An open letter to the Prime Minister from Australia’s secular parents

Prime Minister, the Australian Secular Lobby requests that you initiate an urgent investigation into the structure, the running, the true purpose and the reality of the National School Chaplaincy Program. This must start with the eight-page DEEWR application process, and the surprising 100 per cent tick-a-box success rate, even from schools where parents have complained to DEEWR, and to the ASL, that the consultation process was either flawed, or completely non-existent.

Created by John Howard for base political advantage and continued on the personal whim of Kevin Rudd, at the behest of a noisy and unrepresentative minority of ambitious and divisive evangelical lobbyists, this Liberal government policy has now run its course.

In our once secular public schools, there is now no escape from the presence and influence of potent, raw, unfettered religious ambition, or from the evangelising and proselytising of church recruiters.

Our public schools should not serve as “missionfields” for any religion keen to promote their exclusive message, to tell our children they have no “hope”, to suggest our supporters live in a “moral vacuum” and that our public school teachers cannot be trusted.

Prime Minister, please apply your new authority to tear down this outdated Liberal Party policy that Kevin Rudd so happily endorsed and encouraged. Fund those schools who need qualified professional school counsellors with just that, qualified professional school counsellors.

Erect a wall of separation between the religious proselytising ambitions of church recruiters, and our children, the students who provide the purpose our once secular public schools have always existed for, the promotion of democratic, egalitarian and secular Australian values.

These same secular values allow all within our multi-cultural and multi-faith (and none) nation-state to co-exist and prosper. Those who work to actively oppose a secular state, also work to oppose egalitarianism, democracy, and our shared Australian values.

Yours sincerely,

The Australian Secular Lobby: including all of the many secular parents, students, citizens, electors, teachers, nurses, doctors, truck drivers, politicians, mine workers, retail workers, trade unionists, retired people, journalists, executives, bankers, entrepreneurs’ and the many millions of unidentified people who all expect to be able to co-exist with religion, without having it imposed upon them and their children, particularly by the Commonwealth of Australia, in a secular nation-state.