Rechtub, are you an Australian? Do you define what Australia is?

I am an immigrant from the United States where it is illegal to give taxpayer funds to non-public schools and to have chaplains in the public schools. I would like to see a greater separation of religion and state in Australia, to stop subsidies to non-public schools and to have no chaplains in the public schools. If that happens would Australia stop being Australia?

Australia would still not be the United States even if that happened. A country is not a fixed unchanging entity. Australia would change even if there were no immigration. In fact the Queensland Education Act of 1875 specified that public education be free, universal and secular so I would just like to see the 1875 Act restored. In 1910 the Bible Society of Queensland succeeded in getting the word, secular, removed from the Education Act. Before that there was no religious instruction (indoctrination) in the public schools during school hours. Beasts of pray were allowed in the school after school hours, but the kiddies didn't hang around. The beasts wanted their prey corralled so they succeeded in getting the law changed. However, Australia is a democratic country, and the beasts had a right to get the law changed. I have a right to try to get it changed back. The Sikhs have a right to get an exemption from the helmet requirement.

Viva a living, vibrant, changing Australia!

David f I believe you understand the thread and its author.
I can not refrain from this thought.
In not so many years to come, if we look back on this and much like it, being said, we will be forced to ask what drove it, and much more.
These folk settled at Woolgoolga and started this country,s Banana growing.
They bought food and supply,s to the out back, on Camels.
They fought alongside us, in at least ww2, I think in the first world one too.
And handful, of Bigots, every country has them, tried to bar them, from an RSL Club, and lost.
Others too know, the head gear is a must, under the rules of their faith.
We would not dare, surely, say they do not have that right.
So what is the reason that we see this threads direction so very far from our proud tradition of freedom to follow your faith.
Tomorrow morning, art dawn services around the country, and in the community mentioned, we will see these proud folk, some 4th generation Australians, Honoring the dead.

I dunno, rehctub - it seems that old Australia is still very much alive and well......

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-04-24/aboriginal-men-sue-qantas-after-being-kicked-off-plane/4648596

Butch,
I seem to recall an exemption given also for Sikhs to carry that little knife, because it is a religous symbol.

Hey we turn a blind eye to other cultural matters, like polygmy, forced marriage and FGM. We also have seen bottle shops and lingerie shops closed in shopping malls, due to muslim intimidation.

We compromise our own culture all the time

Perhaps I should convert to Sikhism so I get a chance to ride a bicycle before I die (on the road, I mean, other than the stationary ones in the gym).

In 1990, just when this law was introduced, I was about to buy a bicycle and take up cycling - in order to be fitter and to help the environment. Then as I couldn't, I keep gaining weight, driving my car and polluting the air whenever I need to get from point A to point B.

It's a tragedy to appoint the secular, God-less state as an arbiter into which acts and behaviours are religious and which are not: churches today seem to be short-sighted, wrongly believing that they are immune, so strong that no government can ever trample them over and render their religious practices illegal. It should instead be in the interest of every church to understand that the only way to have religious freedom, is to have freedom for everyone!

Hang on Belly,
You're getting mixed up, the camel teams were mostly Arabs and Baluchis with a few Afghans as well, not Sikhs, their "contribution" to the opening of the outback is grossly overstated, we're talking a few thousand immigrant workers over the course of half a century.
You are however correct in saying that Australia has always been multicultural and again, our historic "racism" is a gross exaggeration but I'd say that due to globalisation we're actually in grave danger of losing that cosmopolitan identity rather that this fictional Leftist bogey of "White" identity.