Weekend Wrap for 19 September 2026
Welcome to the NSL Weekend Wrap for 19 September 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 Exclusive Brethren spent millions at the last federal election paying far-right agitators — some with neo-Nazi ties, including former Proud Boys — to stalk and heckle Anthony Albanese and other MPs the church wanted gone. This week a parliamentary committee ran out of patience with the sect's denials and resolved to summon its world leader, Bruce Hales, and his son Gareth, if they won't appear voluntarily. The Coalition has spent the week defending the church as a persecuted community of faith, which is an odd way to describe an organisation caught paying guns-for-hire to disrupt an election.
In Victoria, freedom-of-information documents obtained by the Rationalist Society show the state government spent more than $300,000 this year on gala dinners held exclusively for religious communities — $206,402 on one, $85,494 on another — while offering nothing comparable to the atheists, humanists and rationalists its own Equal Opportunity Act says it cannot discriminate against. The same government promised in 2021 to end daily Christian prayers in parliament, then dropped the idea after the Australian Christian Lobby and Coalition MPs objected. The prayers remain.
The week's third thread runs through several parliaments at once: the effort to write religious conservatism back into law now that the courts have closed the door on it. In the Senate, Michaelia Cash tried and failed to revive her bill redefining sex by biology. In NSW, One Nation's new leader told an anti-abortion rally the party wanted terminations "stopped", then spent the next day insisting he had misspoken. In Queensland, the education department pulled out of an LGBTIQ+ inclusion programme after lobbying by an activist linked to the Christian lobby, and the state's school regulator decided two Christian colleges teaching Noah's flood in geography were within the rules after all.
News this week
National: Calls for Wear It Purple Day to be banned (14 September 2026)
Family First's national spokesman Lyle Shelton, a former managing director of the Australian Christian Lobby, is campaigning to ban Wear It Purple Day, the annual event against the bullying of LGBTIQ+ students, and says he will legislate against it if he wins a seat in the NSW parliament in 2027. His cause is Janelle Rowe, an ACT school principal who resigned after her superiors declined to swap the day for a generic anti-bullying programme. Rowe, who objected to explaining "these lifestyles" to young children, is represented by the Human Rights Law Alliance, the Australian Christian Lobby's legal arm, and says her Christian faith did not drive her stance.
➧ READ MORE:
OUTinPerth
QLD: Shelley Argent Launches Counter Petition to Protect LGBTQIA+ Inclusion In QLD Schools (14 September 2026)
Queensland's education department has withdrawn from Pride in Diversity, the workplace LGBTIQ+ inclusion programme, after a petition by Brisbane mother Nerissa Pace — a Save Women's Sport Australasia spokeswoman linked to the Australian Christian Lobby — claimed the programme's ties to ACON shaped classroom content and hiring. The department rejected that account. Long-time PFLAG advocate Shelley Argent has lodged a counter-petition in the Queensland parliament asking it to rejoin the programme and restore support for staff. Argent's petition, open to Queensland residents, had drawn 3,282 signatures to Pace's 1,273.
➧ READ MORE:
Star Observer
QLD: QLD regulator opts not to act against Christian schools teaching religious stories in science classes (15 September 2026)
Queensland's Non-State Schools Accreditation Board has closed its investigation into Chinchilla Christian College and Dalby Christian College, both in the Open Brethren's Christian Community Ministries network, without taking action, after the Rationalist Society complained they were teaching creation and Noah's flood in science and geography. The board found the schools still deliver the Australian Curriculum's achievement standards, which it treats as sufficient whatever else is taught alongside. Both schools describe their teaching as coming from a "Biblical worldview", and both draw millions in state and federal funding each year. The federal education department told the RSA that curriculum complaints are a matter for the states.
➧ READ MORE:
Rationalist Society of Australia
NSW: 'Foot-in-mouth moment': One Nation leader backtracks on abortion (16 September 2026)
One Nation's new NSW leader, Mike Newman, told an anti-abortion rally on Tuesday that the party wanted abortion "stopped", then spent Wednesday insisting he had meant only late-term and sex-selective terminations. The rally, one of a series run by activist Joanna Howe, backed Libertarian MP John Ruddick's bill to ban sex-selective abortion, which the upper house defeated 21 to 16 the same day. Newman conceded he did not know how many such terminations occur in NSW; a 2020 NSW Health review found 13 among nearly 16,000, and judged 10 of those to be reporting errors. Premier Chris Minns accused him of tailoring his message to his audience.
➧ READ MORE:
The Sydney Morning Herald
National: 'Paid to stalk': Brethren and Liberals called to answer for far-right election plot (16 September 2026)
A parliamentary committee examining the 2025 election has resolved to subpoena the world leader of the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, Bruce Hales, and his son Gareth, if they will not voluntarily explain the church's covert, multimillion-dollar campaign for the Coalition. Leaked messages published by The Age show Brethren elders tracked MPs in cars and paid far-right figures — some with a history of white-supremacy association — to stalk and heckle Anthony Albanese and teal and Labor candidates in more than a dozen scripted stunts. Labor has rounded on the opposition for shielding the sect; seven Coalition MPs call the inquiry religious discrimination. Climate 200 has referred the church to the charity regulator.
➧ READ MORE:
The Age
VIC: Documents reveal cost to taxpayers of Victorian government's fancy dinners for faith communities (17 September 2026)
Freedom-of-information documents obtained by the Rationalist Society show the Victorian government spent more than $300,000 this year on dinners held exclusively for religious communities: $206,402 on an event for the Islamic community at Rod Laver Arena in March, $85,494 on a Christian gala in May, and $13,625 on a Sikh reception. The society lodged the request after the Coalition complained the Christian gala had become "blatantly political", with the then premier's office deciding who could speak. No comparable event exists for non-religious Victorians, even though the state's Equal Opportunity Act bars discrimination on the basis of religious belief or its absence. The government's 2021 promise to end daily Christian prayers in parliament remains unkept.
➧ READ MORE:
Rationalist Society of Australia
SA: Senator Alex Antic wins SA Liberal presidency, defeating Nicola Centofanti (19 September 2026)
Alex Antic, a federal senator on the Liberals' Christian right who has called conversion-practice bans an attack on religious freedom, has won the South Australian Liberal presidency 119 votes to 73, defeating upper house leader Nicola Centofanti. His win rests on a five-year drive to recruit conservative Christians into local branches, enough to tip the party's internal balance; the prospect had already prompted talk of federal intervention to take over the SA division. One Nation's SA leader, the former Liberal Cory Bernardi, says he would "welcome Antic into One Nation in a flash". The same recruit-the-faithful strategy is under scrutiny across the border in the NSW Liberals, where it forms one strand of the Operation Rosny inquiry.
➧ READ MORE:
ABC News
Commentary and analysis
Anonymous: We terminated a pregnancy so our daughter never had to suffer. It cannot be the right of One Nation to choose for us (18 September 2026)
A first-person account from a parent who ended a wanted pregnancy on medical grounds, written against One Nation's push to restrict late-term and sex-selective abortion in NSW. It sets the medical reality of a late-term termination against the caricature the anti-abortion rallies trade in, and answers the parliamentary abstraction with the decision an actual family faced.
➧ READ MORE:
The Guardian
Opportunities for action
National / SA: Register for Go Gentle Australia's public panel on voluntary assisted dying, The Power of Choice, at 6pm on Thursday 24 September 2026 at the Allan Scott Auditorium (Hawke Building) in Adelaide, with Go Gentle founder Andrew Denton, palliative care specialist Dr Chloe Furst, and Annaliese Holland, who has chosen VAD. In-person seats are booked out, but livestream registration is open via Go Gentle Australia.
NSW: Make a submission to the NSW Law Reform Commission's review of the Anti-Discrimination Act. The Commission's second consultation paper — on complaint procedures, remedies and compliance — is open, with submissions and a community survey closing 2 October 2026. Read our submission here. The wider review reaches the religious exemptions that let publicly funded faith schools discriminate against LGBTIQ+ staff and students. Make a submission or complete the survey via the NSW Law Reform Commission.
QLD: Sign the Queensland parliament e-petition to keep state schools in Pride in Diversity. New this week: after the education department withdrew from the LGBTIQ+ inclusion programme, PFLAG's Shelley Argent has lodged an e-petition asking it to rejoin and to restore support for staff. Queensland residents can sign until 20 November 2026 via the Queensland Parliament e-petition 4694-26.
NSW: Follow Operation Rosny. ICAC's inquiry into the NSW Liberals' right faction, the taxpayer-funded Catholic Schools NSW body and the fight over Sydney's Catholic cemeteries has run into an eighth week. Recent evidence has centred on the property-developer and lobbying strand rather than the Catholic Schools angle, but the hearings are open and livestreamed, resuming Monday 21 September at 9.30am. See the ICAC Operation Rosny live stream page.
NT / National: With voluntary assisted dying now legal in every jurisdiction, the remaining national fight is telehealth access — an outdated line in the Criminal Code that bans electronic communication about VAD and forces regional patients to wait for scripts by post. Go Gentle's campaign asks Attorney-General Michelle Rowland to fix it; Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young's Criminal Code Amendment (Equal Access to Voluntary Assisted Dying) Bill 2026 is also before the Senate. Email the Attorney-General via Go Gentle Australia's telehealth campaign.
National: Have your say in Go Gentle Australia's 2026 National Voluntary Assisted Dying Survey, which gathers public views to inform the defence and improvement of VAD laws around the country. Complete the survey via Go Gentle Australia.
National: Sign the Census – Not Religious? campaign's petition to fix the Census religion question for future censuses. Census night has passed for 2026, but the leading question the ABS's own documents concede "may lead respondents to a particular response" will be back in 2031 unless it is changed. Sign the Change.org petition, and read why the wording is loaded.
National: Push back on the $1.2 billion Choice and Affordability Fund. Private school organisations are campaigning to extend the fund beyond 2029 — money available only to Catholic and Independent schools, outside the needs-based model. Support the AEU's For Every Child campaign.
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
We recently made a submission to the NSW Law Reform Commission's review of the Anti-Discrimination Act. You can read it here.
NSL was a partner in the joint 2026 Census – Not Religious? Mark 'No Religion' campaign, which ran through census night on 11 August and has now concluded. The petition remains open: visit the campaign website to learn more, 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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