Submitted by Max
From The Canberra Times
Missed opportunity to debate school chaplain 'religious test'
By Anna Verney
15 Aug, 2011 04:00 AM
It was a busy time at the High Court of Australia last week. On Monday, the court extended an injunction staying the removal of asylum-seekers from Christmas Island to Malaysia under the ‘‘Australia-Malaysia Deal’’. In the course of a hearing accompanied by high drama, Justice Hayne chided the Commonwealth for the ‘‘unsatisfactory’’ and ‘‘half-baked fashion’’ with which it approached the proceedings, only filing its affidavit with the court an hour into the two-hour hearing. The same ill preparedness was not demonstrated by the Commonwealth in the hearing of Williams v the Commonwealth commencing the next day before the full bench of the court.
That case involves a legal challenge to the Commonwealth’s $222 million National School Chaplaincy Program, under which the government funds school chaplains to provide students of both private and government schools with pastoral care, counselling, ‘‘spiritual guidance’’ and oversight of their ‘‘spiritual wellbeing’’. The controversial program, criticised extensively in a recent Ombudsman’s report, is established by policy guidelines beset by what Justice Gummow termed acerbically on the first day of the hearing as ‘‘somewhat loose expressions which have never been subject to legislative scrutiny and any attempt at legislative precision’’ and ‘‘the sort of stuff [that] would never get through parliamentary counsel’’.
The arguments before the court this week were foremost concerned with the confines of the Commonwealth’s constitutional legislative power with respect to providing ‘‘benefits to students’’, and, secondly, limitations upon the executive’s power to spend appropriated monies without supporting legislation. Given their invested interest in containing the reach of the Commonwealth’s financial tentacles into their governmental purview, each state was represented at the bar table.
Full story: http://www.canberratimes.com.au/news/opinion/editorial/general/missed-opportunity-to-debate-school-chaplain-religious-test/2258330.aspx?storypage=0
