The pressing issues in Australian politics are not the lack of shared values but low productivity and greed. This is where reform efforts should be focused.

Is Australia riven with cultural and religious factions as the right, especially Pauline Hanson, would have us believe? There is no data to justify this claim. There are divisive people in every racial, cultural or religious group, English, European, African, American and Asian. However, 99 per cent of every racial cultural or religious group are good people, while a small percentage can be thoroughly racist, opinionated, partisan and disruptive.

But yes, we are divided, not ethnically or ‘culturally’, but economically. What values are we to draw on to address this division?

The conservative political voice claims we are united through distinctive Australian values but the values they claim to be Australian are essentially common human values. All want to live in harmony. All want to cherish family. All want freedom from domination and tyranny. All want honesty and mutual trust. All want to be governed justly and fairly. I see nothing in these so-called values, recited but never defined by opposition leadership, that address our most pressing issues.

The same voice argues that our way of life is founded on Judeo-Christian values, as if these values exclude people of other religious or ethnic backgrounds. It seems most interpret Christian values as devoted to personal piety and sexual behaviour. These matters are addressed but the overriding biblical concern is wealth and its connection to........

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