Weekend Wrap for 12 September 2026

NSW: Councillors blast 'unreasonable', 'exclusionary' imposition of prayers in meetings (5 September 2026)
Shoalhaven City Council has voted 7-6 to return Christian prayers to the start of its meetings, four years after it replaced them with a moment of silent reflection. The chair's casting vote carried it. Councillors who objected called the practice exclusionary: one, an atheist, said the silent reflection had served her just as well; another said being required to pray asked her to be "hypocritical and dishonest". A supporter argued the region shared a "spiritual foundation" and that "a silent culture is a forgotten culture". The Rationalist Society, which reported the vote, noted that 41 per cent of the Shoalhaven marked no religion at the 2021 Census — a figure the leading Census question tends to understate.
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Rationalist Society of Australia(opens in new tab)

NSW: 'I have nothing to hide': Redeemer Baptist School principal speaks for first time (6 September 2026)
The Independent Education Union has asked the Federal Court to recover wages for two people treated as volunteers at Redeemer Baptist School, the North Parramatta private school facing a NSW parliamentary inquiry after a joint Herald–60 Minutes investigation into its control of staff and students. The union expects more claimants to follow. NSW Anti-Slavery Commissioner James Cockayne has urged police to weigh forced-labour and servitude offences, telling the inquiry that "freedom of religion is a fundamental human right, but so too is freedom from slavery", and that nothing in law exempts a religious body from workplace or child-protection rules. Headmaster Russell Bailey rejects the slavery comparison and says the school hasn't breached its obligations in 45 years. Church leader Jonathan Cannon — who may be summoned when the inquiry resumes on 12 October — declined to comment but said he had "nothing to hide".
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The Sydney Morning Herald(opens in new tab)

National: Edmund Rice Catholic schools considering cutting ties with abuse-plagued Christian Brothers (7 September 2026)
A Four Corners investigation has laid out how the Christian Brothers transferred school properties now worth close to $2 billion to the Trustees of Edmund Rice Education Australia (TEREA) — the body running 61 schools that took $732.7 million in taxpayer funding last year — often for a single dollar, before applying in June to halt all child-abuse litigation on the grounds it was nearly insolvent. An actuarial report put the order's abuse liabilities at $774 million. TEREA, which has agreed to inherit the claims, now says it will have the order "out of the way or removed" within 18 months. Survivors' lawyers compare the manoeuvre to James Hardie's, and warn some clients, several of them gravely ill, could wait another two years for settlements they'd already agreed. It's a live test of whether a religious institution's accountability can survive a corporate reshuffle.
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ABC News(opens in new tab)

VIC: Amplified street preaching a 'nuisance' and 'disturbance of the peace', RSA tells Melbourne city council (9 September 2026)
The City of Melbourne has acknowledged a rise in religious street preachers using microphones and loudspeakers around Flinders Street and Southern Cross stations, and conceded some have been "derogatory to women in particular". The admission came in reply to the Rationalist Society, which had asked what permits and noise rules apply. The council's answer: none currently required, though its Director of City Safety says that's under review and the Activities Local Law may be amended later in 2026. For now, amplified sermonising in the city centre sits outside the permit system that covers buskers.
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Rationalist Society of Australia(opens in new tab)

TAS: Bill hailed as Tasmania's best chance to end conversion practices (10 September 2026)
Tasmania has tabled a bill to ban conversion practices, which Equality Tasmania's Rodney Croome says would be the most effective in the country. Drafted by Greens leader Rosalie Woodruff and refined after consultation, it draws on the Tasmanian Law Reform Institute's recommendations and the stronger NSW and Victorian models, and adds a positive duty on organisations, civil remedies for survivors and mandatory reporting. It keeps NSW-style wording making clear that religious expression, parental advice and genuine medical treatment aren't caught unless they form part of a conversion practice. Croome expects a "scare campaign" to weaken it before debate, likely in October or November.
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OUTinPerth(opens in new tab)

VIC: Dumped Victorian Liberal Moira Deeming joins Family First (10 September 2026)
Family First has named Moira Deeming as its lead candidate for November's Victorian election and state leader of its Victorian branch, making the anti-trans campaigner the socially conservative party's first sitting MP in the state's parliament. Welcoming her, national spokesman Lyle Shelton, a former managing director of the Australian Christian Lobby and a Binary Australia board member, called her one of the country's "most courageous parliamentarians". Deeming, who first drew national attention helping organise a 2023 anti-trans rally that a neo-Nazi group gatecrashed, was removed as a Liberal candidate this year after a dispute with the party. Her defection gives an explicitly Christian party a foothold in Spring Street.
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OUTinPerth(opens in new tab)

WA: WA becomes the last state to introduce legislation on conversion practices (10 September 2026)
With Tasmania's bill tabled the same day, Western Australia is now the only state without conversion-practices legislation. Just.Equal's Brian Greig warned WA risked becoming a "sanctuary" for practitioners, and noted that while Queensland's and South Australia's bans are weak — exempting religious groups or carrying caveats that harm survivors — Victoria's and NSW's are strong, and Tasmania's improves on both. Successive WA governments have promised action since a 2022 inquiry into the religious facility Esther House; Attorney-General Tony Buti says a bill will come before the end of 2026, though its shape hasn't been made public. Advocates want it to leave no loophole for medical or religious settings.
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OUTinPerth(opens in new tab)

National: High Court rejects Sall Grover appeal in long-running gender case (10 September 2026)
The High Court has refused Sall Grover special leave to appeal in Giggle v Tickle, ending the five-year case and leaving intact the Full Federal Court's finding that excluding transgender woman Roxanne Tickle from the Giggle for Girls app was unlawful discrimination under the Sex Discrimination Act. Grover told The Australian the courts were "captured by an ideology" and that "we need politicians to fix this"; Equality Australia called the result a major win. The politicians are listening. Opposition Leader Angus Taylor said a Coalition under his leadership would "change and correct the law to reflect biological reality", and Family First — whose national spokesman is former Australian Christian Lobby head Lyle Shelton — welcomed the pledge while pressing for a Commonwealth law to override state anti-discrimination and anti-vilification regimes. With the courtroom route exhausted, the campaign to define "sex" by birth is now squarely a parliamentary one.
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OUTinPerth(opens in new tab) (10 September)
OUTinPerth(opens in new tab) (11 September)

NSW: A pink note, a dirt doco and an 'insane' meeting: What we learnt from ICAC week seven (11 September 2026)
ICAC's Operation Rosny — which spans three strands: sections of the NSW Liberal Party, the taxpayer-funded body Catholic Schools NSW, and a web of Sydney business figures — spent a seventh week on lobbyist Jeremy Greenwood, co-founder of the firm Beckington. Counsel assisting put to Greenwood that he'd invented a missing fuchsia note said to record $1 million in promised payments from fugitive developer Jean Nassif; the inquiry also heard his "wire me for sound" text about secretly recording Liberal figures, and that the paid but undocumented work of Anita Perrottet amounted to a "mum's perspective" on vaping policy. Nassif is due to give evidence by video link from Lebanon on Monday 14 September.
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The Sydney Morning Herald(opens in new tab)

VIC: Police investigate after pork products thrown at Gippsland's Warragul Mosque (11 September 2026)
CCTV captured a man draping bacon and ham over the entrance and sign of the Warragul Mosque in regional Victoria — a form of Islamophobic attack that trades on pork being forbidden in Islam. It followed a video posted days earlier by a self-styled "defence of Christianity" influencer, Nick Patterson, whose post drew hundreds of comments enraged that the mosque occupied a site a Uniting Church congregation had left in 2006, some urging exactly this kind of vandalism. The Islamic Council of Victoria noted a July attack on Muslim graves at Maddingley cemetery, and Victorian Greens leader Ellen Sandell condemned the incident as "vile" and racist. Victoria Police are investigating.
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ABC News(opens in new tab)