CATH NEWS REPORT: Christian leaders will question the NSW Premier, Kristina Keneally, and the state Opposition Leader, Barry O'Farrell, on a range of social issues during a special leaders' forum at State Parliament next week, reports the Sydney Morning Herald.
Videos of the leaders being asked eight questions were posted on the lobby group's website. Julia Gillard also answered the questions when she replaced Mr Rudd as prime minister.The invitation-only event scheduled for next Tuesday, organised by the Australian Christian Lobby, is inspired by a similar exercise before last year's federal election involving the then prime minister, Kevin Rudd, and the federal Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott.
The ACL's state director, David Hutt, said Ms Keneally and Mr O'Farrell agreed to the forum in December.
"It's an important opportunity for the leaders of both parties - both major sides of politics - to present themselves to the Christian constituency and try and vie for their support at the election," he said. "It will be a very senior audience from the Christian constituency, with a number of heads of denominations.
"It's virtually all denominations," he said.
Both leaders will face the forum separately, but will be asked the same questions. Mr Hutt said ethics classes would be on the agenda, as well as questions on social justice issues, such as poverty and homelessness.
''Ethics classes are an issue which a great many people in the church have a strong interest in. It's one of many issues. The night is not all about ethics classes.''
The Catholic Church this week voiced its displeasure at the opposition's ''backflip'' on ethics classes on the front page of the Catholic Weekly.
Bishop Julian Porteous, the auxiliary Bishop of Sydney, told the newspaper that from a Christian perspective, the ethics classes were "very defective".
"It is what Pope Benedict has so often warned against - a dictatorship of relativism," he said.
Separately, comments by Mr O'Farrell to the National Press Club that his party was unlikely to enter into a preference deal with the NSW Greens was "cautiously welcomed" by the ACL, said a media release.
"The NSW system of optional preferential voting means there is no reason why the Coalition should give preferences to the Greens," said Mr Hutt, the NSW ACL Director.
"More and more we are seeing that the Greens' agenda goes far beyond environmental protection. They support a range of social engineering policies that are clearly making a lot of people uncomfortable.
"I strongly suspect that Mr O'Farrell will be rewarded politically for any decision not to preference the Greens in the same way Victorian Premier, Ted Baillieu was rewarded on Election Day for a similar decision."
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