The Guardian 8 November, 2006
Howard’s attack on secular education
The Federal Government’s decision to allocate $80 million over three years to finance chaplains in schools has the principal aim of spreading religious doctrines to young students and pumping more money into church coffers. For many years, both Coalition and Labor Party Governments have steadily poured increasing amounts of taxpayers’ money into religious and other private schools while cutting back funding to the public school system.
Although money for chaplains will be available to both religious and public schools, PM Howard is deliberately covered up its real purpose. He claims that "there is a keen desire in the community for additional ways to provide pastoral care, comfort and support for young Australians".
Instead of funding additional trained councillors and psychologists to assist those with social, emotional, family and the many other problems young people face today, the government has made it clear that it will not provide money for schools to employ trained councillors — instead using the money to fund chaplains, without such professional training or secular outlook.
The supposed generosity of the Federal Government is also called into question regarding financing the chaplaincy program. Howard says that "school communities will be expected to contribute funding and support for chaplaincy programs at their schools". Parents and citizens are going to be called upon to finance some religious chaplain preaching a particular religion even though they may not subscribe to the religion of the chaplain who gets the government’s approval.
Howard’s statement declares that "[the government] has little, if any, checks on what teachers say to their students — we place a burden of trust on those who instruct our children. The same burden would exist for chaplains." But the reality is different. It has been made clear that the final say on appointments will rest with the Education Minister, Julie Bishop, who will decide whether this or that chaplain agreed to by a school is acceptable to the government.
Although Howard claims that "this is not an attempt to force-feed religion to our children", his record of achieving his long range objective is obscured by taking one step at a time while telling lies or dissembling, at which he is a master.
Once a network of chaplains has been established it is only a short step to making religious instruction in schools compulsory — with the chaplains preaching creationism and opposing evolution, campaigning against abortion and stem-cell research and of course, doing their bit to attack communist ideas while becoming propagandists for Howard’s social, economic and foreign policies.