Education

Ethics classes to stay under NSW Coalition government

The Australian Christian Lobby says it’s disappointed by the New South Wales Liberal Leader, Barry O’Farrell’s decision to back away from his commitment to remove ethics classes in NSW public schools if elected.

The ACL’s NSW Director, David Hutt, questioned whether voters could have any confidence in the Liberal Party after breaking its own election commitment, before the election was even held.

Mr. Hutt said the ACL had welcomed the Opposition’s previous commitment to scrap the ethics classes should they win Government and he cannot understand why they have now retreated from this.

“Across NSW many people have been hoping an election might usher in a new era of public confidence in State Government. This backflip means politicians will have to work even harder to restore trust with the community,” said Mr. Hutt.

Christian ethic classes were introduced in NSW by the Labor Government in 2010. At the time, the NSW Coalition, who opposed the legislation, stated that the Coalition does not believe ethics classes should be positioned as an alternative to Special Religious Education.

Mr. Hutt said the ACL has always said that if ethics classes are so important, they should be available to all students and that they should not compete with and undermine Scripture in Schools.

The ACL is not unique in its opposition to ethics classes with the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen and the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, George Pell being fierce critics of the program.

In an interview for the PM program on ABC Radio when ethics classes were first introduced in NSW, Archbishop Jensen spoke of the importance of scripture as a separate study to ethics.

“From the very beginning of scripture teaching it has been a sort of protected space. It's protected because it's such an important study. You're hardly educated unless you've made a study of religion and the Bible whether you believe it or not,” said Mr. Jensen.

The Catholic Archbishop was even stronger in his condemnation of the ethics classes saying “This right of children to receive religious education in public schools is protected by legislation. Regulations prohibit other subjects being offered in SRE time.

“Although the law is very clear, this right is being undermined by the state government and the inappropriately named St. James Ethics Centre by the introduction of ethics classes in SRE time,” said Archbishop Pell.

Following the Coalition’s backflip on the issue, Christian leaders are hoping that if the Coalition does win the next election, they will revisit the issue, and at a minimum, commit to protect the right of ethics classes not to be held in direct competition to Scripture classes.

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