18 | February | 2016 | Words, By George!

By Kristina Keneally

The first time I listened to Tim Minchin’s new song “Come Home (Cardinal Pell)” I cackled. Brilliant rhyming. Religion and prison. Bell with a Pellian knell. Minchin writes poetry with a pungent point.

The second time I listened to it I was just double checking that Minchin never used the word “fuck.” He often does. He didn’t this time. He didn’t have to – the grotesque nature of the circumstances doesn’t need to be punctuated by obscenity.

The third time I listened to it I cried. I was driving in my car. I cried big fat tears that caused me to pull over to the side of the road.

I’m not a victim of sexual abuse. No one in my family is. I do know people who are. I am a Catholic and a public critic of Cardinal Pell and the Catholic church on its handling of cases of child sexual abuse. I’ve expressed frustration at the church’s unwillingness to reform in response to this abject, catastrophic failure of its mission.
Tim Minchin asks George Pell to ‘come home’ in expletive-filled new song
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Crying at Tim Minchin’s little ditty calling on Cardinal Pell to come home and face the music is the last reaction I expected to have.

Listening to victim’s testimony is harrowing. That makes me cry. Sometimes it makes me furious. And sometimes, I admit, I have to turn it off or stop reading because it’s too much to take in.

But a whimsical, acerbic and mocking take down of Cardinal Pell? What’s there to cry about?

For starters, it provoked sorrow at my loss of faith in the church, an organisation that has done much good but nonetheless values its rules, assets, and male privilege above all else.

I cried because there was little else I could do with my deep fury that neither Pell nor his mates at the Vatican appear to take seriously the need to respond fully and openly, and to reform the church, in the face of the child sexual abuse crisis.

Jesus said there is no greater love than to lay down your life for another. Cardinal Pell says there’s no way I could risk my health by flying business class to Australia.

I know Jesus says “judge not lest you be judged” but I reckon it’s a fair question to ask, Cardinal Pell: what would Jesus do?

Jesus said “let the little children come to me” and “you must be like a child to enter the kingdom of heaven.” Jesus valued children in their innocence and goodness. The church allowed priests to destroy that goodness and then valued the institution above the victims.

But if I’m honest, it’s not just a loss of faith in a human institution. It’s a challenge to my faith in a loving and gracious God.

I long ago stopped buying the idea of intercessory prayer – the kind where you ask God or some saint or Mary to intercede on your behalf or someone else to cure an illness or relieve a burden. I don’t believe God interferes in human lives in that way.

But I do – well on most days anyway – still believe in a source of love, grace and goodness that motivates our human existence.

Watching Cardinal Pell flounce about in his regal gear and flout the royal commission, watching the institution supposedly founded by Jesus grotesquely morph into something so removed from the teachings of Christ: it shakes me to the core. It shakes the very foundations of belief. It gives me no hope.

When Minchin sings “And if Lord God omnipotent reigneth, he will take one look at you and say, go home Cardinal Pell … I think the lord is calling you home Georgie”, I wonder: where the hell God is in all of this?

I feel hesitant honestly expressing my reactions. How much more significantly, terribly, horribly wronged must victims of child sexual abuse feel? How much courage must it take to testify to a royal commission about something so foul that’s happened to you? How deep must their feelings of betrayal, sorrow, loss, and anger be?

Here’s fresh insight into Pell’s response to the child sex abuse crisis. It’s not encouraging.

How can we as a society not pay attention? How can the church, and one of its supposed “princes”, Cardinal Pell fail to face this great wrong and move heaven and earth to make it right?

No less a legal mind than Frank Brennan outlines the significant charges and questions that Cardinal Pell has to answer under oath and cross-examination. Or as Minchin simply sings: we have a right to know what you knew.

Cardinal Pell should, as Minchin sings, come home. But if he won’t, some victims of child sexual abuse want to go to sit in front of him when he testifies via video link. The proceeds of Minchin’s song are going to fund their travels.

If you want to support them, buy the song. Just be forewarned: Minchin is a genius who provokes hilarity and horror in just four minutes of melody. If you are Catholic, I recommend not listening while you are driving.

Two hundred and twenty current and former personnel join class action claiming negligence and breach of contract

The sailors were among 320 men and women who enlisted between 2010 and 2012 on contracts that reportedly said they would receive training to get a certificate IV in engineering in four years.

Sailors who enlisted on the promise of trade qualifications are suing the Royal Australian Navy for failing to deliver, with 220 current and former naval personnel joining a class action claiming negligence and breach of contract.

The sailors were among 320 men and women who enlisted between 2010 and 2012 on contracts that reportedly said they would receive training to get a certificate IV in engineering in four years under the marine technician 2010 category career continuum program, or MT2010.

The lead plaintiff, Clayton Searle, told the ABC the training was never delivered. “At the four-year mark they were offering new courses to act as compensation for where they had gone wrong, but it was still three years before we’d receive a lesser qualification than what we were scheduled to have,” he said.

Jon Henderson, who joined at the same time, told the ABC it was “quite obvious” the recruits were never going to get the promised training and said they were instead frequently left with nothing to do.

“I was basically warehoused in a site called PSU, or personnel support unit, where numerous sailors basically sit around, read the paper, go online,” Henderson said.

“Kids are going in there at 17, 18 and leaving with nothing. There are guys who’ve been in there 10 years and are coming out and having to do excess training just to get a qualification to get a civilian job.”

Stewart Levitt, the lead lawyer on the case, said the sailors were “effectively conned into enlistment”. “They were effectively misled and strung along and left in a position where they were asked to do either other duties or no duties at all,” he said.

Levitt said some had been placed in a room and told they couldn’t leave until they signed a waiver of the training agreement. Three years in, the sailors were reportedly told they could get a certificate III in engineering, a lesser qualification, if they signed on for another term.

“Overwhelmingly they don’t want to remain in the navy because the navy has done the wrong thing by them,” Levitt said.

Levitt told Guardian Australia he had been contacted by recruits in other navy and defence force programs who said they had also not received promised training.

“They say that this is the tip of the iceberg and asked us to take on their cases, which they describe as very similar,” he said.

“It’s wasteful not only in terms of taxpayer dollars but in terms of human resources – there are 320 people who are in the prime of their lives in terms of employability who are frustrated and denied their ability to contribute as taxpayers who are actively participating.”

According to a 2014 report by the Australian National Audit Office, the navy had a “critical” shortfall of 370 qualified marine technicians, or 23.5% of their required taskforce, in June 2014.

That report said the MT2010 program had been intended to address “career dissatisfaction” among marine technicians, concern about their qualifications and “lack of meaningful shore-based jobs”. It said the chief of navy, Vice Admiral Tim Barrett, had ordered the training of junior marine technicians be prioritised.

The class action is scheduled for the New South Wales supreme court on 20 May.