The Archbishop of Sydney, Dr Peter Jensen, has some advice for the Liberal Party - think more about love and relationships, and less about money and economic growth.
So claims journalist Andrew West in a major feature article which hit news stands today and investigates Dr Jensen's opposition to John Howard's IR agenda.
The seven page article in current affairs magazine The Monthly, reports Dr Jensen saying that the Liberal Party has drifted away from its Christian roots.
Dr Jensen tells Andrew West that he agrees with Judith Brett's assessment of liberalism in Australia.
"Brett discusses liberalism of the early 20th century, with its emphasis on freedom with responsibility, on a person standing up in his or her own right to serve others. Now that's Christian," says Dr Jensen.
"You get to the end of the 20th century and the rhetoric is the same " freedom is still the great value for the Liberals " but the sense of responsibility is no longer there."
"In the original sense of freedom you take responsibility, which is to say, you love others. Your freedom is limited by the commitment you have for other people. By the time you get to the end of the 20th century, there's no sense of love for others. It's purely what suits "me'.
“I think the Liberal Party originally began with a Christian view of human freedom and has lost it, so that what was human freedom has become multiplicity of choice."
Dr Jensen particularly cites merchant banker turned politician Malcolm Turnbull.
"Mr Turnbull, whom I understand is a professing Roman Catholic, is putting forward a view of human freedom as being almost a supreme good," says Dr Jensen.
"Now, I think his view of human freedom is very different from the Bible's view and I'm sorry that his thinking hasn't been shaped by a Biblical view of human freedom."
Current political and economic trends, including the marginalisation of the union movement, also have the potential to undermine democracy, argues Dr Jensen.
"The decline of free associations is very bad for democracy because democratic skills are learned in free associations," says Dr Jensen.
"If they disappear, the government will fill the vacuum and that will be very bad indeed. We need a society in which we are governed at all sorts of levels."
Andrew West's article is not available on the web. However The Monthly is available for $6.50 from most news agencies.
