Weekend Wrap for 1 August 2026
Welcome to the NSL Weekend Wrap for 1 August 2026. The Wrap covers Australian secular politics — religious privilege and funding, religion in public schools, discrimination laws, voluntary assisted dying, and many other related issues. If someone forwarded this to you, you can subscribe on our website.
A quick note that until 11.59 pm on Monday 3 August, every contribution to the Census — Not Religious? campaign will be matched, dollar for dollar. The Rationalist Society of Australia has generously offered to match contributions made during that period, up to a total of $5,000. Double your impact now.
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Coming up...
ICAC's Operation Rosny opened on Monday, and by Friday it had done something the sector rarely manages on its own: put the money of a publicly funded Catholic schools body on the public record. The commission is examining undeclared donations it alleges were arranged and approved by the chief executive of Catholic Schools NSW, inside a Liberal branch-stacking operation whose organisers, on the evidence of two mastheads, knew each other through Opus Dei. It's a blatant example of religion operating through party machinery and taxpayer money.
In Melbourne, the Victorian parliament's cults inquiry handed down its final report, and did the sensible thing: it recommended laws against coercive control that are belief-neutral, aimed at conduct rather than doctrine, and it explicitly refused to define a "cult". That is the position secular advocates and survivors have argued for against a religious lobby that warns any such law will be turned on churches.
Voluntary assisted dying stayed in the frame, and the religious lobby made itself plain. After Labor's conference backed lifting the Howard-era ban on telehealth for VAD, Melbourne's Catholic archbishop and a coalition of Christian, Muslim, Sikh and Hindu leaders publicly urged the Prime Minister to hold the ban — and he obliged, saying he would not personally support the change. Another loud and clear example of the power of religious influence in Australian politics.
The NSW Law Reform Commission has released the next stage of its review of the Anti-Discrimination Act, with submissions open until 2 October. The religious right has already framed it as a threat to "religious freedom", which is the surest sign the review has reached the exemptions that let publicly funded faith schools discriminate.
And the census question the ABS concedes is leading is going out to households right now. Answer it honestly, and tell others why the wording is loaded.
News this week
National: Religious leaders urge PM to hold firm on telehealth VAD ban (27 July 2026)
After Labor's national conference voted to remove the federal barrier to discussing VAD by telehealth, a coalition of religious leaders publicly pressed Anthony Albanese to resist his own Left faction and keep the ban. Melbourne Catholic Archbishop Peter Comensoli warned against "caving", said the government's focus should be palliative care, and repeated the line that "faith leaders from Christian, Muslim, Sikh and Hindu communities" hold that euthanasia and assisted suicide "can never be made safe". The current law threatens doctors with a $364,000 fine for using a carriage service to counsel suicide. The Prime Minister duly said he would not personally support the change, citing "misuse" concerns. The barrier falls hardest on terminally ill people in regional and remote areas — and its defenders here are, once again, organised faith interests.
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CathNews
VIC: Victorian cult and fringe group inquiry recommends criminalising group coercion (29 July 2026)
The Victorian parliament's Legal and Social Issues Committee tabled the final report of its inquiry into "cults and organised fringe groups" on Wednesday, with 39 recommendations drawn from 317 submissions. It recommends the state criminalise group-based coercive control by February 2029, after a Victorian Law Reform Commission review of legislative options, and it deliberately adopts a behaviour-based approach — targeting coercive conduct, not religious or ideological belief, and explicitly declining to define a "cult". Survivors of high-control groups, several of them religious, welcomed it. The report also urges a lived-experience advisory body, frontline training, stronger child-protection measures and a review of home-schooling to reduce the isolation of children in high-control settings — while acknowledging the religious-freedom questions that oversight of parental choice raises. The government has six months to respond. It is the belief-neutral, conduct-based model secular advocates have argued for against ACL and Freedom for Faith resistance.
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ABC News
The Guardian
National: 'Gas from the chambers': Students' cruel taunts at Jewish classmates revealed (30 July 2026)
The Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion sat in Sydney this week, taking evidence on the experience of Jewish Australians across health, the arts and education, and hearing disturbing accounts of schoolyard abuse. Commissioner Virginia Bell AC presided. The block followed the Melbourne hearings carried in the last edition and continues the commission's central task: defining how a public body identifies hatred of a religious and ethnic group, and how the state's protective machinery is built around it. The secular interest is in the governance question, not the particular grievances: the commission is drawing the line between protected belief and unlawful hatred in the same period other reforms are testing where religious bodies may lawfully discriminate. Its final report is due by 14 December 2026.
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The Sydney Morning Herald
SBS News
NSW: Sham invoices, kickbacks and sickies: ICAC witness spent work time on branch stacking (31 July 2026)
ICAC's eight-week Operation Rosny inquiry, which opened on Monday, spent its first week tracing how money and favours moved through a NSW Liberal faction known as the Reformers. The commission alleges that Catholic Schools NSW — the taxpayer-funded body governing some 600 diocesan schools — made political donations that were not declared and exceeded the caps, "pursuant to payments arranged and approved" by its chief executive, Dallas McInerney. Witnesses this week included Robert Assaf, who admitted creating fake invoices, and Jean-Claude Perrottet; evidence pointed to operatives spending a majority of their paid work time on factional projects. A religious-education body funded by the public purse sits inside a corruption inquiry into the internal machinery of a political party. No findings have been made.
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The Sydney Morning Herald (31 July)
The Sydney Morning Herald (30 July)
Commentary and analysis
Brian Morris: ABS Back-down on Census Needs a Public Inquiry (27 July 2026)
Morris — an author and founder of the National Secular Lobby — argues the ABS's retreat on the religion question is not a statistical footnote but a governance failure that warrants a public inquiry. He sets the 2021 census figure of 38 per cent "No Religion" against an Essential Media poll the same year that asked "Do you have a religion?" and recorded 54 per cent with none (and indeed, new 2026 polling confirms this gap), and traces the reversal to the Catholic bishops' lobbying of the Prime Minister, exposed by the Rationalist Society's FOI. His wider claim is that loaded census data feeds funding inequity, particularly the drift of public money to private and religious schools.
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The AIMN
Patrick McIvor: What Victoria's Cult Inquiry Needs to Deliver (27 July 2026)
Published two days before the report landed, McIvor's piece offers a ten-point scorecard — drawn from survivor submissions — for judging whether the inquiry's recommendations would deliver real change: behaviour not belief, survivor leadership, specialist recovery support, independent oversight, and regulators with teeth. Read against the report the committee actually handed down, it is a useful measure of how far the recommendations go, and where the government's response will need watching.
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Patrick McIvor
Johanna Browne: Why Australians need the right to answer their own Census (29 July 2026)
A pointed argument (from someone involved in the Census — Not Religious? campaign) that people should be free to record their own beliefs, identity and conscience without the form nudging them toward an answer. It is the civil-liberties framing of the same grievance the campaign presses on the religion question: a census that leads respondents and makes it difficult for individuals (especially those in high-control environments) to answer for themselves is a census that misreports the country to itself.
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Independent Australia
The Sydney Morning Herald (editorial): Time for Catholics to be transparent about their use of other people's money (30 July 2026)
The Herald's own view, written off the back of Operation Rosny, argues that the freewheeling days when NSW Catholic schools did not have to account for how they spent taxpayer funds must end. It is a notable intervention precisely because it comes from a masthead's editorial line rather than a secular advocate: the transparency argument about publicly funded religious education has moved into the mainstream, and it did so in the same week a Catholic schools body's donations landed before a corruption inquiry.
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The Sydney Morning Herald
Michelle Grattan: A reluctant Albanese is under pressure over telehealth for VAD (30 July 2026)
Grattan's read on the fallout from the one contested vote at Labor's national conference. The conference backed a conscience vote to lift the Howard-era criminal-code barrier to discussing VAD by telehealth; the Prime Minister then made clear he opposes the change, and the Attorney-General has voiced strong concerns. This is why a platform amendment does not make a law, and highlights the church-adjacent politics of a barrier that matters most to people in the bush.
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The Conversation
Malcolm Knox: How does Liberal plotting and branch-stacking fit into God's plan? (31 July 2026)
Knox's column turns the Operation Rosny evidence — young "Reformers" and Catholic Schools NSW employees spending most of their paid work time on factional scheming — into the sharper question the inquiry keeps raising: what a self-consciously devout faction thinks it is doing with other people's money and time. A fitting companion piece to the Herald's editorial, and to the deeper reporting on the network's Opus Dei ties.
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The Age
Nail Aykan: Census 2026: Australia's Muslim milestone is more than a number (1 August 2026)
The complement to the "No Religion" argument, from the other side of the religion question. Aykan sets out how the 2026 census will, for the first time, break down Islamic denominations, giving a fuller picture of Muslim diversity and belonging. It is a useful reminder that the case for accurate religion data is not an argument against faith communities: better data serves the non-religious and religious minorities alike, and it is the leading wording — not the counting itself — that the campaign objects to.
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Pearls & Irritations
Ben Cubby, Jessica McSweeney and Alexandra Smith: From God to Godfather: The secretive young men behind the Reformers (1 August 2026)
The feature companion to the Operation Rosny news item. It maps the network of young NSW Liberal operatives at the centre of the ICAC hearings and the shared Catholic formation — much of it traced to Opus Dei — that bound them together. It is a reminder that the church-state stakes of Operation Rosny run wider than the publicly funded Catholic Schools NSW body alone: this is religious identity used as the connective tissue of a party faction in a position to push public policy.
➧ READ MORE:
The Age
Opportunities for action
National: Double your donation to the Census — Not Religious? campaign before it closes — deadline 11.59 pm Monday 3 August 2026. The Rationalist Society of Australia is matching every contribution to the joint campaign dollar for dollar, up to $5,000, but only until Monday night. This is genuine, time-bound urgency on a campaign the NSL co-drives. Donate via the campaign's donation page.
National: Support changing the leading Census question on religion. The 2026 Census religion question is the one the ABS's own documents concede "may lead respondents to a particular response", retained after the Catholic bishops lobbied the Prime Minister. If you are not religious, say so, and tell others why the wording matters. Sign the campaign's change.org petition to change the question.
NSW: Make a submission to the NSW Law Reform Commission's Anti-Discrimination Act review — submissions due 2 October 2026. The Commission has released its consultation paper on procedures and compliance, together with a community summary, a survey and an Easy Read paper, as the next stage of its review of the Anti-Discrimination Act 1977. The broader review reaches the religious exemptions that allow publicly funded faith schools to discriminate against LGBTQIA+ staff and students, which is why the Australian Christian Lobby and Freedom for Faith are mobilising against it. Secular, humanist and human-rights voices that want those exemptions narrowed rather than preserved should lodge a submission. Make a submission or complete the survey via the NSW Law Reform Commission.
VIC: Back the cults inquiry's belief-neutral approach in the government's response — Victoria has six months to reply. With the inquiry's final report tabled on 29 July and its 39 recommendations — including criminalising group-based coercive control by 2029, after a Victorian Law Reform Commission review — the contest shifts to the government's response and the drafting of any legislation. The ACL and Freedom for Faith will press to narrow or resist a coercion law that could reach high-control religious groups. Secular voices that support conduct-based protections should be ready to defend the report's behaviour-not-belief model. Read the report and inquiry details on the Victorian Parliament website.
National: Ask the Attorney-General to lift the telehealth barrier to VAD. Labor's national conference backed a conscience vote to remove the Howard-era criminal-code provision that stops doctors discussing VAD by phone or video — but after religious leaders urged him to hold firm, the Prime Minister has said he opposes the change, and the Attorney-General is resisting. The barrier falls hardest on people in regional and remote areas. Go Gentle Australia and Dying With Dignity NSW are both running campaigns to email the Attorney-General. Email the Attorney-General via Go Gentle Australia's telehealth campaign.
National / NT: The Northern Territory's voluntary assisted dying bill will be debated in late August 2026. Introduced on 23 July with all 17 CLP MLAs committed to passing it, the Rights of the Terminally Ill bill will make the NT the last Australian jurisdiction to legislate for VAD. Two contested features remain: a 12-month prognosis limit and a "gag clause" barring practitioners from raising VAD unless a patient asks first. The Australian Christian Lobby is running a parallel "born alive" campaign in the Territory. Go Gentle Australia is tracking the NT process, and Territorians can email their local MP.
NSW: Watch Operation Rosny — ICAC's public hearings continue for roughly eight weeks from 27 July 2026. With a publicly funded Catholic-education body implicated in an inquiry into party donations and branch-stacking, the hearings are a live test of integrity where church, party and taxpayer money meet. They are open to the public and livestreamed. See the ICAC Operation Rosny page for hearing details.
VIC: The Victorian parliament's Inquiry into Anti-LGBTIQA+ Hate Crimes reports by 1 September 2026. Proceedings are open and broadcast live. Details on the inquiry page at the Victorian Parliament.
National: Push back on the $1.2 billion Choice and Affordability Fund. Private school organisations have opened a campaign to extend the fund beyond 2029 — money available only to Catholic and Independent schools, outside the needs-based model. The Australian Education Union's For Every Child campaign is the natural vehicle for a reply before this becomes a 2028 election commitment. Support the AEU's For Every Child campaign.
National: Look up your aged-care provider's VAD position. Go Gentle Australia's Know Your Rights: VAD in Aged Care found two-thirds of the largest residential providers publish no information about voluntary assisted dying, despite VAD being lawful nationwide. Faith-based providers are a large part of the sector. Read the guide and search the provider database at Go Gentle Australia.
National: Track the government's response to the UN Universal Periodic Review. Australia declined every LGBTIQ+ recommendation — the only group for which the government accepted none — including removing religious-school discrimination exemptions and a national conversion-practices ban. Read Equality Australia's response.
National: Support an Australian Charter of Human Rights & Freedoms. The Human Rights Law Centre runs a site for supporters. Visit the Human Rights Act campaign website.
Our activities
NSL is involved in the joint 2026 Census - Not Religious? Mark 'No Religion' campaign aiming to improve the accuracy of census religion data. Visit the campaign website to learn more, make a donation to support the campaign, or sign the Change.org petition calling on the ABS to change the leading religion question in the Census.
As always, the full videos of presentations and panel discussions from the 2023 Secularism Australia Conference (co-organised by NSL and other groups) are freely available for viewing on the Secularism Australia website and on YouTube!
More coming soon!
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