Although John Howard has faithfully followed the
foreign policy adventures of his American ally, his government has
never had the fundamentalist religious colouring of Bush’s Republicans.
Nonetheless, he has steadily tried to advance the place of religion in
public life. A good example is the plan, reported in yesterday’s Age, to provide federal funding for chaplains in state schools.

Apparently four Liberal MPs – Greg Hunt, Andrew
Laming, Louise Markus and David Fawcett – have written to the PM
proposing that state schools that raise money to take on a chaplain
should receive matching federal funds. Education minister Julie Bishop
has backed the idea, and The Age says “it received strong support
from both Liberal and National MPs” at a meeting last week.

A quick look at the Australian constitution reveals that according to section 116 “The Commonwealth shall not make
any law for establishing any religion, or for imposing any religious
observance” – which would appear to rule out such a plan from the start.

But in
1981, in Attorney-General (Vic); Ex rel Black v The Commonwealth (the
DOGS case), the High Court ruled that those words do not mean what they
say, and that commonwealth funding for religious education is
constitutionally permitted. There is no evidence that the current High
Court would come to a different view about chaplains.

No doubt many chaplains do excellent work, but
nonetheless they are beholden to a distinctive worldview. This would
not be so bad if there was any likelihood that the non-religious would
be given fair treatment – according to the 2001 census,
17.5% of those who answered the question said they had no religion,
although many observers think the real figure is higher, since some
responses
indicate social identification rather than actual religious belief.
But is there any chance that a share of the government money will go to
employ atheist propagandists?

Shadow education minister, the usually invisible
Jenny Macklin, “offered cautious support” for the idea, saying that
“Any new chaplaincy program must take into account the diversity of
religious beliefs in our school system”. But that’s just conceding the
principle that everyone needs some sort of religion, and haggling about
the details.