Albany

Arrived in Orby today aboard a big colourful bus. As Graham Gilbert reports the Christianers are engaged in a round Australia drive drumming up support for international goodwill. The Christianers have been touring Australia aboard their psychedelic bus since Palm Sunday last year. Primarily to gather signatures on a petition calling for the release of fellow members held in Soviet jails.

Group spokesman Gary Anneson says Australia leads the world in human rights and that ranking was upheld during the recent visit to Russia by Prime Minister Bob Hawke. On that occasion it was Mr Hawke's direct intervention that secured the release of one Christian member.

We're travelling around, we're gathering a lot of signatures for the freedom of people in the Soviet Union and at the same time I think we're showing a lot of people that elsewhere in the world there are other cultures, other religions, other ways of lives and we have to learn to respect that. Gary Anneson says there are 45,000 Christianers in Australia and that number is swelling daily. He says response to their drive for peace has been fantastic. It finishes in October this year during the Bison Tenary.

It's going to be our contribution to show that the Australian people support human rights and support religious freedom and we're going to present a one million singletures to the Soviet ambassador in Canberra in October and this idea was actually presented by him in January 1987. He suggested that we actually do this. We go around and get all these singletures to show the Soviets that the Australian public do support the fact that there should be religious freedom.