Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I was in opposition for three years, as you know, and I have been on the government side now for a year and a half. Having been on both sides of the House, one of the things that I think would make governments even better would be if they did not have to actually make choices. It would be good if, every time we saw a program which a large number of people in our electorate liked or which we thought had some merit, we could just go with it and did not have to sometimes put one thing aside in order to support something else. I remember the epiphany I had within about four hours of us winning government when I realised that, when you are in government, there really are no excuses. If you do not do something, it is because you did not want to, as you really do have the power. Yet, when we are in government, we are continually looking at that infinite range of choices and deciding which of those options we will pursue and which we will set aside. Which choice we make on the National Schools Chaplaincy Program is not defined as yet. The review is still underway, yet I am very aware when I listen to the members of the opposition speak on this that there is considerable support for it, but we will, in time, have to consider whether it is a priority area or whether we have other priorities.

The National Schools Chaplaincy Program was a three-year program initiated in 2007 by the Howard government and it allocated $165 million over three years for chaplaincy services in schools. Each school was able to apply for up to $20,000 per year for three years. It recognised that for some religious affiliations the word ‘chaplain’ may not be appropriate and it uses that word as a generic term, but it can equally apply to imams, rabbis, lay leaders or religious workers. There were two rounds of the program in 2007 and around 2,700 schools were funded. On election, the Rudd government undertook to honour those commitments and will fund the schools for the program through its three-year term to 2010.

There have been some issues with implementation of the program and changes were made in early 2008. The main problem was that schools were able to apply for funding without having identified a chaplain, and a number of schools that had received funding reported difficulties with finding a chaplain. For this reason, the government decided to allow the successful schools to use an alternative worker if they could not locate a chaplain by July 2008. Such schools are able to use other suitable services such as appropriately qualified counsellors, youth workers and other secular support staff.

I am aware that many schools are making use of the funding in areas that are much broader than the original chaplaincy stream. These include organising sporting events, working with children who suffer trauma from their times in refugee camps, and working with children with drug-affected parents or children with language needs. The immediate needs vary considerably and the alteration of the program due to the difficulty in finding chaplains, I believe, has made the program much more flexible to respond to the needs of the local community.

I am aware that in some electorates—and the previous member referred to 19 schools in his electorate—the program has been widely adopted. In my electorate it is much more marginal as there are only four schools in the electorate of Parramatta that have taken up the chaplaincy program, although I do admit that there may be a couple of Catholic schools that I have missed because of the commonality of names such as St Pauls and the lack of addresses on the reports. But there appear to be only four schools in the program in my electorate, and I am aware that those schools use those chaplaincy funds very well for the needs of their local community.

We are of course extremely well served by religious institutions in Parramatta which has a very strong Catholic community and has one of the largest proportions of Catholics of any electorate. We have the largest Sikh temple to the north, the largest Hindu temple to the south, the largest Buddhist temple outside of Wollongong just on the border and there is a brand new mosque opening very soon. In terms of religious institutions it is an extremely well-served community.

Money for education is not unlimited and the Rudd government, like all governments, will need to make choices. The process that leads to that choice is taking place now. The program will be reviewed and its effectiveness assessed. There is no plan for a further round at this time but the program will be reviewed and, as appropriate, the government will make a decision on whether the National Schools Chaplaincy Program delivers in a priority area and whether it is the most effective mechanism to deliver services to schools. Meanwhile, we can all acknowledge the hard work being undertaken in our communities by schools, chaplains and lay people who work with children, teachers and families in need.

See this speech in context