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<title>Journey - Fast News</title>
<link>http://www.journeyonline.com.au/</link>
<description>Fast News from Journey</description>
<language>en-au</language>
<pubDate>Tue, 31 Jan 2012 15:37:20 +1100</pubDate>
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<managingEditor>mardi.lumsden@ucaqld.com.au (Mardi Lumsden)</managingEditor>
<webMaster>osker.lau@ucaqld.com.au (Osker Lau)</webMaster>
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<title><![CDATA[Uniting Church Volunteer Recognised on Australia Day]]> - Journey</title>
<link>http://www.journeyonline.com.au/home.php?inc=fastNews</link>
<description><![CDATA[Lu Piper, a Uniting Church volunteer in Papua New Guinea, has been awarded a Medal (OAM) of the Order of Australia for service to the international community through educational, health and pastoral roles.

The Medal, awarded on Australia Day, recognises Luâs extensive work in PNG as well as her contribution to indigenous education in Australia and her work as a parish minister in the Anglican Church. Lu, a trained teacher, worked in PNG in this capacity from 1968 â 1972. She then was seconded to the Melanesian Council of Churches to work on a Christian education syllabus for Primary school students. She spent several years teaching in a remote indigenous community in Australia before returning to work at Gaulim Teacherâs College in PNG
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<author>journey@ucaqld.com.au (Journey Editor)</author>
<pubDate>Tue, 31 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +1100</pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[Easy access triggers explosion in online gambling - study]]> - Journey</title>
<link>http://www.journeyonline.com.au/home.php?inc=fastNews</link>
<description><![CDATA[POKER machines may be in the spotlight but academics warn online gambling could become a significant public health problem if action is not taken to protect vulnerable users.

The largest study of online gambling habits in Australia, which surveyed more than 6500 people, found 50 per cent of participants had taken up gambling in the past six years, making it the fastest-growing form of gambling in the country. Lead researcher Sally Gainsbury said it was highly accessible and convenient and appealed to punters already involved in multiple forms of gambling.]]></description>
<author>journey@ucaqld.com.au (Journey Editor)</author>
<pubDate>Mon, 30 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +1100</pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[When adventurers give until it hurts ]]> - Journey</title>
<link>http://www.journeyonline.com.au/home.php?inc=fastNews</link>
<description><![CDATA[
Could the surge in volunteer tourism be doing more harm than good?

VOLUNTEER-related travel has been one of the biggest trends in tourism in the past decade but who is measuring how much good it is doing?

With \"voluntourism\" now a mainstream commodity, many are questioning to what extent the good-natured intentions of travellers are being matched by benefits to communities.

Advertisement: Story continues below \"With the growth in the area, there\'s a real concern about why people are doing projects and whether it is just to make them feel good,\" says a Sydney-based expert in responsible tourism, Stephen Wearing.

\"It has been commoditised by mainstream tourism and they [tourism operators] have realised they can turn a profit out of it.
]]></description>
<author>journey@ucaqld.com.au (Journey Editor)</author>
<pubDate>Mon, 30 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +1100</pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[New TV series invites participation from religious young Aussies ]]> - Journey</title>
<link>http://www.journeyonline.com.au/home.php?inc=fastNews</link>
<description><![CDATA[Religious young Australians will put their faith to the test in a new ABC TV series that challenges them to live a totally different life for two weeks, reports news.com.au.

Applications are now open for the experimental series, Holy Switch, that will put six Australians aged 18-23 and their families in a spiritual-style exchange program in March, April and May this year.]]></description>
<author>journey@ucaqld.com.au (Journey Editor)</author>
<pubDate>Mon, 30 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +1100</pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[Breaking the \'boat people\' deadlock]]> - Journey</title>
<link>http://www.journeyonline.com.au/home.php?inc=fastNews</link>
<description><![CDATA[If you are tired of hearing about asylum seekers imagine how weary they must be.
 
Much of the analysis regarding asylum seekers does not seem to drive home the core truth: that the debate conducted by politicians is not really about solving the so called refugee problem. It is predominantly a show for an audience. It is a game of hardball. 


That game is an old one played by tyrannical regimes throughout time and perfected under Nazism by Joseph Goebbels. First, demonise a group. Then you can progressively suspend their rights and use them to shore up your power.]]></description>
<author>journey@ucaqld.com.au (Journey Editor)</author>
<pubDate>Mon, 30 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +1100</pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[Junior sport can cost parents a fortune ]]> - Journey</title>
<link>http://www.journeyonline.com.au/home.php?inc=fastNews</link>
<description><![CDATA[THE search for the next Darren Lockyer or Laura Geitz is costing Queensland families thousands of dollars a year, at a time when the State Government is urging kids to exercise more and fight childhood obesity. 

A family with two kids each involved in both summer and winter sports would shell out up to $2000 a year on fees and equipment alone - and hundreds of dollars more on petrol and other transport costs.

The Queensland Government heavily promotes junior sport and will stage a series of \"Super Sports sign-on days\" next month, but a Government spokesman said it was up to individual clubs and sports to keep fees affordable.

Mark Bates, a financial counsellor from Uniting Care Community, said some parents felt they were \"letting the kids down\" because they could no longer afford the cost of junior sport.

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<author>journey@ucaqld.com.au (Journey Editor)</author>
<pubDate>Mon, 30 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +1100</pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[Beyond Australia\'s adolescent identity crisis]]> - Journey</title>
<link>http://www.journeyonline.com.au/home.php?inc=fastNews</link>
<description><![CDATA[It is easy to forget how young Australia is. Many look to 1788 as the source of national identity, but  Federation is actually a closer approximation of birth. Given that the creation of the Commonwealth was driven in part by a movement that sought to formally distinguish what is Australian from what is British, 1 January more accurately captures the beginnings of nationhood than 26 January.

If we thus take 1901 as our birthyear, then our country turned 111 on New Year\'s Day. A mere drop in the ocean, in a world where China, Egypt, India, Iran and Mexico have histories that stretch back uninterrupted into antiquity. Our own Indigenous history is at least 500 times older.

Even the US, the closest comparable country in terms of genesis, is far ahead in maturity. By the time the First Fleet pulled into Sydney Cove, 12 years had passed since the American Declaration of Independence. When our first Federal Parliament was inaugurated, the US Constitution had been in place for over 100 years. We have been singing our current national anthem only since 1984.

This youthfulness contributes to the ongoing tensions around what being Australian means, or indeed who we ought to be. Like many adolescents, Australia is going through a protracted identity crisis.

]]></description>
<author>journey@ucaqld.com.au (Journey Editor)</author>
<pubDate>Wed, 25 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +1100</pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[Rewards in giving aid overseas ]]> - Journey</title>
<link>http://www.journeyonline.com.au/home.php?inc=fastNews</link>
<description><![CDATA[CONGREGATIONS are reaping rewards from giving to overseas aid projects, church leaders say. 
Henley Fulham Uniting Church minister Reverend Malcolm Rawlings said getting involved united congregations and made international issues more real to them.

Inspired to help after watching news coverage of Papua New Guinea, his congregation raised $25,000 to have a health clinic built on the island of Numfor.

\"This was something making a practical difference in the lives of people overseas and we found that all people, both in the congregation and outside it, were excited about supporting it,\" Mr Rawlings said. \"People who normally wouldn\'t work together were working together and supporting each other. It gave us an opportunity to talk about faith in practice and people were pleased to see the church was involved in more than just looking at their own buildings. It\'s that sense of giving without getting anything back.\"

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<author>journey@ucaqld.com.au (Journey Editor)</author>
<pubDate>Tue, 24 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +1100</pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[Constitutional reform: choosing the path of hope]]> - Journey</title>
<link>http://www.journeyonline.com.au/home.php?inc=fastNews</link>
<description><![CDATA[In his moving apology to the First Peoples in February 2008, then-prime minister Kevin Rudd spoke of the \'unfinished business\' of our nation.

He likened aspects of our history to a \'stain on our soul\'. Most importantly, however, he spoke of hope - of a way in which all the people of our nation may be truly reconciled to the past in order to build a strong future together.

Four years after this historical event, I welcome the Report from the Expert Panel on Indigenous Constitutional Reform. The panel have travelled the country and listened to stories of pain, dispossession and betrayal from our Indigenous brothers and sisters. They have also listened to the call of those wanting change - demanding that our nation do more in the hope that we can become more. These calls for change came from both Indigenous and non-Indigenous citizens, who were united by a shared desire to take the next practical step towards reconciliation in Australia.

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<author>journey@ucaqld.com.au (Journey Editor)</author>
<pubDate>Tue, 24 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +1100</pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[Italian shipwreck captain \'cried like a baby\': chaplain]]> - Journey</title>
<link>http://www.journeyonline.com.au/home.php?inc=fastNews</link>
<description><![CDATA[The captain of the wrecked Costa Concordia \"cried like a baby\" hours after the crash, says a priest, in a report by AFP published in the Daily Telegraph.

The captain hugged the ship\'s chaplain, Father Raffaele Malena, hours after the luxury liner foundered off the island of Giglio, Italy, the priest said in an interview yesterday.

Interviewed by French magazine Famille Chretienne, Fr Malena said he was among the last to leave the ship at around 1.30am last Saturday and then stayed \"close to the injured\" in the tiny harbour of Giglio.

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<author>journey@ucaqld.com.au (Journey Editor)</author>
<pubDate>Mon, 23 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +1100</pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[WACC photo competition 2012 launched ]]> - Journey</title>
<link>http://www.journeyonline.com.au/home.php?inc=fastNews</link>
<description><![CDATA[The annual Photo competition of the World Association for Christian Communication (WACC), 2012, has been launched. The theme is: COMMUNICATION FOR ALL

The WACC Photo Competition 2012 seeks photos that illustrate the notion that communication is a basic human right, essential to people\'s dignity and community; or how communication promotes democratic values and social justice; or how communication helps restore voice and visibility to people, particularly vulnerable and disadvantaged groups.

]]></description>
<author>journey@ucaqld.com.au (Journey Editor)</author>
<pubDate>Tue, 17 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +1100</pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[From prisoner to religious poet]]> - Journey</title>
<link>http://www.journeyonline.com.au/home.php?inc=fastNews</link>
<description><![CDATA[A paradox of mystical experience is that it is often in contemplating emptiness, nothingness and darkness that the seeker comes to an awareness of divine light.

For some years this has been the preoccupation of the poet featured in this interview. It is also the subject of his poem, \'Via Negativa, the Divine Dark\', which won this year\'s Blake Poetry Prize.

Australian poet and publisher Robert Adamson spoke to Eureka Street TV at the National Art School Gallery, in Darlinghurst in inner Sydney. The interview, and reading of excerpts from the poem, took place against a backdrop of some of the finalist works from this year\'s Blake Prize for Religious Art.

In addition to the Blake Poetry Prize, Adamson recently received the 2011 Patrick White Award. The award worth $18,000 was established by White in 1973 from the proceeds of his Nobel Prize for Literature. It\'s given annually to an author who has \'made a contribution to Australian writing\' but has not, in the opinion of the judging committee, \'received due recognition for that contribution\'.

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<author>journey@ucaqld.com.au (Journey Editor)</author>
<pubDate>Tue, 10 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +1100</pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[Best of 2011: Breast sandwich]]> - Journey</title>
<link>http://www.journeyonline.com.au/home.php?inc=fastNews</link>
<description><![CDATA[This hospital is like a city where some people wear their names on lanyards around their necks and walk the corridors purposefully while others hobble, stagger or are pushed on trolleys or in wheelchairs. Then there are people like me who wander around, confused because there are no recognisable landmarks, street names or road signs, only painted lines to follow.

Every time I come here I go to a different address depending on the procedure of the day. Today I find myself in a corridor with doors to an outdoor seating area, so I duck out to call my mother.

\'Mum. Just reminding you about the op shop today.\'

\'But I\'ve just put out my medicine for tomorrow and there\'s something wrong. I should have one capsule that\'s half-red and half-blue, one that\'s green all over and three while pills. But I\'ve only got two white pills.\'

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<author>journey@ucaqld.com.au (Journey Editor)</author>
<pubDate>Fri, 6 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +1100</pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[Charity cheats to feel the law ]]> - Journey</title>
<link>http://www.journeyonline.com.au/home.php?inc=fastNews</link>
<description><![CDATA[MELBOURNE\'S poor are being cheated by the residents of Melbourne\'s richer suburbs. 
Needy families, whose children might have had a frugal Christmas, have been left with the bare bones of other people\'s yuletide dinners and their discarded Christmas trees.

The leftovers, including turkey carcasses, have been stuffed into charity bins in Kew, Hawthorn, and Fitzroy.

The charity organisations who put out the bins in the hope of people leaving wearable clothes and usable electrical goods have had to pay to have the rubbish removed. Sadly, Christmas brings even more rubbish.

Brotherhood of St Lawrence volunteer Monika Friedrich is right when she says well-off residents dumping garbage should be ashamed of themselves.

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<author>journey@ucaqld.com.au (Journey Editor)</author>
<pubDate>Fri, 6 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +1100</pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[Churches address asylum debate]]> - Journey</title>
<link>http://www.journeyonline.com.au/home.php?inc=fastNews</link>
<description><![CDATA[People smuggling had been turned into a political football that satisfied no one, minister of the City Uniting Church Ivan Roberts said in his Christmas Day sermon.
\'\'Despite the rhetoric from both sides ... the stark reality is that both sides have turned it into a political football over border protection rather than the challenge it is to respond with compassion to the needs of desperate people in desperate circumstances seeking refuge, somewhere safe to live.\'\'

Mr Roberts compared Australia\'s handling of asylum-seekers to the Christmas narrative, in which there was no place in the inn for the birth of Christ. He said the imposition of temporary protection visas and offshore processing policies were intended to discourage rather than respond to situations of human misery and need.

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<author>journey@ucaqld.com.au (Journey Editor)</author>
<pubDate>Tue, 3 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +1100</pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[Christmas lunch brings people together]]> - Journey</title>
<link>http://www.journeyonline.com.au/home.php?inc=fastNews</link>
<description><![CDATA[Christmas lunch brings people together
ASHLEIGH GLEESON
26 Dec, 2011 01:00 AM
PEOPLE who might otherwise be spending Christmas alone joined together yesterday and enjoyed chicken, ham, pork and mutton at Wesley Uniting Church.


Elder at the church Phil Sheath said it was the first time they had hosted the event, which is called The Sharing Samaritan\'s Christmas Dinner, and 70 people had made reservations to attend.



\"There was a need for it and we thought it was a nice thing to do because so many people might otherwise have Christmas on their own,\" he said.



\"It\'s been great - people from outside the church have been offering to volunteer and help out.\"

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<author>journey@ucaqld.com.au (Journey Editor)</author>
<pubDate>Tue, 3 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +1100</pubDate>
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