Somewhere in a dimly lit, smoke-filled room out the back of St Andrew’s Cathedral, Anglican Bishops are holding a secret conference. They are pouring over membership lists and crunching the numbers as they prepare to roll local P&C presidents as part of a diabolical plan to take over the world – starting with the NSW education system.
Not since Niccolò Machiavelli walked the earth has there been such a gathering of calculating and ruthless political minds.
Suddenly there is a knock at the door. A heavy-set minder crosses the room and glares through a small peep hole before opening the door to let the newcomers in. Through the thick haze of cigar smoke emerge representatives of the Islamic Council and the Jewish Board of Deputies. They take their seats at the table as the unlikely cartel plans to divide the spoils of war…
This is of course an absurd, paranoid image. Fairies at the bottom of the garden stuff really.
But it’s the type of scenario put forward in parliament recently by NSW Greens MLC John Kaye in a blistering attack on religion that spared none.
In just five short minutes, Kaye accused Christians, Jews and Muslims of conspiracy; labelled the Catholic Bishop of Wollongong a liar; and suggested the Anglican Church had been taking lessons from the NSW Labor Right and was planning to branch stack local P&C meetings.
Kaye was responding to recent media reports that the Anglican Archdiocese of Sydney was encouraging its members to attend their local P&Cs as local committees discuss the NSW Government’s proposed changes to Special Religious Education (SRE) in state schools.
Heaven forbid that in a predominantly Christian country (64% to be exact) Christians, or people of any faith for that matter, would participate in local discussions as active members of their communities.
At least Dr Kaye had the decency to make his accusations against the Church in the mainstream press. His personal attack on Bishop Peter Ingham’s integrity however, was said in the Legislative Council under parliamentary privilege.
He accused the Bishop of lying about the legality of the Keneally Government’s trial ethics programme. It is one thing to pull the Bishop up on a factual inaccuracy; it is another thing entirely to ascribe to him sinister motives and to accuse him of lying.
Kaye himself is guilty of stretching the truth when it comes to religious education in schools. In a 2007 press release yet again targeting religious education, he made the exact same mistake as Bishop Peter and confused the Education Act with government regulation, suggesting that NSW legislation forbids children who opt out of religious education from undertaking other educational activities. As Dr Kaye well knows, this is wrong.
The most astonishing thing about Kaye’s rant is that he is a member of a political party that is trying to position itself as the third force of Australian politics.
However no Australian political party can try to pass itself off as being mainstream as long as it ignores the fact that the overwhelming majority of Australian’s profess to hold religious beliefs.
Trying to shut people out of the debate because they hold to a particular religious world view is neither helpful nor practical. Kaye’s outburst raises serious questions about the Greens’ commitment to religious freedom. Unfortunately it is a trend being repeated continuously by the Greens across Australia.
For example in Victoria, the Greens were behind a push which began in 2008 to have the Government remove the ability of Christian and other faith-based organisations to hire people who share their faith and values.
Had it been successful, such a move would clearly have been a backward step, undermining religious freedom in this country. It is not a policy worthy of a credible political party.
If the Greens hope to be taken seriously by the Christian constituency in the lead up to the Federal, Victorian and NSW elections, all three due within the next ten months, they will need to do a lot of work to convince people they are not “anti-faith”.
Putting an end to vitriolic and personal attacks on church leaders under parliamentary privilege would be a good start.
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