asks, such as raising awareness on the importance of aid for sanitation and hygiene, and to suggest cuts in other parts of the budget which could be funnelled into aid. She was especially interested in Micah Challenge’s new policy on tax evasion by multi-national corporations in tax havens and its negative relationship on aid and the wealth of poorer nations.

I am very proud of our lobby group who sought God and represented Christ’s voice at the heart of our nation, Parliament House. God used us to speak engagingly and eloquently from the heart enjoying light-hearted moments with Laura.

At the end of the meeting, before I even had a chance to ask, Ms Smyth offered to make a speech on the issue in the next few weeks. This had an impact on me as it demonstrated to me that the Australian political system really is open to the voice of the people and of God. To add the cherry on the cake, she attended our media event this morning and was more than happy to make a public pledge on video. As we left her office, she stuck our poster on her window communicating her support to other MPs.

We need more politicians like Laura. Passionate, committed and caring, she has left our lobby group on a high and we can’t wait to meet our second politician to make real change for the global poor, striving onward to finish the race!

~ www.micahchallenge.org.au

Phil Chan is a committed Micah Challenge campaigner

and participant at this year's Voices For Justice

and regularly attends St Barnabas Broadway in Sydney.

PICTURE: Christoph Ziegenhardt

DAY 2 - WE ARE A PECULIAR PEOPLE

16th September, 2012

PHILIP CHAN

Voices for Justice 2012 began last night and 300 Christians, converging into Canberra to campaign for the world’s poorest, joined me. From electorates all around Australia, we represent different denominations and backgrounds, spanning across numerous generations. From teachers, retirees, advertising consultants to development workers, students and journalists, we are indeed a peculiar people.

Participants at Voices for Justice "We...want to see more effective aid, particularly investing a quarter of our aid budget into health. Following our water and sanitation campaign last year, there has been great progress on access to fresh drinking water but we want to see an increased focus on sanitation, which is still being neglected."

We are peculiar because, despite our diversity, we are united through Christ’s love and His love for the poor. For politicians, we are even more peculiar because we are not lobbying for our own self-interest but for the interests of the marginalised.

Day in and day out, politicians meet with their constituents and professional lobbyists, who are armed with their own agendas and issues. But over the next two days at Parliament House, our local politicians will be meeting with us, a motley crew of passionate Christians, half of whom are first-timers, determined to halve poverty by 2015.

Today we learnt about the three issues that we will be speaking about to our politicians. Following the Australian government’s decision to delay giving 0.5 per cent of our gross national income to foreign aid to 2016, we want both sides of politics to have a timetabled commitment of 0.7 per cent by 2020. 

We also want to see more effective aid, particularly investing a quarter of our aid budget into health. Following our water and sanitation campaign last year, there has been great progress on access to fresh drinking water but we want to see an increased focus on sanitation, which is still being neglected.

Our third ask is to tackle tax evasion and corruption, which is a new campaign called “Shine the Light” launched by the Micah Challenge. Having very little knowledge about this issue, I was shocked at how corruption was acting as a brake on development. Shrouded in secrecy, big corporations are evading tax in a process called transfer mispricing. Many companies operate in developing countries, such as mining firms. Rather than paying tax in the source country, which would contribute to that country’s aid and infrastructure, the companies are moving their assets through tax havens to avoid paying tax.

It’s a complex problem, but one that continues to go under the radar and really hinders our aid efforts and poor countries’ efforts to lift themselves out of poverty. So we’re asking our politicians to increase transparency by introducing country-by-country reporting for multi-national corporations registered in Australia.

The action begins tomorrow when we meet our local MPs on Capital Hill to advocate on behalf of the global poor. We’ve been busy learning about the issues in workshops and preparing in our lobby groups. It will be my second time speaking to politicians and I’m feeling very excited. As amateur lobbyists, our lack of self-interest makes us unusual and perhaps, even strange and yet it is this peculiarity that will stand out and deliver change in the corridors of power.

~ www.micahchallenge.org.au

Phil Chan is a committed Micah Challenge campaigner

and participant at this year's Voices For Justice

and regularly attends St Barnabas Broadway in Sydney.

PICTURE: Christoph Ziegenhardt

DAY 1 - THE MICAH SUMMIT

15th September, 2012

PHILIP CHAN

Rewind your memories back to New Year’s Eve 1999. What were you doing to welcome in the new millennium? Were you celebrating this momentous milestone by wearing novelty glasses shaped like ‘2000’? Were you gathering supplies in anticipation of the Y2K bug?

As a 10-year old, I remember watching the fireworks on television with my family, and together with the rest of Australia, we were excited to be part of this once-in-a-thousand year occasion.

Tim Dixon, senior fellow of Purpose.com and former speech writer for Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard addresses Voices for Justice. As Christians, we were reminded that advocacy is a tool of love and while politicians have become complacent to the aid commitments, we needed to surprise and challenge them.

As humanity heralded the new millennium, our world leaders shared our sense of newfound potential. Why create New Year’s resolutions, when you could create new millennium resolutions? As we start a new chapter in humanity, what could we do to make a lasting change?

With this in mind, our leaders came together at the Millennium Summit. Powered by possibilities, they committed to the Millennium Development Goals to halve extreme poverty by 2015.

Fast-forward 12 years. There’s a buzz in Canberra today as 100 handpicked Australians gathered for the Micah Summit, held before the start of Voices for Justice. While it wasn’t quite the Millennium Summit, the event brought together passionate Micah supporters to contribute to the campaign leading up to 2015, the MDG deadline, with an unrivalled sense of energy and determination.

As Christians, we were reminded that advocacy is a tool of love and while politicians have become complacent to the aid commitments, we needed to surprise and challenge them. With a flurry of informative statistics and colourful diagrams, Mark McCrindle, the founder of McCrindle Research, gave us an insight to the trends that are redefining our country.

“Change doesn’t have to be generation to generation,” Mark explained, referring to the rapid change happening in our world, across generations and the explosion of technology that has created new opportunities to connect. As well as a soft spot for statistics, Mark adored alliteration. He told us that it is important to tap into these changes to create real, relevant, responsive and relational campaigns, involving creativity, community and currency.

Tim Dixon, a senior fellow of Purpose.com- a leading social enterprise movement, took us time-travelling to various social movements led by Christians who stood up against the flow, rallied against injustice and demanded change. “We understand justice by looking at the sources of injustice. Don’t jump to the symptom but look at the cause,” he said. He challenged us to examine the sources of power and how poverty is a product of power imbalance. Jesus changed the power game by not dominating, but blessing, bringing power form underneath rather than above. Only through effective and strategic movements, which generate awareness and challenge power structures, will change occur.

So will change occur? Fast-forward now to 2015 or even 2020. Will we reminisce at our achievements in halving world poverty and ensuring Australia played its part, or will we look back at the missed opportunity to make a lasting difference?

Luckily, there is still time. Next year’s federal election is the last election before the 2015 deadline. Never has there been a more important time to raise our voice for the voiceless. It’s time to finish off what we started in 2000.

In the pages (or perhaps holograms) of history, let us be remembered as the movement that shared God’s love for the poor and halved poverty in the New Millennium.

~ www.micahchallenge.org.au

Phil Chan is a committed Micah Challenge campaigner

and participant at this year's Voices For Justice

and regularly attends St Barnabas Broadway in Sydney.

PICTURE: Christoph Ziegenhardt