“Our political system has its problems, but we have a steady democracy, something that is not a foregone conclusion, neither is the quality of those who stand to be elected in the federal Parliament: we owe them for their will to serve people”. This is how the Australian Bishops start off in a message published in the run-up to the election of 2nd July 2016. In an election campaign, “economy is of course important, and sound governance is needed too”, but, the Bishops warn, this must not become “a sort of a false god who even human beings are sacrificed to”. That’s why they want “to give a voice to those who are voiceless and to make their faces be seen”. Refugees and asylum seekers, natives, victims of sex abuse, victims of domestic abuse, those in their mother’s womb, old people, mentally ill people, addicts, victims of modern forms of slavery, the desperately poor: all these people “are politically irrelevant, the result of the election will not depend on them”, yet, according to the Bishops, “a society should not be judged by the way it manages its economy but by the way it treats the people everyone throws away”. These must be the real issues in an election campaign, otherwise it would turn into “a political theatre”, and such issues must include families, that have been disadvantaged by the latest political decisions, and environmental issues. “Neither can we, as Christians, afford to be voiceless, we must make ourselves heard on all these issues”.