The only schools the government should finance are public schools which are open to all students regardless of religious and ethnicity. There should be no chaplains in public schools and no taxpayer financing of non-public schools.

Children should have the opportunity to associate with children of different backgrounds. Australia should not be in the business of financing anything to do with religious belief or non-belief.

Iftikhar wrote: "Bilingual Muslims children have a right, as much as any other faith group, to be taught their culture, languages and faith alongside a mainstream curriculum."

I agree with that. They should have a right equal to any other faith group. As far as I am concerned no faith group should have any such right.

S. 116 of the Australian Constitution states: The Commonwealth shall not make any law for establishing any religion, or for imposing any religious observance, or for prohibiting the free exercise of any religion, and no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the Commonwealth.

The above means that religion should be no business of the Australian government.

Posted by david f, Friday, 2 January 2015 1:37:01 PM

" ... S. 116 of the Australian Constitution states: The Commonwealth shall not make any law for establishing any religion, or for imposing any religious observance, ... "

That's true dear *DavidF* but how do we reconcile parliamentarians all standing up and saying a Christian Prayer before proceedings commence?

And if the catholic church (whose leadership is rightly loathed and despised by some if us) is allowed to have their own schools and only hire catholics and have their own special forms at the court houses that they may be excused from not conferring information told to them in the confessional then why not the Muslims and others too?

It is not for the state to favour any religion as I see it and further I am of the view that children's rights should be enshrined such that they may not be indoctrinated by their parents or otherwise, which means no religious schools except for those of the age of majority.

Dear Dream On,

We don't reconcile it. The Australian Constitution may be violated with impunity as long as the violations are neither brought into court nor subjected to the action of law enforcement bodies. In the case of parliamentary prayer the courts can rule that those who are not in parliament do not have interest sufficient to sue. If the attorney general or others in control of the actions of law enforcement do not direct the police to act there will be no action. Since the legislative and executive branches of the government are one and the same and there is not the separation of powers between the legislative and executive bodies envisioned by Montesquieu the attorney general is subject to parliament. Making the laws and enforcing them should be separate, but they are not in the Westminster system.

Twice law suits have been won that have judged that the funding of the chaplaincy program by the Commonwealth is not a valid action of the Commonwealth government. Twice the government has bypassed the courts. The latest method is to give direct grants to the state for the purpose of continuing the chaplaincy program. In short the Australian Constitution usually can be ignored or bypassed if the government of the day chooses to do so. Australia is only a government of law if the government of the day agrees to subject itself to the law.

david f,

Maybe the Government should finance only public schools but the truth of the matter is that the burden on the taxpayer would be much greater without the church schools.
The Catholic school system saves the taxpayer heaps.

By the way, a child of any faith may be enrolled in a Catholic school and Catholic schools do employ teachers of other faiths.
Many Muslims have enrolled their children in Catholic schools as, in the absence of Islamic schools, they see the Catholic system as more ethical than the State system.
My youngest son attended a Marist school in Brisbane and in his final two years there were two Hindus in his class.

Hasbeen,

"Schooling must be conducted in English only, & all foreign language TV & newspapers , particularly publicly funded TV, must be banned."

That'd make it bloody hard to learn a foreign language!

[Sorry, couldn't help myself].

Posted by Is Mise, Thursday, 1 January 2015 10:45:30 AM.

Yes & that should stop immediately, if not sooner.

Have you forgotten that the worst male Prime Minister the country has ever seen was a Mandarin speaker.

With that in mind there is a solid argument that learning s foreign language in Oz will probably rot the brain, leading to really dreadful cases of stupidity associated with ideas of grandeur.

On the precautionary principle alone, we should not take that chance.

Is Mise wrote: Maybe the Government should finance only public schools but the truth of the matter is that the burden on the taxpayer would be much greater without the church schools.
The Catholic school system saves the taxpayer heaps.

Dear Is Mise,

Under the present system our public schools will continue to get short changed as parents with children in religious schools will in general not care about the children in public schools.

Is a goal of our educational system to see that every child gets an adequate education or is it to save the taxpayer heaps?

Is the goal of our educational system to see that every child gets a good scientific education instead of the creationist crap that they get in some religious schools or is it to save the taxpayer heaps?

Is a goal of our educational system to see that children grow up with children of different backgrounds and learn together or is it to save the taxpayer heaps by creating a fragmented society?

The present system is possibly cheaper, but we should have something better. Under the present system our public schools will continue to get inadequate funding, and although segregation will not be complete there will be too much of it. It would probably cost more money to get something better than what we have now, but our children deserve it.

I can think of no better use for our taxes than to fund public schools adequately and see that Australian children get the best education they can have.

I am 89, and my children are all past school age. However, if I had children of school age I would neither want to send them to an Australian public school with chaplains or a religious school of any kind. Fortunately none of my grandchildren live in Australia.