Nick G.
On June 20, 2012 the High Court of Australia handed down a judgement that provides a huge moral victory for the proponents of secular public education.
It was a response to an action taken by a father of four children enrolled at a particular government school in Queensland who had objected to the use of federal funds to provide school chaplaincy services.
The plaintiff, Ronald Williams, believed that the employment of school chaplains was unconstitutional because Section 116 of the Constitution provides that “no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the Commonwealth”.
This section of the Constitution was written to guarantee the separation of the Church and state.
Simple common sense would rule that the employment of school chaplains under a Federal government program using Federal government funds violated s 116.
However, a majority of the learned judges ruled that as an intermediary body, the Scripture Union of Queensland, was the employer of the chaplains they did not therefore hold office under the Commonwealth.
This is a dodgy argument. Construction workers and others are quite familiar with sham contracting which removes large numbers of employees from the protection of Awards and the entitlements contained therein. This is sham contracting for the purpose of denying that people employed on a government project using government money are engaged as office-holders for that government!
So the Constitutional separation of Church and state can be easily frustrated.
But so, too, for the moment, are the government and the supporters of school chaplaincy services.
For the High Court discovered that under s 61 of the Constitution, the Commonwealth can only fund those matters provided for in the Constitution or authorised by laws of the Commonwealth.
The funding of education is not a Commonwealth responsibility under the Constitution. No laws have been passed by the Australian parliament to authorise the provision of Federal funds for the chaplaincy program.
Hence the High Court ruled that the funding agreement between the Commonwealth and the Queensland Scripture Union was invalid.
Herein lays the moral victory for a secular system of public education.
Ways will be found around it.
What is clearly indicates is the complete bankruptcy of the Australian Constitution which was cobbled together as a compromise document by the British colonialists, the capitalists of each of the colonies at the time of Federation, and those capitalists whose interests were served by the creation of a single market and trade regime over the whole of the continent and Tasmania.
It is ludicrous that the national government of a modern twenty-first century industrialised capitalist economy is hamstrung by such a compromised document.
And this is just looking at the matter from the perspective of a continuing and developing capitalism.
There are no rights for the people in this stupid document. There is no recognition of the prior occupancy of Australia by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples (although there is a belated effort to amend the Constitution in this regard). There is no clear definition of the independence and sovereignty of Australia - to the extent that such is recognised it was done by means of the British Imperial Parliament’s 1931 Statute of Westminster. Even then this Statute was not adopted by the parliament of the Anglophile Australian bourgeoisie until the crisis of a Japanese threat in 1942 compelled these lackeys to attach themselves to US imperialism. This they couldn’t decide to do until they had given themselves the authority under a British statute!
Not until the Australian people successfully challenge the rule of the capitalist class and destroy its loyalty and subservience to imperialism will we be able to replace our compromised, stupid and outdated Constitution. The one that replaces it will acknowledge the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the original owners of the country and make provision for their continuing custodianship and for the continuing exercise of traditional law and culture. It will define and protect the working class and its allies and establish them as the leaders of a sovereign and independent nation free of imperialist dictate, bullying, interference and control.
It will honour the intentions of Ronald Williams by defining education as free, compulsory and secular.
No comments:
Post a Comment