This term I’ve been exploring Movement and Migration in Australia with my Year 11 class. Sounds a little dull I know, but it allows me to tell them about my country (which I enjoy) and look at the good, bad and downright ugly when it comes to our history with refugees, migrants and our beautiful Indigenous people.

In my searching for classroom resources, I came across this YouTube clip of Hugh Jackman on George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight. 

In the clip, Jackman talks about when he lived in an Aboriginal community during his university years and the way in which politics and the media have impacted Aboriginal people’s lives.

Here’s some lines from the interview:

“… it angered me the way the media had portrayed the Aboriginal people, because my experience of living with them was… not envious, but I was inspired.

I was inspired by the family, I was inspired by the community. I was inspired by their culture, their togetherness. I’d only seen images of problems. You know whether it was drinking, whether it was poverty, whether it was health issues, that’s all I knew about the Aboriginal people and I wanted to go back and say: ‘hang on a sec, forget those images, you need to go out there and we need to learn from the Aboriginal people’. That, and also I went to a school, where I had no idea about The Stolen Generation. I didn’t even know that happened, [and] I’m not that old.”

I’m really glad Hugh Jackman is a celebrity who advocates for our Aboriginal people and I really love that quote. It struck a chord with me on a number of levels, actually.

It was wonderful how he was so inspired that he wanted to share his newfound, correct understanding of Indigenous Australians with others. Yet, I felt he also took the words right out of my mouth when it came to the media’s portrayal of Christians in recent times.

If you’ve never been inside a Church and all you know of Church is from the media, all you’ve ever seen is ‘images of problems’. Of course there’s problems in the Church, because there’s problems everywhere. But please don’t think that’s the full story.

I understand if you’ve been scared off. That’s why I wanted to write this blog.

I also understand that the media need a good story, regardless of whether it’s 100% true or not.

Driving around Sydney at the moment I keep seeing Facebook advertisements at bus stops that read “fake news is not our friend”.

If fake news is not your friend when it comes Christianity, then this blog is for you.

I can’t promise it, but I can assure you my aim is to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

So help me God.

Yours in a post-truth world,

Alison