For God’s sake are there any Christians left in Australia who care about where this country is heading, or has the Christian God become a private idol or a family totem?

Without the support of Senator Steve Fielding the government wouldn’t have got its new media laws through parliament intact. Those laws now threaten to see most Australian media controlled by a few families i.e. the Murdoch family, the Packer family, the Stokes family.

Representing the Pentecostal Christian backed, Family First party, Fielding’s role in this is a case study of the way Christians of all denominations in Australia are reducing the Creator God, the God of the Nations, to a private fetish. Media policy is just one example of Christians ignoring the social good as they turn inward to their private-only salvation.

And with Mark Scott, the ABC’s new Managing Director, choosing to announce major changes to the ABC’s editorial policies not to the public at large, nor even to ABC managers and journalists, but at a meeting of Gerard Henderson’s right-wing lobby, The Sydney Institute, media policy should be a burning social justice issue for Christians.

In China, the Communist Party controls all media, including the Internet, because it knows media control is mind control. It wants its citizens to see the world through ‘party eyes’ only.

If Australians are only permitted to see the world through the eyes of exceedingly rich capitalists then we have to start asking whether we live in a democracy or a plutocracy.

No one elects Rupert Murdoch, James Packer and their likes, but clearly our elected representatives fawn upon them and frequently seem beholden to them too. And no one elects the board members of the ABC either, the government of the day appoints them – that, too, potentially permits a lot of mind control.

In his speech supporting the legislation, Fielding told parliament that those he represents didn’t know anything about the proposed new media laws and, when informed by him about them, they didn’t care either. ‘Debates in Parliament about who owns what in the media simply don’t feature in the day-to-day lives of the Australians we represent’, he said.

Fielding put this lack of concern down to his constituents’ preoccupation with their mortgages and their kid’s schooling. But The Issues suspects it goes much deeper: that they are really concerned only with hallelujahs praising a diminished Christian God who, supposedly, is only concerned with such matters as private salvation, private prosperity and what goes on in other people’s, homosexuals especially, bedrooms. There is no ‘God’s eye’ view of the social good. This is not ‘to have a go’ at Pentecostals, increasingly the same is true of Anglican and other Christians too.

Fielding went on to expose a naivet © entirely in accord with the ideology of freedom and individuality that our commercial media want us to swallow while they control our views of the world. An example of this ideology is an advertisement for jeans. It shows a pouting sexpot of a young woman, windswept hair, an arrogant groin-thrusting pose, clad tightly in the particular brand, proclaiming ‘no one tells me what to wear!’

Parroting the sentiment of this ad, Fielding said – ‘Television, and especially free-to-air television, is the primary source of information and entertainment’ for the families he knows, and – ‘The programs Australians watch are not determined by who owns what station but the actual programs themselves. Families switch from one station to another depending on what is on.’

So, according to Senator Fielding, we are free individuals because we can choose to watch a Packer, a Stokes or a CanWest station. No one tells Steve Fielding or Australians what to watch on television eh!

When at last Fielding attempted to put together an argument for why it was ok for him to support laws that would likely lead to concentrated media ownership, his argument was that ownership did not mean control of ideas. ‘Out there in the real world it’s nothing like that’, he said. His example was the ABC.

‘Consider the ABC. It is owned by the government. The ABC Board is appointed by the government. Therefore wouldn’t we expect the ABC to voice the views of its owners? In theory – yes. But we all know the ABC’s owners – the Government (sic) – are constantly railing against them.’

The Government owns the ABC!! It appears that Senator Fielding has no concept of independent statutory bodies and the importance of them.

But at least for the time being, the ABC alone among Australia’s main media is not owned by plutocrats or by wealthy investment companies. It belongs to all Australians! And alone, the ABC is not controlled by the advertising dollar of multi-national companies. The Chinese Communist Party does not share Fielding’s naivet © about the relationship between ownership and control! And nor should it be shared by a Christian ‘God’s eye’ view of the relationship between media ownership and the social good.

Senator Steve Fielding probably does reflect the views, not just of his Pentecostal constituency but of tens of thousands of other Australian Christians who, likewise, have been seduced by the ideology of individual freedom, and whose diminished Christian God is concerned only with personal, private affairs.

So will the ABC be next to succumb to this ideological paralysis of the Christian social conscience? Will we see the ABC bowing to the multi-national advertising dollar and the threat of withdrawal if it broadcasts things they don’t like? Will we see the ABC Board so controlled by the government of the day that it might just as well own it?

Jesus said Christians are to be the salt of the earth i.e. preservers of the good (adding a little spice too?). We can’t do that unless we try to get a ‘God’s eye’ view on our world – not a communist eye, or a plutocrat eye or even a Liberal or Labor party eye. If we had a ‘God’s eye’ view of the ABC, probably we would be lobbying furiously for a policy by which ABC Board members are no longer appointed by the government but elected by the people of Australia. This election could coincide with Federal parliamentary elections.

November 2006

[The author wishes to remain anonymous].