Weekend Wrap for 22 August 2026
Welcome to the NSL Weekend Wrap for 22 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(opens in new tab).
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Another week revolving around accountability. In Sydney this week, ICAC's Operation Rosny claimed its biggest scalp yet: Catholic Schools NSW sacked its chief executive Dallas McInerney after two bruising days in the witness box. In Canberra, the Plymouth Brethren were forced to deny, in the pages of Nine's mastheads and before a Senate inquiry, that they had secretly paid far-right influencers to harass candidates during last year's federal election.
In Tasmania, a two-year parliamentary inquiry into school bullying handed down its report and named the problem plainly: Catholic Education Tasmania may have broken the state's anti-discrimination laws in its treatment of LGBTQIA+ students and staff. The Rockliff government is now being asked whether it will act against the church or look away. It is the same fight over religious exemptions playing out in the NSW Law Reform Commission's review, and the same fight the Australian Christian Lobby and its allies are working hard to keep unresolved.
Meanwhile the religious right kept pressing its own agenda. Family First's Lyle Shelton called for LGBTIQA+ "Welcome Here" stickers to be stripped from publicly funded spaces, days before a Sydney rally — headlined by Binary Australia's Kirralie Smith — demanding that gender identity be removed from the federal Sex Discrimination Act. On the page, The Conversation traced how anti-abortion rhetoric has become entrenched in right-wing politics, and a NSW Supreme Court judge drew a sharp line between criticising Israel and antisemitism, a ruling with real consequences for how governments wield the IHRA definition.
Not everything went the church's way, and not everything went the other. But the direction of travel this week was towards scrutiny. Worth noting, because scrutiny is the thing religious privilege is built to avoid.
News this week
National: Plymouth Brethren Christian Church denies paying influencers to harass election candidates (21 August 2026)
The Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, the wealthy sect formerly known as the Exclusive Brethren, has denied allegations that it secretly paid people to disrupt Labor's re-election campaign in 2025. Reporting in Nine's mastheads alleged that church members coordinated far-right influencers — among them Laurence McIntyre, who abused Anthony Albanese — to track and harass candidates. Appearing before a Senate inquiry, the church insisted its own members were the victims of a harassment campaign at polling booths, and its spokesman objected to being questioned at all. The episode is a reminder that organised religious money does not stay out of elections simply because the group keeps a low profile.
➧ READ MORE:
ABC News(opens in new tab)
The Guardian(opens in new tab)
The Age(opens in new tab)
NSW: Catholic Schools NSW sacks Dallas McInerney, former police minister gives evidence (21 August 2026)
Catholic Schools NSW sacked its chief executive Dallas McInerney on Friday, after his damaging two days of evidence at ICAC's Operation Rosny inquiry into political donations and branch-stacking. The board moved against him as the Catholic Church sought to insulate itself from a scandal centred on a taxpayer-funded education body that distributes some $3.8 billion in public money. McInerney had earlier conceded he wiped his phone and iPad over a weekend before appearing, and accepted an ABN belonging to someone else from the factional allies he engaged. Former police minister David Elliott also gave evidence about a related surveillance and smear campaign. The hearings continue.
➧ READ MORE:
The Sydney Morning Herald(opens in new tab)
TAS: Catholic Education boss denies skirting around Tasmanian anti-discrimination laws (21 August 2026)
The final report of a two-year Tasmanian parliamentary inquiry into school bullying, released this week, singled out the treatment of LGBTQIA+ students and staff and questioned whether Catholic Education Tasmania's practices may have contravened the state's anti-discrimination laws — concerns it noted have not been tested in court. The inquiry urged the Rockliff government to stand up to the Catholic Church over the alleged discrimination. Catholic Education Tasmania's executive director, Dr Terry McCarthy, rejected the suggestion his organisation had skirted the law and said it takes bullying seriously. The report puts the question of publicly funded religious schools' exemptions squarely back on a state government's desk.
➧ READ MORE:
OUTinPerth(opens in new tab)
Star Observer(opens in new tab)
The Mercury(opens in new tab)
National: Lyle Shelton calls for end to 'Welcome Here' stickers for LGBTIQA+ community (21 August 2026)
Family First spokesperson and Binary Australia board member Lyle Shelton has called for "Welcome Here" stickers — which signal to LGBTIQA+ people that a health service, police station or other body is a safe place to engage — to be removed from publicly funded spaces. His intervention followed a complaint by Binary Australia chief executive Kirralie Smith about a sticker on her local police station. Smith was due to speak at a Sydney rally on Sunday calling for gender identity to be stripped from the federal Sex Discrimination Act. The campaign is a clear instance of religious-right actors working to wind back anti-discrimination protections through the language of free speech and "safe" public space.
➧ READ MORE:
OUTinPerth(opens in new tab)
Commentary and analysis
Afzal Azeem Chowdhary: What the census tells us about Australia losing its religion (16 August 2026)
Written just after census night, Chowdhary charts the long arc from the handwritten "no religion" answers of 1911 to what is now the largest single category on the form. It is a useful corrective to the idea that secularisation is a recent or fragile trend: the shift is decades deep, shaped by migration and changing social attitudes, and it keeps growing. It's a reminder that the fight over the leading religion question is about measuring a change that has already happened, not manufacturing one.
➧ READ MORE:
Pearls & Irritations(opens in new tab)
Trevor Cobbold: Government Funding Supports Huge Resource Advantage for SA Private Schools (18 August 2026)
Cobbold's latest analysis for Save Our Schools shows South Australian private schools — most of them religious — sitting on a large and growing resource advantage over public schools, underwritten by government money. It is the state-level detail beneath the national argument about the Schooling Resource Standard and the Choice and Affordability Fund: public funds flowing to well-off faith schools while public schools remain below the standard. Essential reading for anyone tracking where the money actually goes.
➧ READ MORE:
Save Our Schools(opens in new tab)
Prudence Flowers, Erica Millar and Tania Penovic: Anti-abortion rhetoric is becoming entrenched in Australian right-wing politics (21 August 2026)
Three researchers trace how anti-abortion language, once kept to the fringes, has moved into the mainstream of Australian conservative politics — carried by One Nation, elements of the Coalition, and the religious lobby. The piece maps the shift from arguing about abortion directly to chipping at it incrementally through "born alive" provisions and gestational limits. It is the analytical backdrop to a threat that rarely announces itself as religious, but almost always is.
➧ READ MORE:
The Conversation(opens in new tab)
Paul Gregoire: NSW Supreme Court Confirms that Criticising Israel Is Not Antisemitism (21 August 2026)
Gregoire's explainer walks through Justice Des Fagan's judgment and why it matters beyond the case that produced it. The ruling draws a firm line between political criticism of a state and hatred of a people — a line that governments, universities and regulators have blurred by adopting the IHRA definition of antisemitism. The relevance is direct: how the state defines a religiously and ethnically loaded concept determines whose speech it can police.
➧ READ MORE:
Sydney Criminal Lawyers(opens in new tab)
Greg Barns: A judgment that challenges the IHRA definition of antisemitism (22 August 2026)
Barns reads the same Fagan judgment as a warning to the politicians and institutions who have embraced the IHRA definition, and to the antisemitism commissioner who has championed it. His argument is that the definition, deployed uncritically, ends up policing legitimate political speech in the name of protecting a community — and that a senior judge has now said so. Read alongside Gregoire's explainer, it makes the case that the definitional fight over antisemitism is really a fight over free expression and the reach of the state.
➧ READ MORE:
Pearls & Irritations(opens in new tab)
Claire J. Harris: I went to an Opus Dei school. What I was taught was unbelievable (22 August 2026)
A former student of Tangara School for Girls — sister school to the Opus Dei-aligned Redfield College now surfacing in the Rosny hearings — draws the connection the funding headlines miss. The ICAC evidence about a captured Liberal faction and the Redeemer Baptist inquiry, she argues, point to the same blind spot: religious private schools that take public money while shaping their students almost entirely beyond public scrutiny. It is a first-hand account of what "no scrutiny" actually looks like from inside the classroom, and a direct argument for regulating what publicly funded faith schools teach.
➧ READ MORE:
The Age(opens in new tab)
Opportunities for action
National: Watch the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion — its ninth and final hearing block is sitting in Sydney now, running to 28 August 2026, with the final report due 14 December 2026. This block has examined the drivers of extremism and radicalisation, including evidence from religious leaders on the intersection of faith and political violence. The hearings are open and livestreamed, and this week's NSW Supreme Court judgment on the IHRA definition sharpens the stakes of how the Commission ultimately defines antisemitism. See the Royal Commission's hearings page.(opens in new tab)
National: Ask the Attorney-General to lift the telehealth barrier to voluntary assisted dying — the fight is now in the Senate. On 11 August the House of Representatives, with government and Coalition votes combined, defeated Kate Chaney's bill to allow telehealth for VAD by 74 to 12, despite a Labor national conference resolution to remove the bar. Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young has introduced the Criminal Code Amendment (Equal Access to Voluntary Assisted Dying) Bill 2026 into the Senate, where the numbers are more open. Email the Attorney-General and your senators via Go Gentle Australia's telehealth campaign.(opens in new tab)
NSW: Watch Operation Rosny — this week ICAC's inquiry claimed its highest-profile casualty, with Catholic Schools NSW sacking chief executive Dallas McInerney after his evidence, and former police minister David Elliott appearing. A taxpayer-funded Catholic-education body distributing some $3.8 billion in public money remains at the centre of an inquiry into political donations and branch-stacking. The public hearings, running roughly eight weeks from 27 July, are open and livestreamed. See the ICAC Operation Rosny page for hearing details.(opens in new tab)
NSW: Make a submission to the NSW Law Reform Commission's Anti-Discrimination Act review — submissions due 2 October 2026. The Commission's second consultation paper, on procedures and compliance, is open alongside a survey and an Easy Read paper. The review reaches the religious exemptions that let publicly funded faith schools discriminate against LGBTQIA+ staff and students — the exemptions the Australian Christian Lobby and Freedom for Faith are mobilising to protect, and the same exemptions the Rosny evidence showed powerful actors working to keep. Make a submission or complete the survey via the NSW Law Reform Commission.(opens in new tab)
TAS: Write to your Tasmanian MPs on two live fronts. The final report of the parliamentary inquiry into school bullying, released this week, found Catholic Education Tasmania may have breached the state's anti-discrimination laws in its treatment of LGBTQIA+ students and staff, and urged the Rockliff government to act. Separately, the Tasmanian Greens' draft Conversion Practices Prohibition Bill 2026 is still to be introduced to parliament — Tasmania is one of only three jurisdictions yet to ban conversion practices, and the Australian Christian Lobby is campaigning hard against it. Public submissions on the draft bill closed on 14 August, but Tasmanians can still write to their local members before either matter is debated. Find and contact your local members via the Tasmanian House of Assembly member list(opens in new tab).(opens in new tab)
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 question that the ABS's own documents concede "may lead respondents to a particular response" — retained after the Catholic bishops lobbied the Prime Minister and the Bureau cancelled its 2024 test of a fairer alternative — will be back in 2031 unless it is changed. Sign the Change.org petition(opens in new tab) asking the ABS to fix the question, and read why the wording is loaded.(opens in new tab)
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. 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.(opens in new tab)
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.(opens in new tab)
Our activities
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(opens in new tab) to learn more, or sign the Change.org petition(opens in new tab) 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(opens in new tab) and on YouTube(opens in new tab)!
More coming soon!
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