(July 13, 2012 at 8:42 pm)padraic Wrote:Quote:but a question about whether they should be funded by the federal government was the issue
THAT is unconstitutional. However, S116 of our constitution does NOT apply to the states.
I think the funding of school chaplains wad unconstitutional, because of the religious tests which were imposed as part of the position descriptions for the school chaplains. That clearly violated the fourth limb s.116 of the Australian Constitution. However everything else about the school chaplaincy program is technically constitutional given that outcome of Attorney-General (Vict.); Ex Rel. Black v. The Commonwealth (1981) 146 CLR 559 (aka the DOGS Case).
This country needs a bill of rights like that of the United States with same strict separation between church and state clause.
Quote:Are you being deliberately dense?
Democracy protects the rights of minorities,
IF there is to be a chaplains programme, ALL religions at a school must be represented. No child must be disadvantaged in any way.
Here in Australia there is growing insistence by non believing parents that ethics be taught to their children instead of religion.
The Greek ethicists predate Christianity by about 600 years. In my opinion,doing what one thinks of as right for its own sake is far more moral than doing so for the reward of heaven or fear of hell.
Given we are a multi-cultural, multi-faith society I would make the case for truly objective comprehensive education on religion as opposed to 'scripture classes', along with ethics classes as well. The current situation of allowing of organisations like Access Ministries and Scripture Union into state school classrooms and evangelising education (which they don't deny doing) is a scandal.
However this change can only come by the non-religious (who are between 30 to 50% of the nation's population) mobilising, so they can pressure the governments, education departments and school councils to rectify this shameful state of affairs.
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