Hi Alan, can't disagree with any of your analysis really, but for many non Christian schools that are cash strapped - employing someone to talk to their kids about enviromentalism, socialism, the dispossession of Aboriginal people and the need for a treaty, the hypocricies of democracy, belief in the common good and how evil the Howard (and possible Beazley government) - is and would be - is fine by me.

This is an important issue and one the media will ignore as much as they can because there is no emotional scare factor since nobody is being burnt alive, nor are there any irrational Muslim Clerics in the story.

It is my belief that it is the role of the child's parent/carer to firstly decide if they will be religously or spiritually raised. Should they decide to, then it is their role to teach, it is not the role of government to teach people which faith they should have.

I remember when Michal Jefferies become the Governor General. He said that Christian teachings should be compulsory in all schools. Well, I'm not Christian so why should my children have Christianity forced down their throats.

The world is full of victims of the Christian faith and I for one, will not take moral lessons from a moral bankrupt church and it's lap dog Prime Minister.

I gather there is a little troll in you who would like to see Imams get the Gig Alan?
We are aware of our heritage here, minus post modern sickness- inculcations and falsehoods.
Intellectual fraud is a crime you know.
You ought to do more research, but thanks for a good laugh .Although I am young, I had to hook up to a colostomy bag: the article, it was so funny; and its content and text provides a good aid for identifying Ideological depravity and all of its projections, this article has a very high rating ; opposed to ranting. Well both actually.

So what's the problem here Alan? You don't like the government giving money to Christian Churches to provide guidance for school kids, and then you don't like the Churches accepting that money?

Is it that you don't like religion? Is it that you don't like governments supporting religion? What is it?

If Howard spent the money to send in some Green Priests to preach about global warming what would your reaction to that be? Somewhat different I suspect.

"For the Howard Government, there is no separation between church and state."

Where's your evidence for this stupid statement?

It's only been in the last 40 odd years that the role of Christianity as a moral guide in this country has been eroded to the point of virtual non-existence. Tell me what the problem is with children in schools being given the option of spiritual guidance from Christian Chaplains?

Rainier doesn't mind if we spend money on some of his particular pet idiocies but gets all indignant when the Christian religion is mentioned. But that's a totalitarian for you.

Well written, Alan Matheson!
Australia is becoming a theocracy, and that means persecution. In Russia, in return for silence on human rights abuses, Christianity has regained almost all its pre-communist power.
Our educational institutions have been infiltrated by Fundamentalists.
Religions are not democracies, they are dictatorships of unreasoning faith.
The claims of religions must be examined. They insist they are struggling financially to provide for the poor, needy and weak, but their tax-free profit-turning enterprises, along with billions of dollars of public money for which they are unaccountable, allowed the Catholic Church to make an untaxed profit of 16.2 billion dollars last year. Uniting and Anglicans made over 2 billion dollars each, and the others are catching up fast according to BRW chief business commentator, Adele Ferguson, reported by Geraldine Mitchell – Sunday Mail Adelaide 2nd July 2006.
They claim to be the protectors of marriage, yet fundamentalist Christians have a higher divorce rate than atheists!
They equate homosexuality with paedophilia, yet statistics indicate that heterosexuals are more prone to that perversion than queers.
They reckon they are caring and worship a loving god, but they chose to do nothing about the new labour laws or the misery of the people of Palm Island.
They reckon they love children, but the expansion of religious indoctrination in all schools has been accompanied by a rise in juvenile depression, and an increase in pupil and teacher harassment of same-sex-oriented students so that gays account for about half of all youth suicides because religion-inspired homophobia permeates society, undermining joy and hope for susceptible children.
But no one points the finger. There’s a conspiracy of silence regarding the abuses of religion.
The High Court in 1981 declared that there is no separation of church and state in Australia. This is not a secular democracy – it is barely a democracy!
Religious ideologies can never be part of the solution to our woes, because they are the problem!
Healthy, just and fair societies are not based on religious dogma, but on universal humanist principles of freedom, justice, honesty and compassion.

Bozzie

You are pretty spot on. THe Government would be applauded by Alan if they funded the handing out of condoms in schools or promoted godless values epoused by the green religion or pseudo science groups that teach we evolved from apes.