Damn good article. I'd hate to see religious discrimination institutionalised.

"Will students be turned away from Catholic schools because their parents are single, in de facto relationships or not regular church goers?"

If they're lucky. It's sad that religion based education (read as: non-education based education) exists at all.

No doubt this push for exemption from the anti-discrimination law comes from Cardinal Pell who, judging from his past record prefers paedophiles to homosexuals. Looks like we are returning to the bad old days of Daniel Mannix. Woe is us.

The Catholic Church needs to step away from public funding and keep the high standard of education in Catholic schools alive through Catholic enrollment alone. Too much of the educational standard has been weaken by the constant exceptions and the demands to water down the curriculum by the non-Catholic public user and a creeping socialist agenda from non-Catholic teachers. Catholics can not be seen to be limiting the choices of non-Christians and therefore it would be best to completely eliminate the public in person and dollars.

aqvarivs, I think you may find support for that notion from unexpected quarters.

I'd support it - I'd rather government funding didn't go to catholic schools. While I may not like them discriminating, I guess that's their business.

Though its interesting that you say their education standards are higher and they should be able to pick students to maintain that - course, I suppose it's easier to have high standards when you pick and choose and only take the smart kids...

Aqvarius. back in the old days before the government gave money to Catholic schools, the standard of education obtaining in their schools was quite poor. My sister used to teach in a state high school in Victoria and her observation was that those students who had a Catholic primary school education were at a considerable disadvantage compared to their state primary school contemporaries. If we were to go down that path again, the same situation would unfortunately apply again.