Religiously Defending the Right to Remain Secular

Leslie Cannold provided a piece in The Age today in which I believe she stepped quite outside her journalistic brief of reporting or commenting on matters - in this case the High Court challenge to Commonwealth funding of school chaplaincy, particularly in public schools.

In her second paragraph she doesn't mince her words, saying that we should all be hoping this challenge succeeds and she concludes the article with the suggestion that this matter this matter goes to the heart of what she loves about Australia.

I decided to write directly to her and I offer my thoughts on the matter for your consideration.

Dear Leslie,
I am conversant with the many lines of argument in support of and against the federal funding of the National School Chaplaincy Program and in your article published in The Age today you mostly reflect familiar territory to me. However in two matters I believe you are in error and perhaps even intentionally misleading.

Firstly, you claim that the government is being less than transparent by placing the annual funding for the NSCP within general supply bills rather than in specific appropriation bills which would be subject to specific parliamentary debate and approval. Your implication is that this is sinister, a strategy to prevent the proper scrutiny of the matter by the parliament.

However, the parliament did have its say when the matter was fully debated in 2006/7 thus establishing the program, and as a result of that Bill being passed, the Federal Government through the Department of Education, Employment & Workplace Relations entered into contractual relationships with individual schools across the nation to provide funding for three years, contracts which were subsequently extended until the end of 2011. Since the funding being provided to these schools was now subject to a contract and no longer a matter for parliamentary debate, provision for the funding was made in the general Supply Bills.

The establishment of a new program beyond 2011, which the Government and the current Opposition promised to do in the lead-up to the recent election, will provide the appropriate place for the program to be subjected to parliamentary scrutiny.

This is not sinister in any way. It is not an abuse of power by anyone. It is simply the proper way government is carried out every day in this nation.

Secondly, in your second but last paragraph you have, I believe, misrepresented the meaning and intention of Section 116 of the Constitution by suggesting that this Bill is requiring "an Australian to be a person of faith ... to get a job."

The statement in the Constitution is clear - The Commonwealth shall not make any law establishing any religion, or imposing any religious observance, or for prohibiting the free exercise of any religion, and no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the Commonwealth.

I assume it is the last clause of this Section that Mr Williams and you think is being contravened by this program and the Bill establishing it. The Bill does no such thing. It simply provides special-purpose funding to schools, public and private, right across the nation. With this funding schools are able to purchase the services of a chaplain from a third party. Public schools are not allowed to employ chaplains directly and I suspect that this is because in that case a chaplain could be regarded as holding an office or public trust under the Commonwealth. Having said that, if state (not Commonwealth) schools were the employers then it would still have to be argued that this constituted an office or public trust under the Commonwealth.

The only places I am aware of in which such public officers could be at risk of contravening this provision is in the armed forces and in Commonwealth-run Health and Correctional services where chaplains have been part of the furniture since times pre-dating the establishment of the Commonwealth. No-one in politics or society in general has ever raised a question about the legitimacy of this.

I am not sure if the High Court judges will take into account the historical context in which Section 116 was crafted in their interpretation of it, but the clause you seem to be relying on relates to standard practice under British Law that prevented people who were Roman Catholic holding certain offices or public trusts, a practice this clause and our Human Rights and Equal Opportunity legislation equally abhor.

Finally, I wonder if I might offer you an observation. The "religious neutrality of the state" that you desire does not require that all public places and publicly-funded institutions be what I call "religion-free zones." The religious neutrality of the state is reflected in the universal provision of freedom-of-choice in matters of religion.

Officers in the armed forces are not rquired to confide in the chaplains nor are they required to attend the religious services they provide - but they can.

Patients in hospitals are not required to consult chaplains or attend services in the hospital chapels - but they can.

And students and staff of schools are not required to consult chaplains - but they can. Indeed, in the public schools in my state, Principals are required to ensure parents are given the opportunity to withdraw their children from school events at which prayers, sacred songs and writings are going to be used, as well as from formal religious education classes - whether or not those classes are provided by school teachers or visiting religious people.

Equally important is the fact that no school was required to appoint a chaplain. Indeed the Federal Legislation specifically required school Principals to demonstrate that they had consulted their school community about the matter and that the request for funding reflected the views of the school community.

Having said all this, and by way of being completely transparent, I must make it clear that I am a senior manager of an organisation that provides chaplains into public schools in Western Australia. Consequently, on behalf of our members (which are churches, not individuals) and our exisiting employees, I have a vested interest in the continued funding of the NSCP.

I am of the view that the matter before the High Court is very similar to a previous case challenging the application of Commonwealth Funding to Private Schools, particularly those that are faith-based. In that case it was decided that it was not improper, nor contrary to any law or provision of the Constitution for Commonwealth funds to be provided to faith-based organisations for the purposes of education.

NSCP funding is explicitly provided for the pursposes of providing pastoral care - proselytising and some religious activities in public schools are explicitly prohibited. But over-riding all this is still the matter of freedom of choice. Mr Williams has exercised his choice by not just withdrawing his consent for his children to meet with the chaplain or attend any events at school in which the chaplain plays a part, he has remoeved them altogether to a school where the school community has chosen not to have a chaplain at all. I would religiously defend his right to make that choice, but not the subtext of this case which seems to me to be to seek to confine religious faith and expression entirely to private settings.

It will be interesting to see how this matter pans out in the High Court and what, if any, consequences there are for the many chaplaincy services provided in our community.

What do you think?

Australia Day

We are all enjoying a short break from work to celebrate Australia Day. It is a time of immense national pride as we honour those citizens who have lived out what we believe it means to be an Aussie - Australian of the Year, Simon McKeon, Young Australian of the Year, Jessica Watson, Senior Australian of the Year,Professor Ron MacCallum and Local Hero Donald Ritchie all offer inspirational examples to us of what any of us can do to make this country great.

But we all know that around the edges of this celebration there are grumblings. Many in our indigenous community see this day much less positively - as the day that marked the beginning of their dispossession of land they had owned and cared for for over 50,000 years. Then there are those living outside New South Wales who feel that celebrating the foundation of that state's initial settlement has nothing to offer them.

So long as we celebrate our National Day on 26th January the focus will be on the issue of settlement, and with it the dispossession of our first-nations people from their lands. Any attempt to ignore the dispossession would result in simply writing our indigenous brothers and sisters out of the story - and what is there to celebrate in that for them?

I have long maintained that the date upon which we became a nation as January 1, 1901 - the beginning of the federation of our states into the Commonwealth of Australia. If we were to celebrate Australia Day on that date (and there are other countries that celebrate their national day on New Year's Day) the symbolic focus would be on all of us, first nations people and immigrant settlers, coming together as one people, under one flag.

Now that I could celebrate. What do you reckon?

Agricultural Economics

In the wake of the severe flooding on the eastern states, particularly Queensland, there will be an enormous and costly task of cleaning up and making good all that was damaged by the water.

Insurance may pay for the restoration of houses and businesses but who is paying for the cost of cleaning up roadways and restoring power and sewerage systems. Well, in most cases the government will simply pay for it. Money may need to be borrowed to do this, and of course we, the taxpayers, will eventually be the ones who pay for it.


Photo source: Daily Telegraph

The economic irrationalists in Opposition, Federally, are beginning to argue that in order to pay for all this, the Government should cut back on unnecessary expenses - "We just can't afford the National Broadband Network now" says Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott. Well, if I recall it, according to him we couldn't afford it before the floods happened, so the call is a bit hollow.

I would like to suggest that the solution to the current situation is found in the practices of a key constituency of the Opposition, a group of people whom the Opposition believes they alone can represent, and even defend - farmers. When farmers have a bad year they go and visit their bank manager and secure a new loan or an extension of their terms to enable them to manage.

If the farmers of this country adopted the proposed practice of the Opposition in running the country there would be no agricultural industry anywhere. A flood would come and the farmers would pack it in, because if they borrowed money it would so increase their costs that they could no longer be competitive.

The reality is that borrowing money in such circumstances enables everyone to spread the enormous cost of this event to be spread over many years, thereby reducing the cost of it - reducing all your other costs in order to pay for something like this up-front will simply lead to the collapse of a whole lot of infrastructure plus the opportunity cost of lost production.

Government debt in Australia is minuscule and despite Opposition protests is not at all toxic. We all live with debt and so long as the debt ratios are safe, which they are, borrowing is actually the best thing to do.

Privatisation, Corporatisation and the Role of Government

Local news broadcasters in Western Australia today were running stories about the issue of Gas Supply. The perthnow news site was headlined "WA gas prices three times higher than in the east". The Australian news site headlined the story "WA gas cheap by global standards". The ABC News site headlined it "Low gas price won't hurt economy: forecaster". And Gas Today Australia magazine headlined it "WA gas crisis?"

Reading the detail of each story was not really illuminating. It seems to me that one's view in the matter was entirely dependent on which vested interest you were supportive of.

What is unavoidable is the reality that for domestic consumers in WA gas, electricity and water prices have all escalated quite dramatically over the past two years, and some commentators suggest that more rises are still in the offing. The reason for these rises is that since the providers of these utilities have been privatised or corporatised they have had to charge prices that enable them to make a profit for shareholders.

This, in my view, is an extraordinary situation for us to be in because I can remember when the pressure was being applied within the political processes that led to the selling off of our Gas services and the segregation of our electricity supply, generation and network services into three separate companies, we were assured that consumers would be the beneficiaries of the competition that would be possible in a privatised market for these services. The reality of our experience seems at odds with this claim.

There seems to have been a view around over the past few decades that if the private sector thinks it can make a buck out of something the government usually does, then it should be allowed to have a go. As a result we have outsourced, corporatised, and privatised more and more services that were previous only provided by the government. This new direction was born on the myth that government-provided services were intrinsically inefficient and tax-payers should be allowed to get better value for their money.

Examples of privatisation delivering cheaper services to consumers are few and far between, but what Governments have liked about these strategies is that they are no longer responsible when things go wrong. They can bleat and carp at the new entity just like consumers but they can't be blamed. (The most extreme example I can think of in this line is the way the Government was able to duck for cover over the death of Mr Ward, the aboriginal man who died of heat stroke while being transported in an un-airconditioned van on a 40 degree day in the outback.)

I have always held the view that there are certain essential services that we, as citizens, should have delivered to our dwellings in a manner that is free from the pressures of commercial gain. Water-supply and sewerage makes sense. Roads and pathways are taken for granted. Reticulated Gas and Electricity are vital for public health and well-being. I would also argue that the network for telephone and high-speed broadband fit into this category these days because the government, not a profit-driven company, is best place to meet the universal access obligations that have applied for telephony for generations. Who we get to send services down the fibres is another matter, just as we can choose whose services we use for transportation of goods and services on our roads.

We live in a great state with an abundance of resources to provide all these services. It makes me mad when I hear politicians ducking their responsibilities in this area with false arguments about the benefits of having the private sectgor provide these services.

What do you think?

Let's all call it quits!

In some ways I understand it, but why is it so inevitable that when a leader of a political party loses an election they not only resign the leadership but they eventually resign as representative of the electorate that they just won.



Mr Brumby said emphatically after the election that he would stay on until the next election yet here he is today saying that it is better to get out of the way all together - and now at great expense and inconvenience the people of Broadmeadows have to go through a by-election to choose another representative.

No wonder people feel disillusioned and disempowered in the electoral process.

Diarmuid O'Murchu,a Catholic priest in a monastic community in the USA, said the following in his most recent publication, Adult Faith:

Governance as exercised across the contemporary world is an inherited patriarchal strategy, based on a top-down chain of command. It is inherently disempowering for the majority of humankind, and for most people it seriously undermines their development as adult selves.

He goes on to talk about democratic disempowerment and drawing attention to the fact that really just a very few people actually exercise power. Yes the people have the power to choose government and dispose of government if they are disatisfied, but the so-called "power of the ballot box" is a very thin veneer of what power is all about.

He then goes further describing the relationship between the powerful elite and the masses as one of co-dependency - the powerful elite need the masses to be passive, allowing them to exercise the power they have, and the masses need the powerful elite to be active because they realise the really don't have any power.

I am still working on many other ideas he raises in his book, but these words made me wonder about the authenticity of the ring of truth I seem to hear in them.

What do you think?

They published some of my letter - SCIENTOLOGY

I wrote to the Magazine editor of the Australian newspaper about the article they did on Scientology and which was the subject of an earlier blog-piece. Following is the letter I wrote and the bold parts are what they published.

Dear Sir

Thank you for creating a pathway for Julie-Anne Davies to submit to the basic introductory experience of Scientology. While it was illuminating, it confirmed some of my fears. In our pluralistic society we get used to people being able to believe whatever they like, but two things disturb me about Scientology (just two? you ask).

I have always been perplexed about why they have incorporated the Christian symbol of the Cross in their logo (what else can it be called?). Hubbard has never tried to suggest that Scientology was Christian. Perhaps it helped in their quest for recognition as a "Church" for tax purposes.

My second concern is far more profound. The process of Auditing as described by Julie-Anne borders on deep psychotherapy but we are given no reassurance that Scientologist Auditors have any deeper training that might give them some skills to deal with unexpected psychological trauma that might be aroused by the therapy. While a similar accusation might be laid at the feet of many Christian Ministers of Religion my experience as one demonstrates that most of the pastoral counselling they might do with members of their flocks does not deal with anything like the deep seated memories from the past that are deliberately sought for uncovering by the Scientoligist Auditor. When you go around lifting the metaphorical rocks in people's lives to see if there are any worms underneath, you have to be prepared and qualified to deal with the concequences resulting from the rrevelation of those worms.

Yours sincerely,

Not bad. They tried to balance the number of letters supportive and antogonistice to the article.

A Pox on both your Houses

The Victorian people have just gone through a gripping state election. At the time of writing the result is unknown - it could be a hung parliament such as we have in Tasmania and the Federal parliament; or it could be the Coalition by the smallest of margins.



Year 2010 will go down in our political history in the words of my daugther, a politics student at Murdoch University, as "The Year of Indecision".

What has happened to politics in our country?

Our parties seem to have become so concerned with gaining "the middle ground" that they have ditched their ideological drivers and read the electorate via the media polls. Now most voters find them indistinguishable from each other, other than by the old maxim - WHAT'S IN IT FOR ME?

The end result of this at elections seems to be that people are still about equally divided on which party they want in government, rather than seeing one or other as overwhelmingly better equipped for our current times. Or are people so disillusioned by the political process that really what they are saying to our politicians is "A pox on both your houses."

What do you think?