DOGS refers to Defense of government schools. http://www.adogs.info/ is their website.

On that site you will find:

The Australian Council for the Defence of Government Schools (DOGS) has been fighting for public education since the 1960s.

The Council has two main objectives:
1. The promotion and protection of public education
2. The separation of Church and State and opposition to public funding of private religious schools

along with other material.

The chaplains are not state employees but supplied by religious organisations. In Queensland they are supplied by Scripture Union, a fundamentalist Protestant missionary organisation.

http://www.suqld.org.au/home/ is their website. On it you will find:

"Primary School Work
SU exists to work with churches, resourcing and supporting them in their ministry. This partnership provides a strategic alliance for taking advantage of the many opportunities which exist for ministry in primary schools."

Government funds are supporting a fundamentalist missionary group. This is taxpayer money going to missionise public school students.

An interesting and timely article, but I think that Max Wallace misses the mark somewhat. Certainly, the Greens need to correct public misapprehensions that they are a unidimensional 'environment' party, but focusing instead on their relative secularism would be selling them short.

Cetainly, there is a quite deliberate conflation in some sectors of the commentariat of all things "green" (i.e. environmental) with the Greens political party. In this way, all the radical and wacky ideas and actions of extreme environmental activists can be associated negatively in the electorate's consciousness with the Greens. Thus, we're always hearing about 'Gaia-worship' from certain wingnut pundits in the same breath as the Greens.

Besides their advocacy of ecological sustainability as one of the four 'pillars' of Greens ideology, as a member I agree that there is insufficient awareness in the electorate of the other three - namely, social justice, participatory democracy and peace. However, while Greens policies tend to be secular and inclusive, secularism per se as a core value is not particularly promoted in Greens policies. Indeed, the Greens have many religious members, including Christians, Muslims, Buddhists etc.

Of course, the George Pells and Jim Wallaces of the community (not to mention their loopier representatives in the commentariat and blogosphere) like to construct the Greens as some kind of Antichrist movement for political purposes, but anybody who has had any involvement with the Greens recognises such mendacious negative spin for what it is.

As we move closer to the election, I expect that we'll be regaled with the usual hysterical and dishonest rubbish about Greens promoting injecting rooms in schools where gay heroin can be consumed by schoolkids avoiding scripture classes (or some other such nonsense), but I think that intelligent voters already recognise such spin as the garbage it is.

CJM.... "However, while Greens policies tend to be secular and inclusive, secularism per se as a core value is not particularly promoted in Greens policies. Indeed, the Greens have many religious members, including Christians, Muslims, Buddhists etc."

Quite so, so 'being secular' is not foreign to the Greens as you point out above.

So, how hard would it be to state that publicly, and ensure that a vote for the Greens, is a vote for a secular public education system?

It's worth noting that the ALP, long a hotbed of Papists, has no desire to use the 'secular' word in its platform, no doubt under orders from Pell direct to all his henchmen in the ACTU and the ALP office bearers from his pocket unions (AWU and SDA amongst others).

And the traditionally Protestant Liberals are devoted to the Jensen views, so also cannot openly claim to be 'secular'.

There is a space there for the Greens, to openly be a secular party, like the Secular Party is, but better equipped than them to take seats and do something really useful.

While the Greens agonise over 'going secular' religions are going green in the USA.

When, finally, something is done to save the world, religions will be there claiming that it was they who drove the new path...

Time to get with it Bob Brown, and the rest of the Greens... state your case, go secular, and start competing with these PR driven pew-stuffers:

Green religion movement hopes spill wins converts

by John Flesher
The Associated Press

NEW ORLEANS – Where would Jesus drill?

Religious leaders who consider environmental protection a godly mission are making the Gulf of Mexico oil spill a rallying cry, hoping it inspires people of faith to support cleaner energy while changing their personal lives to consume less and contemplate more.

Read the complete story:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100707/ap_on_re/us_rel_religion_today

A correction to Max's article, where he says no political party has ever advocated separation of church and state in Australia. The Secular Party is now a registered political party, and certainly does advocate separation.

The Greens have religious members and voters, so that is a problem for them. Only the Secular Party stands for separation, which includes winding back state funding for faith schools.

http://secular.org.au

I vote for the Greens because they are the only political movement which asks real questions about the state of the world, both human and non-human.

I also have a Spiritual Master - a concept, and practice which is completely unacceptable to both secularists and mainstream exoteric religionists, which is the only kind of "religion" that now exists in the Western world.

This site and Zoo was set up as a tool to re-educate humankind re the non-human inhabitants of this mostly non-human world.

http://www.fearnomorezoo.org

The recent Avatar film gave an very dramatic portrayal of the differences between the world views of the now world dominant techno-barbarians and the wholistic ecological consciousness of the Navi.

At a very basic level the film was about the technocratic "culture" of death versus the culture of life.

It is interesting to note that ALL of George Pell's right-thinking friends(eg the Quadrant cabal) came out very STRONGLY in support of the technocratic barbarians and the "culture" of death.