Mr MIKE BAIRD (Manly) [6.04 p.m.]: I have toiled and debated about whether to raise this matter because the challenge in this House is often to avoid revealing personal details. It is tempting to bring one's personal self into this place but the brutal reality is that often words we say in this place and outside this place are used and twisted. Thus there is a tendency to remain private and enclosed, and not to share the things that matter to us. I have taken the challenge today to talk about the things that matter because I believe in them and I want to say them. I want to talk about a community campaign called Jesus All about Life, which is about the church reaching into the community and creating relationships.

The campaign is supported by a range of denominations, including my local church of St Matthews and many churches in my community. The aim of the campaign is to have more than 2,000 churches across New South Wales and the country sign up and then actively be involved in helping family, friends and community to understand the person of Jesus via a range of cultural, community and arts events. The campaign, which will run over seven weeks, is a celebration of being alive. If we understand that the author of life and all in it is God, then we must celebrate what we are provided with. In that context many people throughout Australia have shared the many wonderful things they have been provided with. Too often in life we focus on all the problems and trials before us and we forget about the simple things that we enjoy and are thankful for.

When I looked at the campaign online I found many things that people were thankful for: warm slippers, the beach and a beautiful grandma inspires one person. There was even an entry from a young girl who said she loved sparkly party hats. As background to the campaign, Martin Robinson, a researcher at the Bible Society in the United Kingdom, addressed a conference in Thailand about the work and said that there needed to be engagement with culture. He said:

In western Europe we have succeeded in producing a generation that knows nothing about the scriptures. So serious is this lack of knowledge that in some departments of Fine Arts in our universities they are having to run courses in the Bible so students can understand medieval art and English literature. Whether we like it or not, we are living in a society that knows increasingly less and less about the Bible.

We need to engage with our culture.

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