The Australian Prime Minister (Tony Abbott): We ask you to add secular counsellors to the school chaplaincy scheme
The Australian Abbott government is pushing ahead with a religious-only school chaplaincy scheme despite calls within their own cabinet that secular welfare workers should be included in the program. This ideologically-driven National School Chaplaincy Program (NSCP) has been declared invalid twice in two years within the Australian High Court, so the Coalition government is circumventing this through plans to fund the State and Territory governments to administer the scheme.
It is appalling that in a secular society, nearly $250 million over 4 years has been allocated towards this ideologically-driven policy.
This scheme will undermine the secular traditions of Australian public education. It will infringe on the rights of parents (or guardians) and children to choose schools with or without religious-affiliated counsellors. Many parents choose schools on the basis of religious affiliation: some select schools with an overt religious orientation, others actively select those without. This right must be respected.
Any person providing counselling to Australian children and young people should be selected on the basis of their appropriate tertiary qualifications in mental health and well-being (i.e., psychologists or counsellors), not on the basis of their personal religious belief.
The National School Chaplaincy Program will further see employed and valued counsellors, currently working with our most vulnerable youth, lose their position. This scheme has been criticised by teachers and mental health experts, including the Australian Psychological Society, and the Australian Council of State Schools Organisations, the peak-body for parents of public-funded schools in Australia.
The solution is simple:
extend the NSCP to include appropriately qualified secular workers!
Thus, schools who are faith-based can select chaplains with appropriate qualifications for working with young people; whilst secular schools can choose to employ the best appropriately qualified individual, regardless of their religious affiliation.