Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight and call on the government to continue funding the National Schools Chaplaincy Program. This initiative, which has been highly popular in my electorate and, I know, right across Australia, was started by the former coalition government to provide the staff and students of schools with Christian pastoral care. More than $1.6 million was provided to schools in my electorate of Maranoa in the last two years of the Howard government and in the first two years of the program.

I was out in the western part of my electorate in the Diamantina shire about 12 months ago and I was saying to the local Aboriginal elder of a very remote community how wonderful it was that they had applied for some of the chaplaincy money and received it. She said to me, ‘Yes, Bruce, it is wonderful. We have to do this for the young ones.’ For me that says it all. Whether it is the Aboriginal elders in a community or whether it is the schools where 97 per cent of principals across Australia believe this is a positive program, I believe this is a program that must continue. It is one that requires the federal government’s financial support and I am calling on the Prime Minister to continue that support through funding for the chaplaincy service. The three-year program is about to run out and as we end this school year the schools need to know that next year they will have funding for this chaplaincy service. We have recently had a very successful Stock Up for Hope droving trek in my electorate. The community raised over $300,000 for that program, and I urge the government to put this program back as a priority.