chaplaincy
School Chaplaincy Program
TRANSCRIPT OF THE PRIME MINISTER
THE HON JOHN HOWARD MP
DOORSTOP INTERVIEW
CANBERRA
29 OCTOBER 2006
PRIME MINISTER:
Ladies and gentlemen, I am announcing today that the Commonwealth
will fund a School Chaplaincy Program at $30 million a year over
the next three years.
Up to $20,000 will be available to fund the engagement of a
chaplain in each school throughout Australia. The Program will be
available for both government and non-government schools.
It will be available to fund chaplains of a faith or denomination
chosen by the school community. We will expect individual school
communities to make some contribution themselves to funding the
engagement of chaplains. There will be funding agreements entered
into either with local P&Cs or in the cases where it is necessary
with state governments as the legal authority for government
schools. This funding will be available to help defray the cost
of chaplains that are already working in schools.
We believe that the engagement of chaplains, and this, let me
stress, is an entirely voluntary Program. In no way will schools
be required to participate in this Program as a condition of
receiving the funding. I want to make that very clear. And it is
not designed to discriminate in favour of a particular
religious faith, but obviously, given the nature of Australia,
the great majority of the chaplains that will be engaged will be
of Christian denominations. But clearly, it will be funding
available to Jewish and other schools to engage chaplains.
Each individual chaplain will need to be formally approved by
The Government because we are going to provide funding. It will,
I believe, fill a very significant gap in the services
available to school students. The chaplains will be expected
to provide pastoral care and spiritual guidance and support,
comfort, advice in family breakdown situations. Obviously
support for students grief stricken by the loss of friends in
tragic accidents, or the loss of family members. I think you
can all understand from the variety of human experiences the
sort of roles that this person will be required to fill.
They will be expected to provide support to staff if they want
it. And without regard to religious belief, they will be
expected to help people who are of no religious belief
obviously as well.
So it is a Program that I think will be very warmly welcomed
And widely applauded in school communities throughout Australia.
At the moment there is a small amount of funding. I think
Queensland provides about $3 million, and in the case of
South Australia and Victoria and Western Australia, less than a
million dollars for supporting umbrella organisations that
provide chaplaincy services.
We will naturally expect the states to continue that funding
and I would hope the states would see fit to match what the
Government is doing, because the majority of schools that will
become eligible for this funding are government schools,
because they comprise the great majority of schools in Australia.
The only other observation I would make in relation to the states
is that in no way should this Commonwealth funding be seen as any
kind of excuse to reduce careers advice or counselling support
that is provided in government schools by existing state
government services.
All round, I believe a measure, and an initiative that will
be warmly welcomed, and it will provide much needed additional
support for students in our schools.
And I stress, it’s available for both government and
non-government schools. It’s not restricted to Christian
chaplains and there will be consultation with the school
community and they will have to make the request direct to the
Federal Education Department. And the Minister for Education
Julie Bishop, who will administer this Program, will
establish a reference group. It will obviously include
representatives of parent organisations to give advice on the
implementation and the operation of the scheme.
JOURNALIST:
Prime Minister can you foresee a situation where Scientologists,
Jehovah Witnesses, even Falun Gong have chaplains in our schools?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well the request has to come from the school community and
obviously in some of those cases I think it’s very unlikely that
that will happen.
JOURNALIST:
Would they be rejected? I mean could…because you are…
PRIME MINISTER:
Well we would have to be satisfied that it was in the interests
of the school that that occur, and clearly as the paying
authority, we’re not going to licence and support some activity
that would not be acceptable to the mainstream of the Australian
community.
JOURNALIST:
Will the checking of Muslim chaplains provide a more
sensitive challenge for the Government in its checking process?
PRIME MINISTER:
I don’t think anything is sensitive here. I think it’s just
commonsense. I mean, look, the great majority of people
will support this as a very sensible initiative and I’m quite
sure that Islamic schools and Jewish schools will be as
enthusiastic about this as Catholic and Protestant schools and
so they should be. And we’re not going to discriminate, but
clearly we reserve the right to say no to somebody who is plainly
unacceptable, whatever that person’s background might be.
JOURNALIST:
What influence would you have over what sorts of message they’re
giving to children, given the debate we’re having about things
that are being preached from the pulpit? How do you become
involved in the content?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well clearly we wouldn’t be monitoring every single thing they
said because that is impossible but that applies now. I mean what
check have we got over what teachers say to children? I mean
what’s the difference? Why are we looking for negatives in
something like this?
JOURNALIST:
In things though sir like the Islamic community where there are
concerns about some of the people deeply within the Islamic
community, this group that will approve them or not, how do they…
PRIME MINISTER:
No the Government will approve it.
JOURNALIST:
How does the Government assure itself? Will it get an ASIO
clearance? Would it get an intelligence assessment?
PRIME MINISTER:
Geof, the request comes from the school community and I have a
rather more optimistic view of the commonsense of school
communities, and I don’t think many school communities
will be putting forward the names of unsuitable people. I think
they’ll be putting forward the names of suitable people and we
will devise a checklist, a process that’s not intrusive, that’s
not censorious, but just applies a commonsense assessment of
whether somebody is suitable.
JOURNALIST:
Mr Howard, you’re calling them chaplains rather than counsellors…
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes I am calling them chaplains because that has a particular
connotation in our language, and as you know, I am not ever
overwhelmed by political correctness. To call a chaplain a
counsellor is to bow to political correctness. Chaplain has a
particular connotation. People understand it, they know exactly
what I am talking about. If a particular school with a
non-Christian affiliation thinks the word chaplain is unsuitable
and would like to call them, you know for want of a better
expression ‘lay Rabbi’ that’s fine by me. But for generic
purposes, it’s a Chaplaincy Program.
JOURNALIST:
Would you expect them to be people of faith though…
PRIME MINISTER:
Oh yes, you will see in the guidelines that are issued that the
person has to have certain qualifications and to be identified
and has to obviously match up to a certain background and
standard. The person doesn’t have to be obviously formally an
ordained priest or minister because that would be plainly very
limited. But I could see circumstances where quite a number of
the chaplains could indeed be ministers or priests, just
depending on the circumstances. But it wouldn’t be limited to
them. The expression chaplain will be most widely used, and
people understand what that means. In the armed forces, there
have been Jewish chaplains in the armed forces and I think in the
police as well as Jewish, there have been Islamic chaplains as
well. So it’s a concept that has a generic understanding in our
community and I don’t think we’ll have many problems with that.
JOURNALIST:
So Mr Howard, does this reflect your belief that there’s a lack
of spiritual care currently in Australian schools?
PRIME MINISTER:
It reflects my belief that people want this. It’s not something
that I am trying to force on people, it’s an extra support level
of a personal kind that we are making available. It’s voluntary.
Communities don’t have to take it up. My belief is that they
will. They will see it as a method of providing personal and
emotional support and also clearly spiritual and ethical
guidance. And my assessment of the Australian community is that
whatever its view about formal religious adherence may be, that
it does hunger for additional ways of looking at the spiritual
and pastoral side of life. And people with this background can be
of great help to school communities when there are devastating
accidents, when children’s parents break up, at such a sensitive
and emotional age for them. And the more capacity a school
community has for that, and what’s really good about this is that
it’s going to be available to all schools. I mean these services
are available in many of the independent schools at the moment,
but they’re not as available in government schools. And this is
another way in which we are demonstrating that we are even-handed
in our treatment of both government and non-government schools.