Aspro, another good question.

Perhaps I'm too suspicious and wrong about this, but I wonder how much the government was influenced in making this decision by the Religious Right that seem to swarm around the liberals.

I've just been discussing the huge donations that the government receive from certain religious groups in another thread.

I wonder how anyone would go complaining to the appropriate govt dept [maybe anti-discrimination] that, although they were not a card carrying member, they shared the religious/philosophical beliefs of the [name your favourite bunch of nut-cases] organisation. And they were suffering discrimination because no chaplains had been appointed from this particular organisation.

Before anyone says that this approach would be ignored or fobbed off, some years ago I managed to get a WA govt dept to ask the WA Crown Law dept for a legal opinion on something, because I had presented them with a situation which put them in a difficult position and I refused to back off. And on this occasion, the Crown Law dept reluctantly agreed that I seemed to be right.

Sometimes you just have to be persistent and you can bet that this scheme has not been thoroughly thought out.

Sir Vivor,

I had not even considered the leveraging prospects of a "matched funds" condition attaching to the grants. You call to mind my wife's vivid-to-this-day recollections of being made to stand, as a primary school child, week by week in front of the class to explain why her parents had been unable to pay the school 'voluntary' fees for that week to the school at which there was clerical pressure exercised for her attendance. This not in a school run by some obscure cult claiming the status of a 'religion', but by a very nominally large so-called christian denomination. From the age of thirteen she has never darkened their door once, other than to honour family obligations. Heaven forbid! If what you foresee with respect to a "matched funds" condition was to apply, public funds could be perverted to possibly remotivate such emotional blackmail. Public funding to help co-erce the flock! Surely no government would be so stupid?

I am not seeking to decry the potentially constructive role privately funded chaplains may fulfil in school situations, nor especially to suggest that in a school run under the auspices of any particular religion that chaplains of that pursuasion should be expected to have no role in such schools. It is simply that public money, channeled through the parents, that has been provided for educational purposes is one thing. Public money, provided to the schools for chaplaincy services, is quite another. It amounts to funding the clergy, not empowering the parents with choice as to where their 'share' of education funding shall be deployed, which latter, if I remember correctly, was the basis upon which government funding for 'private' schools was originally, although perhaps questionably, justified.

My goodness, it doesn't take long to become clear how farsighted those were who formulated the provisions of our Constitution! Pity our elected representatives didn't take it as a guide to the limits of their own power and wisdom, rather than regarding it as something to circumvent.

Personally, I'm delighted with this new $90m program to reduce unemployment amongst religious clerics.

I understand that one Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali is likely to be looking for a new job once he gets back from holidays.

"Personally, I'm delighted with this new $90m program to reduce unemployment amongst religious clerics.

I understand that one Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali is likely to be looking for a new job once he gets back from holidays. "

HAHAHAHAHA
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This is too funny- thanks, Snout, I really needed a good laugh right now!

BOAZ_David,

I take your point as to the original meaning intended by the drafters of the Constitution having been as to 'denomination' within the Christian religion, rather than 'religions' in general. I am pleased to see that you observe that these days, with the attempted sidelining of the Constitution and the fundamentally British identity of Australian culture under the imposed 'multicultural' regime, the otherwise clear meaning of the Constitution will be most likely taken to mean that anything that chooses to define itself as a religion would qualify for a taxpayer-funded chaplaincy grant.

I cannot agree with you as to the proposal not specifically establishing 'A religion'. I think it does. It will effectively establish that religion with the largest number of both schools and nominal adherents in the population at large, while at the same time empowering the clergy (at taxpayers expense) of such other religions as are most overbearing and demagogic (mind controlling?) in relation to their nominal adherents. This is a recipe for religious strife, community division, and bitterness at its worst.

There seems to me to be a certain similarity between this attempt at establishing a religion, and the move in recent years to publicly fund political parties' election campaigns. In each case the taxpayer is being bled to support that entity or power structure to which membership can no longer be attracted, and which people at large will no longer voluntarily support in Australia: in the case of religion, its clergy; in the case of politics, membership and party funds.

The Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia provides the framework and guidance within which all of this division and bitterness can be avoided. It would be nice to see all who are sworn in under its concluding words uphold it.