Stop the National Schools Chaplaincy Program!

• A summary of Commonwealth Government actions supporting religion under John Howard since 1995 taken from Response to Amanda Lohrey compiled by Max Wallace

1. Bible study meetings begin to occur in Parliamentary offices;
2. the John Stuart Mill group in Parliament disappears;
3. the Commonwealth Employment Service was abolished and multi-hundred million dollar annual contracts to deal with unemployment are given mostly to church organisations scaling up their wealth considerably;
4. Catholic Kevin Andrews’ private member’s bill is introduced in the Federal Parliament to override the Northern Territory’s euthanasia legislation;
5. a reference to ‘God’ is included in a verse of the National Anthem;
6. The 1998 Constitutional Convention is set up at a time when Republicans were divided increasing the probability that the 1999 Referendum would fail. The Republicans, led by Malcolm Turnbull, agree to the proposal that the proceedings in Old Parliament House should be commenced with prayers. Later in 2002 Turnbull converts to Catholicism prior to his standing for preselection for the safe seat of Wentworth;
7. the 2000 Charities Definition Inquiry’s recommendation that there should be a Charities Commission to regulate charities, opposed by the Catholic Church, is ignored and the government will not answer questions about it; silent nuns who pray for us are, however, given charitable status;
8. $5M funding is given towards the construction of the Anglican/Uniting Church Centre for Christianity and Culture, not Religion and Culture, located symbolically near Parliament;
9. 2001 Archbishop Peter Hollingworth is made Governor-General;
10. Radio Australia’s Cox Peninsular transmitter is sold to the fundamentalist British Christian Voice and is now broadcasting their version of the Christian message to the Pacific and South Asia in a range of languages including Indonesian bahasa. When I rang the station I was told their signal is transmitted from their state of the art studios on the Sunshine Coast to a satellite which beams the signal to the Cox Peninsular transmitter from where it is
broadcast shortwave to Asia. I am told it’s hard to pick up in Australia as 99 per cent of the signal is broadcast north; Carmen Lawrence’s questions in Parliament about this reveal the Government is not the slightest bit interested in what they’re saying to our Muslim neighbours including of course, any extremists who might be listening;
11. Ministers of religion are excluded from the $30,000 Fringe Benefits Tax cap following reform of FBT legislation meaning that they could continue to take the whole of their income as fringe benefits completely avoiding personal income tax;
12. a Federal power is invoked to allow the Catholic Church to proceed with a High Court challenge to a Federal court ruling allowing single and lesbian women access to IVF;
13. Howard leaps to Cardinal Pell’s defense when he is accused of a sexual offence before evidence is heard which exonerates Pell;
14. calls for a Royal Commission into child sex abuse are ignored;
15. Howard open’s Hillsong’s church in Sydney in 2002;
16. in 2004 the First National Day of Thanksgiving ‘acknowledging our Christian heritage and the Lordship of Jesus Christ over our nation’ receive endorsement from the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and the Governor-General;
17. prior to the 2004 election a preference deal is struck with the Assemblies of God inspired Family First Party; Family First goes quiet on its demand for a Royal Commission into child sex abuse;
18. in 2004 the government votes for a total ban on human embryo cloning at the United Nations;
19. Howard votes against RU-486;
20. multi-hundred million dollar contracts will be given to mostly church groups for
counselling divorcing couples with custody disputes in ‘Family Relationship Centres’ ignoring a secular alternative recommended by the government’s own committee;
21. $20M is to be given to church organisations for ‘abortion counselling’;
22. Exclusive Brethren are exempted from the Workplace legislation. The Brethren campaigned against the Greens in the Tasmanian election;
23. conservative Christians are appointed to the Fair Pay Commission and the Board of the ABC;
24. the Governor-General is told he should reject the ACT’s civil unions legislation;
25. $20M is given to the Catholic Church for the Pope’s World Youth Day in Sydney 2008. On 29 June 2006 BRW reported that ‘If the Catholic Church were a corporation, it would be in the top five in the country.’
26. the Queensland Government is threatened with funding withdrawal and obliged to drop legislation changing religious education from ‘opt out’ to ‘opt in’ with humanists, for the first time, being allowed to give classes if requested; shortly afterwards, a decision is made that Federal money is to be given to public schools for religious chaplains if requested;
27. Hillsong given more money to counsel workplace defaulters despite having an earlier grant stripped from them.

To this list you could add more recently the announcement of the National Schools Chaplaincy Program. Wallace goes on to write the following of John Howard's Government:

"I suggest the only difference between the Bush Administration and the Howard Administration is that the secular nature of Australian society causes Howard to be circumspect about what he really thinks. However, on the rising of Parliament for Christmas 2004 he let down his guard a little when he said with false modesty: ‘I have endeavoured, completely inadequately, to live as best as I can
according to the basic tenets of the Christian religion … there is no force which is greater for the enhancement of individuals and the liberation of the human spirit.’
I suggest it’s likely he really believes that. As for the instances when he opposes the churches: refugee children behind barbed wire, the Iraq war etc etc, that is just normal realpolitik. He would take the view, I suggest, that he is working for the greater good and that politicians have to take hard decisions. That sounds banal - but banality is Howard’s defining public characteristic. It is the essence of his negative charisma to which the apolitical electorate responds. He also knows it’s
easy for the churches to play to the gallery but they will still be there when their interests are at stake.
Did the Catholic Church reject the $20M for the World Youth Day because the government was unfair to aborigines in the Hindmarsh Island dispute, or any other matter, where they’ve opposed the government? He would also know the churches themselves are hardly paradigms of virtue as the many paedophile cases demonstrate. They can be less than ‘Christian’ when it suits them – for
example the sacking of the Reverend Knowles, chaplain of Bathurst gaol, just before his retirement, causing him a significant financial loss. The Anglican Church went to the Industrial Commission and argued that they didn’t owe him anything because he was not their employee – he
‘served God.’ I suggest it’s drawing a long bow to suggest all of the actions listed above are just the result of Machiavellian politics. Rather, I suggest, it’s possible Howard is trying to Christianise Australian society by considerably enriching the churches through the multi-hundred million contracts they receive for various projects, thereby further entrenching them in various aspects of society as a way
to counterbalance their failing church attendances. The centerpiece of this strategy is the demolition of public education through under-funding to bring the decision in the DOGS case to its logical conclusion. He has done all he can to set the churches up for the future. He wants us to become like America. That, I suggest, could be his personal agenda and would be his personal legacy."

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