A federal parliament controlled by a Labor majority, plus progressive independents and minor party representation, has a historic opportunity to pursue long-overdue secular reform for Australia.

Despite the fundamental demographic changes that have occurred in recent decades – with increasing religious diversity and the number of non-religious people poised to overtake Christians at next year’s Census – government decision-makers are yet to take note.

Religious privilege – mostly, Christian privilege – continues to pervade our nation’s public institutions, relegating non-religious Australians to being treated as second-class citizens.

With the election of a new federal parliament, we will now be stepping up our calls for broad secular reform.

Non-religious Australians face unfair and discriminatory treatment in many public institutions and in many government programs. We’ll be having more to say about these areas in coming weeks and months. But, today, we want to share with you the reforms that we’ll be contacting ministers and members of parliament about at the start of the new parliament in Canberra.

In terms of secular reforms, our priorities include:

Tax and religion / Charities

We will continue to advocate for an end to special treatment of religious people in the charities system – a system that recognises the ‘advancement of religion’ as a charitable purpose in and of itself (even for damaging cults) while denying equal treatment to non-religious groups. 

We have already begun the discussion with independents, urging them to support the Productivity Commission’s recommendation for removal of the ‘Basic Religious Charities’ (BRC) category, and push for removal of tax concessions enjoyed by commercial enterprises owned by religious charities and where business activities were unrelated to the charitable purpose. We will also urge parliament to examine the election-related activities of religious charities. 

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Religion in the military

We will again urge the government and the parliament to make secular reform of the Defence Force a top priority – something that we called for in 2022. It is unacceptable that the Defence Force continues to rely almost exclusively on religious-based chaplaincy – primarily Pentecostal and evangelical chaplains – for its frontline wellbeing support, even while the majority of its workforce identifies as not religious.

The Navy introduced a handful of secular roles a few years ago, but Army and Air Force do not provide any non-religious or secular option for their non-religious personnel. As a result, many Defence personnel cannot access the frontline wellbeing support that they need – at a time of high mental health probems and suicide among Defence personnel. This is a matter of fundamental human rights.

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Prayers in government

We will again ask the houses of the federal parliament to modernise their Standing Orders to remove daily acts of Christian worship or replace them with something more inclusive and reflective of the community. The practice of opening proceedings with Christian prayers in both the House of Representatives and the Senate alienates many members of parliament, staff and others in attendance.

Many in the Labor Party support change. Among them, the late Peta Murphy, Tim Watts and Clare O’Neill have all called for prayers to go. Upon being appointed as President of the Senate at the opening of the previous term, Senator Sue Lines – an atheist – voiced her opposition to having to recite aloud Christian prayers. Regrettably, her Labor colleagues told her to toe the line.

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School chaplaincy

We applauded education minister Jason Clare’s decision to reform the school chaplaincy program in 2022 by at least giving schools the option of a secular wellbeing officer – an option that school communities have been embracing. Yet, under the newly named National Student Wellbeing Program, taxpayer’s money continues to fund the employment of chaplains  through third-party (Christian) labour hire firms and based on their religious credentials – such as their involvement in local churches or endorsement by a religious leader. This is blatant discrimination against non-Christians on the grounds of religion and belief.

As we reported last week, it appeared the coalition had wanted to return to the model of funding just religious chaplains. Australian governments – state and federal – should put the interests of children first and provide kids with the best support possible through a modern and secular support capability. Public schools should be funded to employ staff directly and according to professional qualifications and experience of candidates, not their religious identity and church connections.

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These issues will be the focus of our work in the early days of the new parliament. But there will, of course, be many more issues that we will be actively campaigning on. And these will include non-secular issues, such as the need for laws to ensure truth in political advertising and changes to the Criminal Code to allow telehealth for voluntary assisted dying.  

If you want to support our work, please make a donation or become a member.

Si Gladman is Executive Director at the Rationalist Society of Australia. He also hosts ‘The Secular Agenda’ podcast.