Weekend Wrap for 5 September 2026
Welcome to the NSL Weekend Wrap for 5 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(opens in new tab).
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Further freedom-of-information documents obtained by the Rationalist Society show the state government handing several million dollars a year to religious labour-hire firms, among them YouthCARE and Scripture Union WA, purely to cover the administrative overheads of recruiting chaplains for public schools. Not the chaplains' pay, the paperwork behind it.
Set that against last week's revelation from the same FOI trail. Public schools had been asking to use their federal wellbeing funding to hire their own staff directly, rather than route it through the religious providers whose roles come with a faith test. The education department said no, citing policy — even as its own papers conceded the federal rules allow direct hiring and that demand for it is growing. Nearly $2.8 million was clawed back from 185 schools that couldn't find a worker through the approved firms.
Put the two together and the arrangement is plain enough: schools that want secular wellbeing workers can't get them, the religious providers keep the contract, and the state covers their overheads on top. Religion stays embedded in public schools by the design of the funding, not by any weight of demand.
The rest of the edition keeps to familiar ground. A Brisbane Lutheran college is reviewing how it vets guest speakers, after a visiting preacher told students they'd go to hell if they were gay. And in Sydney, ICAC's Operation Rosny spent a sixth week on the Catholic Church's interests in the city: its cemeteries, its schools, and the party faction that moves around them.
News this week
WA: WA government providing millions of dollars to fund admin costs of religious hire firms, documents reveal (1 September 2026)
Fresh documents obtained by the Rationalist Society under freedom of information show the West Australian government pays several million dollars a year just to cover the administration overheads of the religious organisations — among them YouthCARE and Scripture Union WA — that recruit school chaplains, even as public schools plead to hire their own wellbeing staff directly. It's the companion figure to last week's revelation that schools were refused permission to appoint their own workers: the outsourcing keeps religion embedded in secular schools, and taxpayers are paying for the back office that runs it.
➧ READ MORE:
Rationalist Society of Australia(opens in new tab)
SA: South Australia Rejects One Nation Bill Criminalising Gender-Affirming Care For Trans Youth (3 September 2026)
South Australia's parliament has rejected a bill, brought by One Nation state leader Cory Bernardi, that would have jailed health practitioners for up to five years for prescribing puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones to anyone under 18. The Australian Christian Lobby had urged supporters to rally on the steps of parliament ahead of the vote. Labor and the Greens opposed it, arguing politicians have no business overriding clinical evidence or the autonomy of trans young people. The SA Rainbow Advocacy Alliance called the result a win for evidence-based healthcare.
➧ READ MORE:
Star Observer(opens in new tab)
TAS: A win for victims as Tassie bans good character references (3 September 2026)
Tasmania's House of Assembly this week debated and, according to The Mercury, unanimously passed the Sentencing Amendment (Good Character) Bill 2026, which stops adults convicted of serious offences from using a "good character" reference to reduce their sentence or avoid a recorded conviction. Attorney-General Guy Barnett credited years of campaigning by victim-survivors, including the Your Reference Ain't Relevant campaign co-founded by abuse survivors Harrison James and Jarad Grice. The state had already restricted such references for sexual offences in 2016. "Good character" and "pillar of the community" testimonials loomed large in clergy and institutional child-sexual-abuse cases, and shutting off that courtroom device is part of the long tail of the Royal Commission.
➧ READ MORE:
The Mercury(opens in new tab)
NSW: Four days, one witness and an unknown number of lies: What we learnt from ICAC week six (4 September 2026)
ICAC's Operation Rosny — examining the NSW Liberal Party's right faction, the publicly funded body Catholic Schools NSW, and a web of Sydney business figures — spent its sixth week on former Liberal powerbroker Charles Perrottet, who conceded he had repeatedly lied to keep fugitive developer Jean Nassif paying. Beneath the branch-stacking and the undocumented consultancy payments is the fight over Sydney's fast-filling, and hugely valuable, Catholic-controlled cemeteries, and the advice Perrottet's wife gave on it. Sacked Catholic Schools NSW chief Dallas McInerney remains a person of interest. Nassif is now listed to appear on 14 September.
➧ READ MORE:
The Sydney Morning Herald(opens in new tab)
QLD: School to review speaker selection after students told gay people go to hell (4 September 2026)
St Peters Lutheran College at Indooroopilly, one of Brisbane's top private schools, is reviewing how it chooses guest speakers after a St Lucia Bible Church ministry trainee, Jonathan Vickers, told year 7 and 8 students during a chapel service that they would go to hell if they were gay. The head of college said the school didn't believe faith should be "communicated through fear or shame", and Deputy Premier Jarrod Bleijie called the comments "completely inappropriate". The same church also holds regular gatherings at nearby Ironside State School under a facilities-hire arrangement, so the one ministry has a foot on both a private-school chapel stage and a public-school campus.
➧ READ MORE:
The Age(opens in new tab)
Star Observer(opens in new tab)
Commentary and analysis
Rationale Magazine — Letters to the Editor: Questioning the 'advancement of religion' as a charitable purpose (31 August 2026)
A reader's letter makes the logical case against the "advancement of religion" being treated as a charitable purpose that earns tax exemption. Prompted by the UK National Secular Society's campaign against tax breaks for creationist bodies, the writer argues that thousands of mutually contradictory religions can't all be delivering a demonstrable public benefit, yet the charitable head asks evidence of none of them. It's a secular framing of a live Australian question: whether religion should keep its privileged place in charity and tax law.
➧ READ MORE:
Rationale Magazine(opens in new tab)
Jack Waterford: When religious conservatives tried to reshape the ACT Liberals (1 September 2026)
Waterford draws the line few others have: the Opus Dei-linked faction alleged at ICAC to have tried to capture the NSW Liberals has a close cousin in the history of the ACT Liberals, where religious conservatives long sought to run the party under Zed Seselja. It's a useful corrective to the idea that Operation Rosny is a one-off Sydney scandal. The pattern — organised religious activists treating a major party as a vehicle, and the factional machinery that makes it possible — is national, and older than the current headlines.
➧ READ MORE:
Pearls & Irritations(opens in new tab)
Karen Barlow: Exclusive: 'I wanted to vomit' at Perrottet ICAC evidence (5 September 2026)
Barlow's latest goes past the theatre of the witness box to the document at the centre of it all: leaked 2021 cabinet advice on the future of Sydney's Crown cemeteries. The preferred option was a single government operator, for the sake of taxpayers and accountability. The model that was ultimately legislated handed the Catholic Church a controlling stake worth, on the advice's own figures, hundreds of millions. Former ministers tell her they were never told a Perrottet was advising the church on the very question cabinet was weighing. It's the clearest account yet of how a religious institution's commercial interest threaded through a state government's decisions.
➧ READ MORE:
The Saturday Paper(opens in new tab)
Opportunities for action
NSW: Operation Rosny continues. ICAC's inquiry into the NSW Liberals' right faction, the taxpayer-funded Catholic Schools NSW body and the fight over Sydney's Catholic cemeteries wrapped a sixth week of hearings, with lobbyist Jeremy Greenwood and fugitive developer Jean Nassif (health permitting) listed in coming weeks. The public hearings are open and livestreamed. See the ICAC Operation Rosny page for hearing details(opens in new tab).
SA / National: New this week — Go Gentle Australia is holding a public panel, The Power of Choice, on voluntary assisted dying at the Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre in Adelaide, 6pm, 24 September 2026. It's a chance to hear from advocates and clinicians as the national fight shifts to access and telehealth. Details and registration via the Hawke Centre(opens in new tab).
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 now, with submissions and a community survey closing 2 October 2026. The broader review reaches the religious exemptions that let publicly funded faith schools discriminate against LGBTQIA+ staff and students. 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 church-state fronts. The Greens' draft Conversion Practices Prohibition Bill 2026 is heading for debate, opposed by Deputy Premier Guy Barnett and the Australian Christian Lobby; and the ACCC's approval of Calvary Healthcare's takeover of the Hobart Private Hospital has prompted Equality Tasmania to ask the Anti-Discrimination Commissioner to investigate the likely loss of lawful healthcare services Calvary refuses on religious grounds. Find and contact your local members via the Tasmanian House of Assembly member list(opens in new tab).
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(opens in new tab).
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(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 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(opens in new tab), 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. 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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