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.