World Congress on Families comes to Sydney

For broadcast on 2CH Sydney, 26 May 2013.

Last week Sydney hosted the seventh World Congress on Families, culminating in the launch of a Declaration upholding the “natural family” as “the basic unit on which human societies are built and … the best environment for the moral, social and emotional development of children.”

The Declaration goes on to state that:

• The economy should serve the family rather than the family being a servant of the economic system and the state

• Economic policies should enable families to hold productive property and to be independent of the welfare state

• Employers and governments need to respect the needs of natural families in wage and labour policies

• Governments must pursue policies of affordable housing, particulary for young first home buyers.

The Congress appealed to policy makers, community leaders, the media and people everywhere to recognise that overwhelming research-based evidence demonstrated the importance of marriage and families to our society.

I’m Rod Benson for the NSW Council of Churches.