Good morning ,
If you Google "the purple economy", you'll come up with this definition:
"The Purple Economy represents a new vision of care work, the empowerment and autonomy of women to the functioning of economies, the wellbeing of societies and life sustainability". It uses the colour purple because of its association with the feminist movement.
But The Purple Economy is also a book written by Australian Max Wallace, subtitled "Supernatural Charities, Tax and the State". He uses the colour because of its association with clerical purple.
In our Lead Articles, a new article by Max in Rationale Magazine in which he argues (convincingly IMHO) that both the NZ
and Australian governments are, and have been for decades, complicit in so mixing with religious institutions that we could be said to live in "soft theocracies".
He describes a "striking example" from New Zealand:
"The Roman Catholic Bishops Empowering Act 1997 was assented to on 28 October 1997. It was introduced by the Hon Richard Prebble on behalf of six Catholic bishops. There was little debate, the legislation was passed on the voices, it was not reported in the media. Mr Prebble made the broad claim, without any detailed justification for it,
that:
I am satisfied that this Bill is the only way the Catholic Church can make these amendments. To do it by court would require dozens and dozens of very expensive court cases.
This is a very clear example of a
politician acting as a proxy for six bishops and a parliament acting as a proxy court for a church. The New Zealand parliament can engage in this proxy work as there is no complete separation of church and state in its constitutional monarchy. That is also true of Australian states. No state constitution has a clause separating church and state. "
And he concludes:
"Is it asking too much for future Australian and New Zealand republics to be characterised by a separation of government and religion when that referendum question arrives, or will we
simply exchange a Christian constitutional monarchy for a Christian republic? "
