Weekend Wrap for 11 July 2026
Welcome to the NSL Weekend Wrap for 11 July 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.
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The parliaments have gone quiet, and the week's news came instead from documents: court files, land titles, a freedom-of-information release, a journal article, a committee referral. Religious privilege in Australia is not always legislated out in the open; often it's administered.
Nowhere more so than at the Christian Brothers. The order says it's broke and cannot pay the survivors it created. The documents say otherwise. Land titles obtained by the Guardian show it has housed convicted child sex offenders on its own property — including one who preyed on orphans, and one kept in schools for almost thirty years after officials were first warned. Survivors have gone to the Victorian Supreme Court to pursue Edmund Rice Education Australia instead: the entity that took the order's property for a dollar a title and now reports net assets of $2.3 billion. And in the Saturday Paper, Judy Courtin — a lawyer for survivors, who was in the room when the order's lawyers gave her firm a day's notice — traces the architecture back to February 2013, when EREA was incorporated one month after the Royal Commission was announced, its council appointed by the Christian Brothers' own Provincial. Her conclusion is the sentence to remember: if EREA looks, acts, sounds and smells like the Christian Brothers, it is the Christian Brothers, and the Christian Brothers must pay.
New South Wales supplied the week's other theme, which is what happens when the state finally double-checks. Parliament's education committee will hold an urgent inquiry into Redeemer Baptist School — coercive control, unpaid teachers, children moved into the principal's home, tens of millions in public funding. Abigail Boyd, who raised Redeemer in that parliament twenty years ago, notes that the concerns were never resolved by public officials. Separately, the Herald reported that the hard-right Liberal faction facing an eight-week ICAC inquiry from 27 July recruited on an explicit "Christian values" platform — the same inquiry that will examine alleged illegal donations from Catholic Schools NSW. One Liberal called the factional split a Henry VIII-level cleave in the church (and the metaphor is probably doing more work than he intended).
The Bureau of Statistics, meanwhile, explained why it blacked out its own admission that the Census religion question "may lead respondents to a particular response". A system error, it says. Faux redactions. The cause hardly matters now: the document stands, the ABS knew the question was leading, and it reverted to it anyway after the Catholic bishops asked the Prime Minister to intervene. Census night is 11 August. The question is unchanged.
Which leaves the quiet work. Private schools are campaigning to keep a $1.2 billion fund public schools cannot touch. The churches are lobbying to keep a tax concession worth $3 billion in donations. And new Monash research put a number on religious instruction in public schools: 91.2 per cent of learning outcomes were lower-order thinking, with fear, shame and reward doing the teaching.
News this week
National: Indoctrination teaching methods prevalent in public schools' religious instruction programs, research shows (5 July 2026)
New peer-reviewed research finds that teaching practices associated with indoctrination are widespread in the religious instruction curricula delivered in Australian public primary schools. Dr Jennifer Bleazby of Monash University's School of Education analysed five sets of teaching materials used in the Special Religious Education programme in New South Wales and the Religious Instruction programme in Queensland, and found that 91.2 per cent of learning outcomes reflected lower-order thinking — memorisation and comprehension rather than evaluation or problem-solving. Lesson plans were dominated by scripted material for instructors to read aloud, and workbook activities were judged too juvenile for the 10–12 age group they targeted. Every programme examined used emotional manipulation: one required teachers to show children newspaper headlines about disasters and explain that people who ignore God may damage the world; another likened sin to disease. The findings sit directly against the Australian Curriculum, which requires critical and creative thinking across all subjects and year levels. The secular question is not whether religion may be discussed in public schools, but whether taxpayer-funded classroom time should be given to programmes that, on this evidence, are designed to close inquiry rather than open it. The research was partly funded by a Rationalist Society of Australia research grant awarded in 2021; the paper is open access in the Journal of Curriculum Studies.
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Rationalist Society of Australia
WA: Saturday in Perth: two very different rallies about transgender people (5 July 2026)
Two rallies were held a block apart in central Perth, one supporting transgender people and one calling for the removal of gender-identity protections from the Sex Discrimination Act. In Yagan Square, around fifty people gathered under the transgender flag for speeches from parents, health researchers and members of the intersex community, who warned that the proposed amendments would harm them too; organiser Nova Sobieralski said the aim was community connection rather than confrontation. In Forrest Place, around a hundred people gathered to demand the Act be changed, addressed by former Legislative Council member Sophia Moermond, who read a statement from Giggle for Girls founder Sall Grover — found to have discriminated against Roxanne Tickle, and now seeking special leave to appeal to the High Court — and by Jodie Clune of the Gerard Rennick People First Party. A recording from Kirralie Smith, head of the anti-transgender group Binary and currently subject to a two-year AVO, was played to the crowd beneath a giant photograph of her; an inverted Australian Red Ensign, adopted by parts of the sovereign citizen movement, flew overhead. The two rallies are the street-level expression of the same federal campaign that produced three failed bills last sitting fortnight, and that Senator Michaelia Cash has promised to take to the next election.
➧ READ MORE:
OUTinPerth
NSW: 'Serious allegations and concerns': Sydney private school to face parliamentary inquiry (7 July 2026)
The NSW parliament's education committee will hold an urgent inquiry into Redeemer Baptist School in North Parramatta, following the Sydney Morning Herald and 60 Minutes investigation into the fundamentalist school and its associated church. Greens MP Abigail Boyd, with other Greens and Labor MPs, directed the committee to act after more than half a dozen witnesses came forward; Boyd noted that the Greens first raised concerns about Redeemer in the NSW parliament more than twenty years ago, and that questions raised decades ago were "never resolved by public officials". The inquiry will examine any use of coercive control over students, families, employees and volunteers; the school's finances and operational structure; its employment conditions; the living arrangements under which children were moved into the homes of principal Jonathan Cannon and headmaster Russell Bailey; and the adequacy of oversight by government agencies on school registration and funding obligations. The church-state stakes are precisely the ones Boyd names: this is a school overseen by NSW authorities that has taken tens of millions of dollars in government funding over the past decade while its teachers go unpaid on small stipends, some relying on Centrelink. Registration and funding are the levers the state actually holds; the inquiry will test whether anyone was pulling them.
➧ READ MORE:
The Sydney Morning Herald
NSW: 'Christian values': The godly mission to control the NSW Liberals that drew ICAC's attention (7 July 2026)
The hard-right Liberal grouping at the centre of the looming ICAC corruption inquiry, Operation Rosny, built its recruitment drive around the claim that Christian values were disappearing from Australian society, staging a series of high-profile events to draw conservatives into the party. Factional rivals put a less devotional reading on it: that the group was less interested in defending Christianity than in defeating the centre right, with one Liberal figure describing the split in the party's right faction as "a Henry VIII-level cleave in the church" that has never been forgotten. The report matters because it supplies the connective tissue in a story the Wrap has been tracking in pieces: the eight-week ICAC inquiry beginning 27 July, the allegations of illegal donations from Catholic Schools NSW to recruit Liberal members, and the standing-aside of that body's chief executive Dallas McInerney. Religious identity here is not incidental to the alleged conduct, it was the organising pitch. Public hearings begin on 27 July.
➧ READ MORE:
The Age
National: ABS blames "system error" for blocking damning statement about Census religion question (9 July 2026)
The Australian Bureau of Statistics has attributed to a software "system error" its redaction of an internal admission that the Census religion question "may lead respondents to a particular response". The statement appeared in a slide presentation considered by ABS executives at the October 2024 meeting where they decided to revert to the 2021 wording — "What is the person's religion?" — for the 2026 Census. The ABS blacked it out of documents released to the Rationalist Society of Australia under freedom-of-information laws; the RSA read it anyway, by copying the redacted block out of the PDF and pasting it into a word processor. Responding to the RSA's March complaint, the ABS said the software had created "faux redactions" obscuring information that should have been released. The document confirms the agency understood the question was leading, and used it regardless, after cancelling the household test that would have validated a fairer alternative and after the Catholic Church lobbied the Prime Minister to reverse the proposed change. Surveys suggest the resulting undercount of the non-religious may be as much as 11 percentage points. Census night is 11 August.
➧ READ MORE:
Rationalist Society of Australia
National: Churches consider urgent appeal to Treasurer over tax changes (10 July 2026)
Church bodies are preparing an urgent submission to Treasurer Jim Chalmers seeking a carve-out from proposed trust tax changes, which they say could cost charities $3 billion in donations over five years from 2028. Catholic, Anglican, evangelical and orthodox Christian leaders — joined by Islamic and Hindu groups — first warned of the effect after the May budget; the measures nonetheless remain in Treasury's package, despite Assistant Minister Andrew Leigh indicating that protections for charities might be possible. Charity law specialist Mark Fowler said he had expected an amendment excluding discretionary trust distributions to charities and income-tax-exempt not-for-profits from the proposed 30 per cent trustee-level tax, and that the consequences would now have to be addressed in consultation. The religious lobby puts the potential loss at more than $8 billion if business donations are included. Our interest lies in the shape of the argument rather than its merits: religious institutions are again asserting a claim on the tax system as a class, on the basis of a charitable status that in Australia still includes the "advancement of religion" as an end in itself.
➧ READ MORE:
CathNews
NSW: Christians target Sydney heritage church following its queer art takeover (10 July 2026)
A group calling itself The Prodigal Sons has begun a campaign of protest against DIVINE PLAYHOUSE, a queer arts venue and bar opened in a deconsecrated heritage church on Kent Street in Sydney under a one-year lease. Videos posted by the group showed up to seventy people praying outside the venue on opening night, with individual protesters shouting "repent" at those entering. The group says it comes "in peace, prayer, and public witness for Jesus Christ", arguing that "an old church is not just a building" and that "the sacred must not be mocked while Christians stay silent"; further protests are scheduled through late July. A Change.org petition, started by protester Chris Nave, objects specifically to the venue's public backing — DIVINE PLAYHOUSE is supported by the NSW government through Create NSW — and asks for "transparency about why public authorities were associated with a venue that many Christians reasonably perceive as mocking their faith". Venue founder Kat Dopper, of Heaps Gay, says the space is intended as a safe and inclusive community centre. The petition raises the secular question of whether a religious objection to the content of publicly funded art is a reason for the state to withdraw its support.
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QNews
NSW: Lyle Shelton Revives 'Children Need A Mum & Dad' Argument In Comments About Same-Sex Parents & Surrogacy (10 July 2026)
Family First national director and NSW Legislative Council candidate Lyle Shelton has restarted the same-sex parenting debate, opposing both altruistic and commercial surrogacy and repeating the claim that children require a mother and a father. Responding to an article in The Australian about a woman who acted as surrogate for her twin brother and his husband, Shelton said public policy "must never begin and end with adult wishes" and that children are "not commodities to be commissioned, bought or transferred through legal contracts". He has been building the theme, including a recent podcast with Glenn Stanton of the American religious-right organisation Focus on the Family, and describes surrogacy as "the unfinished business of the same-sex marriage campaign". The claim he is reviving doesn't survive contact with the evidence: the University of Melbourne's Australian Study of Child Health in Same-Sex Families found children of same-sex attracted parents scored around six per cent above the general population on general health, wellbeing and family cohesion. Shelton, formerly of the Australian Christian Lobby and a leading opponent of marriage equality in 2017, is seeking a seat in the NSW upper house — which is where this argument is headed next.
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Star Observer
National: Abuse survivors launch bid to transfer claims to entity that benefited from Christian Brothers' wealth (10 July 2026)
Two abuse survivors have gone to the Victorian Supreme Court seeking to have their compensation claims transferred from the Christian Brothers to Edmund Rice Education Australia, the entity that received vast property transfers from the order over the past decade for nominal sums of $1. The Trustees of EREA do not consent to being made the defendant and are opposing the application, forcing a hearing in August that will examine the historical relationship between the two bodies. The court heard the case was highly complex and had "high court written all over it". EREA was created in 2007, runs the order's former schools, maintains it is independent, and reported net assets of $2.3 billion and $345 million in cash as at December 2024. The Christian Brothers, by contrast, told a court last month it was going broke and could not meet abuse claims estimated at $774 million, proposing instead to sell its remaining 36 properties for about $217 million and divide the proceeds among creditors. The outcome will shape every other survivor claim in Victoria and interstate: the sell-off scheme asks survivors to accept about $217 million against some $774 million in claims — roughly twenty-five cents in the dollar. If EREA can be sued, claims move off the order and onto a defendant that can pay.
➧ READ MORE:
The Guardian
National: Child abuser who preyed on orphans housed at Christian Brothers property (11 July 2026)
Land title records obtained by the Guardian show the Christian Brothers has used property it owns to house at least two members with convictions for child sexual abuse. Brother Rex Elmer was convicted of abusing children at St Vincent's Boys Home, a Christian Brothers facility for wards of the state, and has been jailed three times, most recently in 2021. Brother Peter Toomey was convicted in 2005 and again in 2019 over offences against students in the 1970s and 1980s; the Royal Commission found senior Christian Brothers officials were warned about him as early as 1973 yet allowed him to remain in schools until the end of 2000, concluding that the order's reputation had been prioritised over children's welfare. The order's constitution obliges it to fund current brothers' housing, utilities, health insurance, vehicles, retreats and a $1,200 monthly living allowance. Oceania leader Gerard Brady told the court that supporting convicted offenders was a "Gospel imperative" and a canon-law duty, and argued that retaining them within the congregation allowed their behaviour to be monitored. The revelation lands while the order is telling courts it cannot afford to compensate the people those men harmed.
➧ READ MORE:
The Guardian
Commentary and analysis
Trevor Cobbold: Private Schools Want Billion Dollar Slush Fund To Stay (9 July 2026)
Private school organisations have opened a campaign to extend the $1.2 billion Choice and Affordability Fund beyond its scheduled 2029 expiry, with Liberal Senator Maria Kovacic pressing Education Department officials on its future in Senate Estimates last month. Cobbold's account is worth reading for the detail of how the money actually works: split between Catholic schools ($740 million) and Independent schools ($464 million), sitting outside the needs-based funding model, allocated on no measure of need, closed to public schools entirely — and, under an arrangement he rightly calls extraordinary, distributed to schools not by the Commonwealth Education Department but by representatives of the Catholic and Independent sectors themselves. The Fund was Morrison's compensation to the Catholic sector for the loss of its Gillard-era special deal, and was labelled a "slush fund" at the time by a former Coalition education minister, Adrian Piccoli. Cobbold's argument is that it should die on schedule. His warning is that the sector has already begun campaigning to make sure it does not, with the 2028 election in view.
➧ READ MORE:
Save Our Schools
Judy Courtin: The human cost of the Christian Brothers' asset shifting (11 July 2026)
The essential companion to this week's Christian Brothers news. Courtin is a lawyer who acts for victims of institutional abuse, and she was in the room: her firm was given twenty-four hours' notice of the moratorium application, then handed more than a thousand pages of court documents "in dribs and drabs" the night before and the morning of the hearing — too late to advise clients, let alone take instructions. She sets out the corporate architecture step by step: EREA established in 2007; granted canonical status by the Holy See in 2012 as a Public Juridic Person authorised to "succeed, carry on and expand the works of the Christian Brothers"; incorporated in February 2013, one month after the Royal Commission was announced, with council members appointed by the Christian Brothers' own Provincial; and then a master agreement transferring property for peppercorn consideration — a copy of which, she notes, the order excluded from the documents put before the court. She estimates at least 2,500 children were raped or assaulted by Christian Brothers, and tells the story of one client, Paul, now 70, who took $80,000 in 2012–15, signed away his rights, was lied to about what the order knew, spent fourteen years fighting to have that release set aside, went to the High Court, had a heart attack, won a new trial date for August 2026 — and then watched the order declare insolvency in June. Her conclusion is a sentence the movement should borrow: if EREA looks, acts, sounds and smells like the Christian Brothers, it is the Christian Brothers, and the Christian Brothers must pay.
➧ READ MORE:
The Saturday Paper
Usman Khawaja: As a Muslim cricketer, at times I felt like I didn't belong. I yearn for an Australia where all that matters is how you play (11 July 2026)
Written for the Guardian, the former Test batsman reflects on wearing the baggy green as a Muslim Australian, on growing up in western Sydney where difference of faith was unremarkable, and on the gap between a scorecard, which records only what you did, and a public life that records what you are. It's worth reading in the same week as the Perth rallies and the continuing campaign against Islam from the parliamentary right: the argument for a state that is indifferent to belief is not only a legal one, and it's made most persuasively by people who have been asked to prove they belong.
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The Guardian
Michael Taylor: Genocide Ordained (11 July 2026)
A historical argument, but one that belongs in a secular publication. Taylor contends that the destruction of Aboriginal Australia was deliberately intended, and that theology did much of the licensing: many colonists believed God had condemned the Aboriginal race to extinction, and understood themselves not to be defying divine will in hastening it but carrying it out. It's a reminder that the case for separating church from state is not merely administrative tidiness. Religious sanction has been among the most effective instruments ever devised for making state violence feel righteous to the people committing it.
➧ READ MORE:
The AIMN
Opportunities for action
National: Go Gentle Australia has published Know Your Rights: VAD in Aged Care, together with a searchable database covering 70 of the largest residential aged care providers, after finding that two-thirds of providers publish no public information about voluntary assisted dying — despite VAD being lawful in all six states and the ACT. Faith-based providers are a substantial part of the sector, and a resident who discovers only on admission that their provider will not facilitate VAD has effectively lost the choice. Supporters can look up their own or a family member's provider and press those that are silent to publish their position. Read the guide and search the provider database at Go Gentle Australia.
TAS: The Tasmanian Greens' draft Conversion Practices Prohibition Bill 2026 is open for public consultation until 31 July, ahead of its introduction to parliament later this year. The bill would be the most comprehensive conversion-practices ban in the country, and the religious organisations that have opposed such laws in every other jurisdiction now have a four-week window to lodge submissions. Secular, humanist and human-rights voices that support a strong ban — one that protects genuine religious expression while criminalising coercive practice — should make sure they are heard. Submit your view via the consultation website.
National: With faith organisations now running a coordinated campaign to lift the religion count, the 2026 Census religion question (Census night is 11 August) is contested ground. Australians who do not hold a religion can ensure the data is accurate by marking "No Religion". The NSL is part of the joint Census — Not Religious? Mark 'No Religion' campaign. Learn more at the campaign website.
WA: The Western Australian Legislative Assembly's Procedure and Privileges Committee is reviewing the chamber's standing orders, including whether to retain the Lord's Prayer that opens each sitting day. With the Premier and Opposition Leader now both on record defending the prayer, the committee has circulated a discussion paper inviting feedback on "Discussion Question 25" — whether the prayers should be altered or retained. WA residents who support an inclusive moment of reflection can register their view and support the Rationalist Society of Australia's Prayers in government campaign.
National: Three bills to strip gender-identity protections from the Sex Discrimination Act were blocked this week, but Senator Michaelia Cash has vowed to make the issue an election campaign, and Nationals MP Alison Penfold's push for a joint select committee review of the Act remains live. If such a committee is established and opens submissions, secular and human-rights voices will be needed to counter the religious lobby's input. Equality Australia's "Hands off our protections" petition calls on federal parliamentarians to reject any narrowing of the Act. Sign the petition at Equality Australia.
NT: The Northern Territory government's voluntary assisted dying bill remains on track for introduction mid-2026, leaving the NT as the last Australian jurisdiction without VAD. The bill is expected to depart from several recommendations of the 2025 inquiry, including a 12-month prognosis limit, and will be decided on a conscience vote. Meanwhile the Australian Christian Lobby has opened a "born alive" campaign in the Territory, signalling that the religious right intends to contest end-of-life and abortion ground there simultaneously. Secular voices supporting safe, accessible VAD with adequate safeguards should watch for the bill's introduction. Go Gentle Australia is tracking the NT process.
National: Not in Our Name (NION) Women Australia continues to invite women across the country to sign an open letter in solidarity with the trans community and in defence of the Sex Discrimination Act. Sign the open letter via Action Network.
TAS: Tasmania: Equality Tasmania, Women's Health Tasmania, and Working It Out have formally written to the Anti-Discrimination Commissioner requesting an inquiry into the proposed sale of Hobart Private Hospital to Calvary Health Care. If you are a Tasmanian who supports continued access to gender-affirming and other healthcare services that Calvary's Catholic ethical guidelines would prohibit, consider contacting the Anti-Discrimination Commissioner's office to support the call for an inquiry or following Equality Tasmania's campaign.
National: Dying With Dignity NSW has an opportunity for people to send a message to Attorney-General Michelle Rowland and ask her to make changes to improve VAD availability (by using telehealth). For people in regional areas and those who are unable to travel it is more difficult, or even impossible, to access VAD. This could be easily fixed by excluding VAD from telehealth prohibition. Visit their campaign here.
National: Go Gentle Australia's 2026 State of VAD Report made a compelling case for a straightforward amendment to the Commonwealth Criminal Code: remove the restriction that treats electronic communication and telehealth discussions about voluntary assisted dying as potential facilitation of suicide. This one-line fix would allow dying people — particularly those in regional and remote areas — to consult with VAD practitioners via telehealth rather than being required to travel repeatedly for in-person appointments. A central Queensland man died waiting for VAD access because of bureaucratic prescription mail rules. This is a discrete, fixable federal legislative problem. Contact your federal member or senator to call for the amendment.
National: The Rationalist Society of Australia is running a Change.org petition calling on the Australian War Memorial to take direct responsibility for the Anzac Day Dawn Service and end the imposition of Christian worship on a national commemoration. Read and sign the petition at change.org.
National: The Australia Institute are calling on federal parliament to pass truth in political advertising laws that are nationally consistent, constitutional and uphold freedom of speech. View the petition at The Australia Institute
National: The Human Rights Law Centre are running a website for those who want to support an Australian Charter of Human Rights & Freedoms. Visit the Human Rights campaign website here
National: The Australian Education Union is running a campaign calling for “For Every Child” to receive fair education funding. Support the campaign here.
NSW: The Human Rights for NSW alliance is running a campaign calling for NSW to pass a Human Rights Act.
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.
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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