Archie Roach sang at the recent Human Rights Awards hosted by everyone’s favourite author and

commedian, the increasingly outspoken Magda Szubanski, and we couldn’t resist playing the track It’s Not Too Late on Monday Drive last week – this powerful ballad from his latest album Let Love Rule seemed fitting as we discussed  the very real pressures bearing down on families all over Sydney this Christmas with Lorraine Murphy, the program manager at Stretch-A-Family. High rents, spiralling costs of living including transport and food, and drug and alcohol dependancies, are among the leading causes of families breaking down, she said. Stretch-A-Family is a secular not-for-profit which finds temporary foster accommodation for children, teenagers and babies who have nowhere to go. Look out for the podcast if you’d like to hear how this brilliant system works. You can be single, married, straight or LGBTQI and offer a safe place for a child in need. Stretch A Family’s rigorous induction process gauges the emotional preparedness of prospective foster carers and offers training and support.

Other not-for-profits out there haven’t fared as well in recent weeks with The Daily Telegraph demanding the total “defunding” of environment groups (and Total Environment Centre in particular) in an editorial which accused green groups of exploiting the generosity of the Baird government. Yet TEC for instance is funded almost entirely on public donations and non government grants. As Jeff explained,  “TEC would not have survived for 40 years if we weren’t supported by the community. While minority vested interests hold sway over very important government decisions, it’s our job to defend the public interest.”

Who would have thought Mike Baird’s epidermis, and Barnaby Joyce’s for that matter, is so thin they must shut down any voice they don’t agree with? While Baird was not amused by The Golden Bulldozer Award for environmental destruction which was presented to him outside his Manly office by a crowd of several hundred people, Joyce is annoyed by activists blowing the whistle on instances of animal cruelty which lead to undue media attention (such as the acclaimed Four Corners report). He’d like to see Ag-gag laws, which have resulted in the criminal prosecution of animal rights whsitel blowers in the US, brought to Australia.

But this is exactly what not for profit organisations, which take their charity status very seriously, are supposed to be doing – exercising the freedom of speech which underpins our democracy, and keeping the big money honest. If you’d like to help TEC resist the latest battering from the Murdoch Press, and continue to raise a voice for our ecosystems try this.

Ruth, Cassie, Riley