M
Matt25
Guest
theage.com.au/news/national/papal-twist-in-work-debate/2005/10/11/1128796526593.html
Australian debate-
WOULD the late Pope John Paul II have given the thumbs up to John Howard’s industrial relations revolution? Catholic teachings were invoked by both sides of politics yesterday, with Pope quotes flying across the dispatch boxes.
Labor backbencher John Murphy, a devout Catholic, quoted the late pontiff as saying Australia’s industrial relations system had “helped to defend the rights of workers and promote their wellbeing while at the same time taking into account the needs and future of the whole community”.
But Prime Minister John Howard later hit back with his own paraphrasing of Pope John Paul II after some advice from the Catholics on his front bench. “The late Pope John Paul II, writing in Laborum Exercens in 1981, said, ‘The primary responsibility of government is to create the conditions under which everyone who wants a job can get one’,” he said.Stung by criticism from several top church leaders, Mr Howard said he agreed with them that relationships were more important than money.
Australian debate-
WOULD the late Pope John Paul II have given the thumbs up to John Howard’s industrial relations revolution? Catholic teachings were invoked by both sides of politics yesterday, with Pope quotes flying across the dispatch boxes.
Labor backbencher John Murphy, a devout Catholic, quoted the late pontiff as saying Australia’s industrial relations system had “helped to defend the rights of workers and promote their wellbeing while at the same time taking into account the needs and future of the whole community”.
But Prime Minister John Howard later hit back with his own paraphrasing of Pope John Paul II after some advice from the Catholics on his front bench. “The late Pope John Paul II, writing in Laborum Exercens in 1981, said, ‘The primary responsibility of government is to create the conditions under which everyone who wants a job can get one’,” he said.Stung by criticism from several top church leaders, Mr Howard said he agreed with them that relationships were more important than money.