Two steps forward...

[Hermit]

Tort law. Introducing dogma in education possibly causing trouble for the kid's further schooling if he learns as truth stuff that will let him laughed out of serious universities, or cause damage to children of atheists, non chretins, and members of disfavored denoms who might get harassed by the religious guys put in positions of authority and their influence over school staff.

Wish us luck with that. In Australia a "breach of non-delegable duty is not automatic on founding a cause of action against the primary tortfeasor. Fault on the part of the contracting party must be shown." Given the mindset of the average Australian - which includes the judiciary - regarding a spongy concept like "spiritual guidance", I don't fancy our chances for success.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Law suit time?

I doubt Oz has the same protections against religion and state conspiring to bugger the citizenry as you yanks have... for all I know, they even have the CoE (or whatever local equivalent there may be) for a state religion the same way they still got the damn hanovers for asses of state

If five thousand Ozzies filed five thousand lawsuits, the government might get the idea.

No case can be made. We don't have a law we could say was broken.

You need better lawyers then.

[Hermit]

Law suit time?

I doubt Oz has the same protections against religion and state conspiring to bugger the citizenry as you yanks have... for all I know, they even have the CoE (or whatever local equivalent there may be) for a state religion the same way they still got the damn hanovers for asses of state

If five thousand Ozzies filed five thousand lawsuits, the government might get the idea.

No case can be made. We don't have a law we could say was broken.

You need better lawyers laws then.

[charlou]

I just encourage and support my children's subversiveness.

[Hermit]

A review of the entanglement of Access Ministries with government schools is becoming a possibility. Both federal and state governments are at last cottoning on to the fact that Access Ministries is in it purely for the opportunity to proselytise. Its CEO, Evonne Paddison, is on record for saying at the 2008 Evangelical Fellowship in the Anglican Communion national conference in Melbourne: "In Australia, we have a God-given open door to children and young people with the Gospel, our federal and state governments allow us to take the Christian faith into our schools and share it. We need to go and make disciples." In case that wasn't clear enough, she added: "What really matters is seizing the God-given opportunity we have to reach kids in schools."

Link

[JimC]

A review of the entanglement of Access Ministries with government schools is becoming a possibility. Both federal and state governments are at last cottoning on to the fact that Access Ministries is in it purely for the opportunity to proselytise. Its CEO, Evonne Paddison, is on record for saying at the 2008 Evangelical Fellowship in the Anglican Communion national conference in Melbourne: "In Australia, we have a God-given open door to children and young people with the Gospel, our federal and state governments allow us to take the Christian faith into our schools and share it. We need to go and make disciples." In case that wasn't clear enough, she added: "What really matters is seizing the God-given opportunity we have to reach kids in schools."

Link

Yep, this has been making the news here. The liberal state government will try to ignore it or sweep it under the carpet, because a good chunk of their political backers want "christian values in all schools"...

Mind you, I can talk, I suppose...

[charlou]

3.5 million potential disciples in our schools

Fuck off, Evonne Paddison.

[devogue]

The $222 million boost to the National Schools Chaplaincy scheme

$222,000,000!!!!!!!!!!!!

Doesn't Australia have a huge skills shortage? How the fuck can they justify $222,000,000 on woo?

[Hermit]

The $222 million boost to the National Schools Chaplaincy scheme

The situation in Australia is a lot worse than I had presumed. The twist of the knife consists of the fact that current policy is not - as you would expect - implemented and expanded by some reactionary, conservative government, but by a Prime Minister who is supposedly a social democrat and an atheist to boot. Someone I know elsewhere has done a fair bit of research on this mess, and gave me permission to quote the following post in full.

The entire problem with the National Schools Chaplaincy Program is that it *requires* the school, if they accept federal funding for the position, to get a religious chaplain. (The chaplains to which Servalon refers above couldn't have been NSCP chaplains - there's no restrictions obviously on what schools do with their own funds.) The program's official guidelines state that the chaplain must have:

formal ordination, commissioning, recognised qualifications or endorsement by a recognised or accepted religious institution or a state/territory government approved chaplaincy service.

The only approved "chaplaincy services" are Access Ministries in Victoria, GenR8 Ministries in NSW, Scripture Union in QLD, the ACT and Tasmania, YouthCARE in WA and Schools Ministry Group in SA. Only if these organisations or affiliated churches are incapable of providing one are they allowed to use the funding to get a non-sectarian chaplain, under "particular circumstances" provisions enacted by Julia Gillard while she was Education Minister in 2008. These organisations, while purporting to represent most major denominations, are incredibly evangelical in their focus and clearly see their chaplaincy role as evangelical. Read this quote from Access Ministries CEO Evonne Paddison, for example:

In Australia, we have a God-given open door to children and young people with the Gospel, our federal and state governments allow us to take the Christian faith into our schools and share it. We need to go and make disciples.

Keep in mind these are state schools. There's no opt out for concerned parents, the chaplain is encouraged to be involved in all school activities regardless of whether the parents approve of this or not, and as 7:30 Report exposed last Monday, there are a number of instances where the program's guidelines have been clearly breached and yet very little has been done about it. Strangely, there is no legislation or delegated legislation putting the scheme into effect - meaning it in effect operates directly out of the Minister's - currently Peter Garrett's - office and does not report to Parliament. And they've just transferred hundreds of millions of taxpayer funds into the bank accounts of these five religious organisations.

And despite the religious test as noted above (that they have to be approved by an accredited chaplaincy organisation or a "recognised or accepted religious institution"), there is no minimum standard for qualifications. The organisations claim to have their own, but these cannot be scrutinised, and given the organisations involved have already engaged in obfuscation, legal action against blogs opposing them, and even poll bombing on The Age newspaper's website, I don't think they can be trusted. Among the scheme's opponents include Professor Gary Bouma, a noted Anglican scholar, Hon Michael Kirby, a former High Court justice who is also an Anglican, and the head of the Anglican Church's Education Commission. link Also Angelo Gavrielatos, the head of the Australian Education Union and prominent advocate for public schools (youtube link - ABC's "Hungry Beast"), and the primary peak organisations for counselling and psychology.

Many Christians have had real cause to oppose the scheme - here in Perth I've been working with a bunch of parents, mostly either non-church-attending or members of more liberal denominations, who are really outraged about the behaviour of certain chaplains in state primary and high schools here. The principals, the chaplaincy authorities and the Minister's office have all been contacted but to no avail, and the chaplains in each case are engaging in outright evangelism, trying to get kids to come along to their churches and putting pressure on them if they come once and decide not to come back. It's really unethical. Claiming "we don't proselytise, we don't proselytise, we don't proselytise" then refusing to act on clear complaints (which even included video evidence in one case) and threatening legal action when people go to the media really says where it's at.

Some additional case studies. From Campbell High chaplain in Canberra:

[A boy atthe school] has tended to be a loner and has been very isolated. He needs friends. As Steve said “If he were to discover Christ and how God sees him, I believe this would transform him”.

From yesterday's "Punch":

A 2009 report into the work of chaplains documented how they were dealing with such issues as depression, self-harm, suicide and grief, yet also revealed a disturbing reluctance to refer to specialist professionals.

And from three different parents:

Just started a new State school. Filled out paper work saying NO to Chaplin service (because there is no service in Chaplaincy). I go to pick the kids up and am greeted by the Chaplain hand in hand with the Principal, who tells me she has just met my kids, given them a gift and told them they can come and see her if they need her (all the while holding a teddy bear). My mind is screaming "How is this different to the techniques used by pedophile?". Now I have to talk to the Principal to discuss what part of No meaning No she doesn't understand!

I don't want my kids growing up with that version of religion. A version that says that although God is a god of love, we should engage in supposedly righteous hatred. Our kids are good kids with a lot of different friends and they have their own belief in God and that's the way we want it to stay. Yet the government seems to think we shouldn't have that right and the wreckers, the people who are doing more damage to Christianity than any non Christian ever could, should be given access to our kids and we don't even have the right to object to that or to the incorrect messages they're "sharing" with the kids. Well, I think that's wrong.

the chaplain at the local high school frequently flyers events at a particular evangelical church where the kids are invited to “witness the Holy Spirit at work”, and by this I mean people foaming at the mouth and having epileptic fits up the front. Kids who go and then decide not to go again get kind of rounded on by both the chaplain and the kids who are going in an immoral attempt to pressure them into continuing. The parents have complained several times to the school with no luck, there’s simply no scrutiny in the scheme. It’s sad because the chaplain at the other high school near here seems like a pretty decent bloke and the kids there speak highly of him. But you measure a system not by its strongest points but by its weakest.

As for the word "chaplain", that was a deliberate part of the design. Howard said in 2006: "Yes I am calling them chaplains because that has a particular connotation in our language. [...] And as you know I'm not ever overwhelmed by political correctness. To call a chaplain a counsellor is to bow to political correctness. Chaplain has a particular connotation, people understand it, they know exactly what I'm talking about."

orderinchaos is an administrator at http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=gro ... 1063938816 "Stop the National School Chaplaincy Program". He also recommends Mike Stuchbery's blog at http://mikerstuchbery.files.wordpress.com/, who in turn seems to be incisive enough to attract legal threats from Access Ministries in Victoria.

[Robert_S]

This! This is why we need to not let the moderates off so easy!!!

[JimC]

Quite disgraceful, the whole thing.

Good info, BTW, Seraph...

[charlou]

And much appreciative kudos to Ronald James Williams for his high court challenge. A man who's putting his money where his mouth is, hopefully with a good result for all involved and interested in keeping state education secular.



Edit: There's an Australian Trust Fund set up for donations (details at above link). I've sent something for the cause.

[Hermit]

Fucking hell! http://www.theage.com.au/national/educa ... .html#poll

[Pappa]

Fucking hell! http://www.theage.com.au/national/educa ... .html#poll

Seraph, what kind of support does all this shit have among the general populace?

[Cormac]

Tort law. Introducing dogma in education possibly causing trouble for the kid's further schooling if he learns as truth stuff that will let him laughed out of serious universities, or cause damage to children of atheists, non chretins, and members of disfavored denoms who might get harassed by the religious guys put in positions of authority and their influence over school staff.

Wish us luck with that. In Australia a "breach of non-delegable duty is not automatic on founding a cause of action against the primary tortfeasor. Fault on the part of the contracting party must be shown." Given the mindset of the average Australian - which includes the judiciary - regarding a spongy concept like "spiritual guidance", I don't fancy our chances for success.

Seems like an excerpt from contract law, rather than something that would apply to a straight negligence case.

Incidentally, constitutional rights might be a useful area to explore...