Churches’ choice: self-interest or Gonski?

Date

June 29, 2013

Peter Garrett and Christopher Pine at the Southern Cross Catholic Vocational College in Burwood, Sydney, debate the funding of education in relation to the Gonski Report. Photo: Janie Barrett

The future of the Gonski education reforms is now in the hands of Liberal premiers and church heads.

The leaders of the Catholic, Anglican and Uniting churches, who have oversight over most of the non-government schools now negotiating with the federal government, need to state where they stand. Should church schools come out strongly in favour of change, it will be difficult for the probable PM-to-be, Tony Abbott, to maintain his support for the status quo. But if they continue to equivocate, the reform agenda could be lost. For this reason alone, the ecclesiastical hierarchy should be as accountable for their position as state governments.

It is generally assumed that Christian schools are negotiating with the government on the basis of securing their own interests, and will support reform only if it delivers them significant financial benefits. The question for the rest of the church is, what do they think of such an overt display of self-interest? Whether pro- or anti-Gonski, do the bishops, moderators, priests, pastors and indeed congregations believe that this is a Christian way of deciding their church’s position? It appears that the churches’ social justice values, so readily expressed when other people’s vested interests are affected, is to be ditched when it compromises their own.

The leadership of even progressive Christian organisations that run schools, from Jesuits to Quakers, remain largely silent on Gonski. Even social justice units specifically set up to combat social disadvantage, seem unable to campaign for schools being funded according to need. Why is it suddenly so complicated to clearly state that the poor should be the number one priority in this debate?

One of the more bizarre outcomes of secularism is that Australians are no longer divided about handing over publicly funded health, welfare and education services to institutions that proclaim a faith that comparatively few people believe in. The century of sustained resistance to government funding of the church, which ended in the 1960s, has been replaced by a corresponding mistrust of public provision. This has meant that the churches, far from becoming as irrelevant as their declining pew population would suggest, increasingly mediate access to a vast range of essential services.

Given that the growth in the church institutions is a direct consequence of taxpayer subsidies, this revolution in service provision raises obvious issues for the state. The question less asked in Australia is, what does it mean for the churches themselves?

The churches like to claim that their schools, hospitals and welfare organisations, which have collective revenues tens of times bigger than the faith communities that spawned them, retain the values of the church. The response to Gonski provides the latest evidence that this is far from the case. Those who believe that the service institutions are effectively independent entities that act to promote their own interests even when this means entrenching inequity, are again being proved right.

The churches of Australia are the custodians of a 2000-year-old tradition that has, even in the worst periods of abuse, generally sought to improve the life chances of the poor. Should the churches now turn their backs on this inheritance to defend an education funding model that has been central to the growing inequality in Australian society, it will confirm the depth of their moral decay.

Many have long noted that privileged Christian educational institutions seem less Christian than those schools that welcome every student regardless of income, family background or ability.

No school becomes Christian by having religion, ethics or social justice as a subject in the curriculum. A genuine Christian community will always put those who are disadvantaged first. This means that the test for the churches in this standoff with the government is nothing less than who are the real Christians here.

Historian James Boyce’s latest book, 1835: The Founding of Melbourne and the Conquest of Australia, won the 2012 Age Book of the Year.