Free Votes

After watching Q and A the other night I started thinking about why all Australian politicians are keen to parade their religion in front of the population - and then whinge about how it is "personal and private".

Actually they don't really parade their beliefs - what they all do is tell the world that they are of the "Christian faith" and that they regularly go to church and read the bible - and some of them do.

Basically it is a way of getting "free votes".

These votes are free because internal polling shows that the people who are genuinely religious in our community prefer to vote for candidates who also have "the faith". And the way our society has evolved over the past two hundred years is that a very large percentage of older voters have been captured by the Christian faith - it's probably their form of insurance.

So if you are a politician and you need votes (and who doesn't) then you will profess to being a "practising Christian".

So that is why you won't find any politicians who say they are - atheist, agnostic, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu or anything other than Christian - because their "free" votes would just move on to their opponents.

My guess is that the numbers of atheists and agnostics and other religions in the political class is about the same as the population generally - Google will give you the current answers on that.

But somehow we let them get away with declaring their "Christianity". In the same way that they declare their financial interests they should be compelled to *truthfully* declare their personal and religious interests.