The issue of the separation of church and state ought to be a cornerstone of our civilisation, but in fact it is out of sight and out of mind, being virtually overlooked by our historians, academics and law-makers. Our fore-fathers, being of British stock for the most part, accepted the standing of the constitutional monarchy where the monarch is also head of a state church, and the question of the separation of church and state probably did not occur to them. But more surprisingly, neither does it appear in the debates engendered by the current Australian Republican Movement.
By contrast, France, after the Revolution, opted for freedom of conscience and freedom of religious observance, but, importantly, did not endorse state support for religious institutions. Further legislation in 1905 reaffirmed this position. While in the USA the Constitution has defined separation unequivocally, with cases mounted in the Supreme Court about this issue as recently as 2004. The increase in religious influence within American politics may appear to threaten to undermine the situation, but at least the issue is out in the open there and being debated. In Australia, however, this is far from the case.
The only reference to religion in the federal Australian Constitution is in Section 116. It reads :
The interpretation of this section was tested in the High Court in 1981 by the case for the Defence of Government Schools (DOGS), or the "State Aid" case which challenged government funding of church schools. The decision given emphasised that there was no clear separation in law between the state and church(es), with Justice Sir Ronald Wilson saying,
The next day none of the newspapers which had been following the case reported the judicial comments. Nor is there discussion of the matter in legal textbooks.
Thus while Australia does not have a state religion, but rather acknowledges many religions, and while we lack an effective separation of church and state, we are somewhere between a democracy and a theocracy, an unacceptable state of affairs for those who espouse a liberal democracy.
Each state also has its own constitution. Only the Tasmanian constitution mentions God. All states, as well as the commonwealth, offer tax exemption to the churches, which are deemed to be charities. They are "supernatural charities", according to Max Wallace, and in his forthcoming book, The Purple Economy: Secular Essays on Culture and Religion, he will explore the fiscal dimensions further. One could ask whether the financial affairs of the churches should be more transparent and accessible in light of the wide-spread subsidies that they receive from public revenue?
In New Zealand, while there is no written constitution, there is a similar dearth of discussion about the constitutionality of the nexus between church and state. None occurs, for example in the book published in 1992 by Sir Geoffrey Palmer, a former Prime Minister, called New Zealand's Constitution in Crisis. Like Australia, NZ has many overt religious traditions, such as references to God in both its national anthems, prayers at the opening of Parliament and the use of the emblems of christian saints within the national flag. Where do we turn, therefore, in a constitutional sense to see where NZ stands on the issue of the separation of church and state? Evidence given to a parliament-tary committee about state aid to non-state schools in 1956 stated that separation was written into the inaugural education statutes. But, in fact, for separation to be formalised there would need to be either specific legislation, such as the 1905 French law which guaranteed a secular society, or alternatively, a common law decision which endorsed it and could serve as a precedent. New Zealand has had neither of these. The Integration Act of 1975 removed any prohibition of state funding to religious schools, but by contrast to the showdown following the DOGS case in Australia in 1981 there was no similar constitutional reaction in NZ.
However after the Bill of Rights Act of 1990 and the 1993 Human Rights Act some useful commentaries emerged. Wridgworth in his book Rights and Freedoms argued that rights involve corresponding duties while freedoms do not. Legally the churches are charities. This status entitles them to tax exemption and government grants, based on the rationale that they are cross-subsidising community facilities with their charitable works. However there is no countervailing requirement for them to submit a statement of income, which would allow a review of grant funding in the light of current assets. And while the NZ government has recently established a Charities Commission to investigate the situation, the Australian government has ignored a recommendation to do so. Thus the right to religion has in fact become a freedom or a privilege. Consider, however, that the freedom to non-belief and that of religious observance are equivalent in many of the UN treaties that NZ is a signatory to, and that over the last hundred years the population has become decisively more secularised, with dwindling church attendance figures a testimony to this.
With respect to state aid to church schools in NZ a report on the Commission on Education in New Zealand in 1962 outlined the churches' argument. It was based on the key concepts of distributive justice and double taxation. The first is a flawed argument as it would follow that if recompense should be given to those who do not use a service, this might favour not only parents who choose a religious school in preference to a state one, but also citizens who do not have children at school at all. As to the second, double taxation is to some extent working in reverse now, as many religious families cannot afford, or choose not to send their children to schools run by the churches.
What would happen in NZ if there were to be a constitutional challenge to the 1975 Integration Act? At first glance it would be hard to see how the Supreme Court could follow the Australian precedent, as NZ now has a Bill of Rights which recognises belief and non-belief equally.
To some extent the controversial question of school funding has been tackled back to front. If there had been a clearly delineated constitutional separation of church and state at the outset, this could have been used as a starting point to find accommodation with the churches, such as in France, where, some religious schools, mainly Catholic, receive state funding providing they limit religious education, conform to the state's curriculum and take all-comers irrespective of religion. In Australia this issue of separation has been a missing concept with many of our politicians being religionists who sympathise with the super-natural charity agenda. Added to which, since the 1970s the ALP has seen state aid to church schools as a strategy for winning voters and neutralising their political opponents. As a result the 1981 State Aid case was a travesty which installed privilege as a right and as a consequence billions of dollars have been lost to consolidated revenue, given that the churches are exempt from income tax, capital gains tax or any tax on commercial income. Money that could, in principle, have helped to fund government and church schools more fairly.
In a final comment Max Wallace mentioned that the recently published book, God under Howard: The Rise of the Religious Right in Australian politics by Marion Maddox, although possibly the best book to date about religion and politics in Australia, it does not mention the question of separation. Any change in the situation would probably need a private members' bill to raise awareness and debate. There is not much hope that the republican movement will spearhead change if events of the recent past are any guide. For example, the issue was not canvassed in the 1998 Constitutional Convention which they held in Canberra and the proposal to adopt a republican system of government at the conclusion of proceedings was initiated by the Most Reverend George Pell, Archbishop of Sydney and Cardinal of the Catholic Church. If Australia is to become a republic and the question of separation of church and state continues to be bypassed we will effectively become a Christian Republic. Will this be acceptable to members of the community who do not believe in Christianity or whose religious beliefs are not Christian?
In Australian politics there is a disturbing tendency to tie morality to religion, and imply that Humanists and others have no independent base to their morals. Thinking Australians reject this. One obvious reason being the many humanistic people who have contributed to the public good, e.g. Pamela Bone, Eva Cox, 'Nugget' Coombs and Fred Hollows. The good such people do is sourced from a concern for the well-being of their fellow humans, any link to religion is coincidental.
Aiming to live a 'good' life is a human universal that religion has hijacked for its own ends. As Massimo Pigliucci, professor of evolutionary biology writes in free inquiry, June/July 04, "the most powerful argument ever produced to show that morality and religion are independent of one another" was originally articulated 2,500 years ago, by Socrates, recorded in a short and important work by Plato, called Euthyphro.
Written as a dialogue, it tells of Socrates on his way to the courts of Athens to answer the charge of impiety (for which he was later condemned to death). On his way he meets Euthyphro, a theologian who is going to charge his own father with murder. Surprised, Socrates asks for details of the story, which turn out to be rather muddled. This leads Socrates to ask Euthyphro how he knows that what he is about to do is right. Euthyphro answers that it is right because the gods want it! At this point Plato has Socrates deliver the single most powerful blow to theistic based-morality. He says: "Is what is holy holy because the gods approve it, or do they approve it because it is holy?"
The dilemma that Socrates poses to Euthyphro is this: either what is holy (or good) is such because the gods says so, or the gods have no choice but to approve something because it is good. In the first case, the good becomes an arbitrary concept, or whim of the gods. In the second case there is an independent source of the good.
The point of this dilemma is that the gods are irrelevant to the question of morality, because they either give arbitrary moral directions, or they refer to an independent standard of morality that is accessible to humans as well. This last point is an important contribution from philosophy to the general welfare of humanity. In a nutshell, you can be good without religion.
Understanding this has liberated people of good intent, whether religious or not, so they can join together and work towards a more equitable, just and fairer world, e.g. in Humanist Societies, through Amnesty International or the United Nations' advocacy of human rights. Thinking people have long known that morality, being sourced in human empathy and a universal fellow feeling, is independent of religion.
The opening salvos of the Federal election have centred on trust - a pivotal social value. Prime Minister John Howard says 'trust me to keep interest rates low and safeguard Australia's national security.' Opposition Leader Mark Latham claims more generally, 'trust me to tell the truth to the Australian people.'
This focus on trust follows a call by 43 former highly credentialed public officials for more honesty in government, and the revelation by a former public servant, Mark Scrafton, that he told the PM three days before the 2001 election 'that no refugees had thrown their children over-board.' A claim Howard denies.
Yet we know that the government lied about WMD, thus involving Australia in an illegal war and occupation that has left Iraq in ruins and socially dysfunctional with terrorism as its most viable growth industry. We also know many people rank politicians low on any scale of occupational trustworthiness.
In her address to the national Humanist Convention in Sydney on 2 May Eva Cox, social commentator and 1997 AHOY, spoke about trust and the need to create trustworthy societies. She said "while we might trust a mechanic to fix our car, we wouldn't trust him to do anything else. Trust is contingent on circumstances. To find somebody trustworthy you don't just want to know that they'll do the right thing by you; you want to know that they'll do the right thing in the broader sense, because if they're prepared to dud other people to suit you, at some stage they might be prepared to dud you to assist others."
Cox went on to say that, "creating trustworthy societies is a real challenge. First we've got to decide what are the criteria for a trustworthy society, and some of that is built into the assumptions of Humanism. A government that is seen as attempting to be fair and ethical is part of a notion of a trustworthy society. It is very difficult to create trust among citizens if people can't trust their politicians - a problem that we have at the moment. You also have to look at how we see strangers, because if people can be charming to people they know, but bastards to people they see as strange or threatening, we've got no basis for a trustworthy society."
It is our responsibility, individually and in our communities, to work out ways to create ethical trustworthy societies that espouse the Humanist values of equality and dignity for all; that foster personal relationships and a sense of community; and that allow for responsible freedom of action. Both governments and society need to be imbued with an ethic of equality, fairness, openness and honesty, that's far deeper than the mantra 'trust me', otherwise Australia will slip further into a bleak and Orwellian future.
VH Sept. 2004
This page was last updated on 07 June 2005
