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October 31, 2006
The sharp edges that separate church and state in liberal democratic Australia are further undermined with a proposal by the Howard federal government to fund chaplains in private and state schools. It is more than likely the money will flow through to the private schools are they will be more united about the variety of chaplain they want.
Cathy Wilcox
Presumably state schools are deemed to be value free zones--sites of nihilism--- by conservatives and only religion is about values. Secular humanism has nothing to do with values apparently. What has happened to John Stuart Mill? So are we going to have a return to the 1950s - conservative Catholic priests or fundamentalist Anglican chaplains telling students that women should be modest, they should wear scarves in church, they should not be seen in revealing clothes and they should not provoke men because men were wild animals who strayed easily. Rememberall that stuff about "men will be men" and the role of men was to seduce, the role of women to resist?
Is that what is meant by values---a preoccupation with sexual morality that is not too far removed from the "uncovered meat" sentiment of the widely criticized Sheikh Taj al-Din al-Hilali? It's another plank in the values debate isn't it. The beginnings of state-sanctioned religious intolerance?
Andrew Lynch, in an op-ed in The Age says that:
If the separation of church and state means anything, it is that the Government should not use public money to decide which religious opinions are to be promoted at the expense of others....Talk of insulating religion from the power of the state is not merely a resort to a vague ideal. It has clear constitutional text behind it. The inclusion by the constitution's framers of that text should prompt us to think critically about any proposals that look sure to entangle the Government in issues of faith.
Under the Commonwealth constitution, the Federal Parliament is prohibited from passing a law that confers on any religion the status of a national established church. It also cannot prohibit the free exercise of religion or impose any requirement for religious observance on the community. Additionally, the constitution states that "no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the Commonwealth".
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