With the election just weeks away, the call has gone out from a coalition of conservative Christian groups to pray, pray and pray again for a 2019-style miracle to save the Morrison government.
The coalition, aligned with the so-called “Canberra Declaration”, claims to represent “80,000 Aussies who love their country”. It might exist on the fringes of political debate, but it has managed to command the attention of no fewer than three high-profile Liberal MPs.
Queensland Senator Amanda Stoker, South Australian Senator Alex Antic, and Victorian MP Michael Sukkar all agreed to front up to a national Zoom to commemorate Anzac Day last Monday and kick off a weeks-long “Prayer and Gospel campaign”.
Sukkar, the most senior of the government trio, has been assistant treasurer as well as minister for housing and minister for homelessness, social and community housing. Stoker has been an assistant minister covering three portfolios. Antic, the most junior of the three, is best known for siding with One Nation against vaccine mandates.
The Canberra Declaration group has worked itself into an apparent frenzy over who might be elected to federal Parliament on May 21.
“We need to see Godly leaders placed in our Parliament,” the group noted in an email which has found its way into the Crikey bunker, “but Australia’s greatest need is an outpouring of the Holy Spirit and revival and transformation for our nation.” (Words bolded as per the email to supporters.)
The Canberra Declaration’s call to arms sets forth a plan that would swing into action with the two-and-a-half-hour Anzac Day Zoom call, which it called “a very historic occasion and a night not to be missed” (also in bold). The organisers also laid claim to the “Christian foundations” of Anzac Day.
Advance sizzle for the event also featured “special guest” Col Stringer, a Top End evangelist known in Christian circles as Pastor Crocodile Dundee. Stringer is also Australian President of the International Convention of Faith Ministries International. Queensland State MP Dr Mark Robinson, an outspoken conservative family-values LNP politician, was to be another headliner.
What else would four high-powered MPs funded by the taxpayer get up to on a Monday night?
The Canberra Declaration believes its “united prayer and fasting” efforts have so far brought a “major turnaround” in the lead-up to the election. It cites the “ongoing persecution of Israel Falou” as eliciting support “from both Christians and unbelievers”.
“The team at the Canberra Declaration have never seen such a level of unified pushback against overtly evil political policy in an election,” it said. “The prayer effort for our nation in the 18 May 2019 Federal Election was unprecedented and so was the miracle!“ it proclaimed, again in bold.
So why did the Liberal politicians sign up to the cause? Senator Antic chose to shoot the questioner rather than answer the question.
“I wasn’t even aware of Crikey until relatively recently but having read some of the content I have concluded that there is absolutely no point in me engaging with Fake News websites which pretend to report news but are essentially activists,” he responded in an email.
(The senator made a name for himself late last year by allegedly misleading Scott Morrison on whether or not he had been vaccinated and was directed to a COVID medical hotel after flying into Adelaide apparently unvaccinated. Just saying.)
Senator Stoker’s office said she had agreed to give a short talk on the importance of the Anzac spirit, but did not end up attending the call “due to other commitments”.
Crikey is yet to hear from Michael Sukkar and Mark Robinson.
