Sydney May 28: Christian community leaders met yesterday in North Sydney to celebrate the 1967 referendum anniversary with hard-hitting addresses delivered by Josephite Sr Susan Connelly, former diplomat Tony Kevin and visiting anthropologist Dr Jojo Fung.

	Sr Susan Connelly

In her talk, well-known Josephite, Sr Susan Connelly compared the colonisation process in East Timor with the loss of Aboriginal language and culture in Australia.

"Each language has a particular way of interpreting the world, adding to humanity's store of truth and to its ability to perceive," she told the annual gathering.

"We are probably unaware of the extent of the loss to the world of the 150 Australian Aboriginal languages which are now dead.

However, the East Timor advocate says that it is not just Aboriginal languages that are being destroyed.

She accuses the Federal Government of wasting "vast amounts of money" on advertising that is not intended to inform but to deceive.

"The attack on truth which is integral to the prostitution of language as practised by the present Federal Government is behind its inability to express the sorrow of the population at large for the treatment of the indigenous peoples of this land," she said.

"The loss of any language is a loss to the whole human race apart from the death blow to the culture from which it comes and which it forms," Sr Connelly says.

Also speaking at the Forum was visiting Jesuit anthropologist Rev Dr Jojo Fung and former Australian Ambassador to Poland and Cambodia, Mr Tony Kevin.

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Former "human shield" in Iraq, Donna Mulhearn, also made an appearance — her last in Sydney before facing charges in Alice Springs under the Defence (Special Undertakings) Act 1952 which carries maximum penalties of up to seven years in jail.

Journalist, Greg Barnes, writing in crikey.com today asks if the Federal Government should "be using draconian Cold War laws on the citizenry of Australia almost 20 years after the Berlin Wall came down?"

Sr Connelly's speech will be available on the New Pentecost Forum website tonight (www.newpentecost.com). The speeches by Dr Fung and Mr Kevin will be available online later this week.

The New Pentecost Forum, a partnership of over 15 Christian agencies, congregations and groups, was established in 2005.

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