Mr MURPHY (10:25 PM) —Last Sunday, my wife Adriana and I had the privilege of attending the celebration of the Eucharist to mark the 40th anniversary of the ordination of Monsignor Vince Redden, Parish Priest of St Mark's Catholic Church, Drummoyne. The celebration was a great tribute to a humble and very popular parish priest. The congregation was vast and included Monsignor Redden's parents and other family members, as well as members of the clergy, local parishioners and many friends of Monsignor Redden. During the Eucharist we all prayed for Monsignor Redden. Our prayer read:

During Monsignor Redden's homily, he mentioned the dwindling number of vocations to the priesthood in Australia and called for more vocations. He observed that he might be the last parish priest of St Mark's Church—an observation that struck the heart of all of us. The time has come when the devotion to the sacrament of holy orders is reaching rock-bottom. This is particularly prevalent in Australia, while in many other countries there is a spectacular resurgence in religious vocations of all kinds.

The significance for Australia is profound. Australia's legal, administrative and jurisprudential systems are based on solid Christian ethics. Indeed, the very notion of the rule of law, the doctrine of universalism—that is, one person, one law—and a host of other cornerstones of jurisprudence and justice are grounded in our Christian ethos. Therefore, the decline in the number of Christian vocations marks an adverse trend away from the very foundation of our democracy. With the decline of Christian vocations comes the erosion of universalism, the erosion of the rule of law, the erosion of the natural law, the erosion of natural justice, and the erosion of judicial review. In this House we know that cultural, legal and moral relativism are becoming increasingly more prevalent in the laws we make today.

Monsignor Redden's call for more vocations, whatever one's religion, needs all the support we can give. Let us strive for the restoration of those little republics of church that enshrine the critical link between morality and law. Let us deny the threat of agnosticism, with its lie in denying transcendental truth and, with it, the very foundation upon which our democracy so critically depends. Let us preserve our cultural, moral and political heritage that makes Australia one of the most desired places on earth to live.

Relativism, consequentialism and liberalism are the very roots of morally inconsistent law-making. If we do not preserve our Christian cultural legacy, we will lose it in favour of another matrix, whether it is an alternative theistic belief or whether it is the worship of ego (liberalism), money (materialism), the state (nationalism) or some other morally erroneous ideology. Let us work for the preservation of our Christian legacy and encourage, ever more vigorously, teaching institutions to teach only truth. In so doing, we will play our part in ensuring that vocations thrive, thus preserving the moral rubric of our political and legal system which is so essential for the practical implementation of morality, and we will realise the ideals of Monsignor Vince Redden.