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Harvesting a secular Greens vote

By Max Wallace - posted Thursday, 8 July 2010


While the power of the media has been demonstrated by the mining lobby’s victory in removing Kevin Rudd, I suggest it does not follow that a similar media campaign of abuse and misrepresentation would necessarily work this time.

First, Julia Gillard’s atheism has muddied the waters.

Second, the electorate is already polarised. An attempt to demonise the Greens would only succeed in alerting those voters who recently swung to the Greens for a negative reason, to swing back again for a positive reason. Namely, that the party is further differentiating itself from Labor and Liberal by openly embracing secularism, and all that means in terms of republican policies, especially, I suggest, the proposal of a new law advocating separation of church and state.

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A Murdoch Newspoll survey undertaken in 2006, which Murdoch’s Australian refused to publish, found Catholic majority support for a new separation law. Separation speaks to an issue dear to Australian hearts across the board but ignored by all political parties, including the Greens: that religion should be kept out of politics.

There is no separation in Australia at either a federal or state level of government, and no political party has ever advocated there should be. It would be difficult for Cardinal Pell to argue against this because in 1988 he said: “All Australians believe in the separation of church and state, in a division between God and Caesar.” (Letters, The Age, 2 September, 1988.)

While some of the public, along with some politicians, detest what they see as interference in politics by clerics meddling in public issues, rather than the rightful exercise of their free speech, many are equally angered by the way politics is heading in the US direction with duplicitous politicians affecting religious belief for perceived political gain. The Greens could successfully press that hot button.

Third, an approaching high court case challenging the constitutionality of Howard/Rudd’s financing of religious chaplains in state schools could blow the lid off this whole issue (see www.highcourtchallenge.com).

Of course, the Greens would have to declare that their secularism would not mean a reconsideration of funding for Catholic schools, but they could certainly demand there should be transparency into how that school funding is allocated, a policy that may be no different to Julia Gillard’s.

Catholic parents, and the public at large, should be entitled to know where government funding is spent. The church itself has admitted that up to half of Catholic children attend public schools because their parents cannot afford the lowest fees at their systemic schools (see “Catholic schools too expensive, says bishop”, Sun-Herald, August 19, 2007).

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Fourth, in the above-mentioned Christian survey, it was reported that “Believers in God, including those who believe but have doubts and those that believe ‘sometimes’ fell from 61 per cent to 47 per cent” between 1993 and 2009. “Correspondingly, there was a large increase in those claiming to have ‘no religion’ - from 27 per cent in 1993 to 43 per cent in 2009.”

The earth has moved beneath everyone’s feet. The question is why the Greens lack the courage to move with it to be not only green, but also secular.

Notwithstanding her backdown on gay marriage, Julia Gillard has had the guts to declare she’s an atheist. So, what is the Greens’ problem in giving the public what they want: the advocacy of some political space between religion and politics, to be achieved in principle through a new law separating church and state? New votes are waiting to be harvested by the Greens who are secular in everything but name and political will.

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About the Author

Max Wallace is vice-president of the Rationalists Assn of NSW and a council member of the New Zealand Assn of Rationalists and Humanists.

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