The whale in the bay of Australian politics

Apart from the logical craziness of contemplating a republic without a US-style constitutional separation of church and state, another major problem with Australia’s lack of separation is that governments, state and federal, are free, as noted, to throw any amount of taxpayers’ money, big and small, at religious causes, whether we like it or not.

Another significant example was Catholic World Youth Day (week) in Sydney, July 2008. It cost in excess of $20 million of federal money and a whopping $100 million approx of NSW money. When the same event was held in Canada and Germany their governments dedicated only about a quarter of the Sydney sum, which is a measure of how supine our governments are (“Almighty cost of hosting pilgrims”, Sun Herald, June 22, 2008).

Interestingly, this federal spending was contested by disaffected Catholics who slapped a Writ, March 2008, on the federal government in an attempt to stop it. It didn’t get past first base despite the interesting arguments of their barrister, Peter King, former federal member for Wentworth (see my “Conflict of Interest? The High Court and the Vescio/Catholic World Youth Day Case”, forthcoming, Australian Humanist , October 2010).

Quite soon, the federal government will be facing another High Court Writ contesting the constitutionality of that federal funding for religious chaplains in state schools. Leading barrister, Bret Walker, will be asking the government to explain itself. (“Chaplains in schools challenged”, The Age, September 5, 2010).

Maybe the old whale will surface at this point and new whale watchers will be surprised to learn that it was there all along, and they never knew.