Ethics classes. It looks like the battle may finally have been won.
As I have written about previously, the Labor government introduced Ethics Classes to run in parallel with formal religious education. The Coalition initially said that they opposed the classes and would get rid of them if elected, and then backflipped to support the changes.
When I last wrote on this issue, Fred Nile (head of the Christian Democrats) was making thinly veiled threats to the O'Farrell government. These threats appear to have been hollow.
No surprises there.
Also unsurprisingly, Fred Nile's campaign against Ethics Classes has not abated. His vehement opposition was pretty obvious during the speech he gave on the second reading of the bill. It can be found here and is too long to extract here in full. Here, however, are a few highlights:
Since then, Nile has continued his campaign against the classes. Whether his opposition is out of a firmly held personal belief or simply pandering to his base is impossible to know for sure, but his enthusiasm cannot be doubted.
He has also persisted with the pretty offensive suggestion that the Ethics Classes preached Secular Humanism, which he insists on linking to the Nazi's. Clearly he has never heard of Reductio ad Hitlerum.
Previously, Nile has had in his corner most of the major Christian denominations.
In recent months, however, this support has slowly evaporated. This is no doubt in part due to the churches seeing that this particular battle was lost, but may also be because the churches have realised that the "catastrophic" effects on scripture that were predicted have not really eventuated.
What may prove to the final nail in the debate was hammered in today by the Inter-Church Commission on Religious Education in Schools. Jo Tovey wrote this piece in the Herald.
The Commission apparently "represents 80 per cent of groups that provide special religious education (SRE)." Their website can be found here. Their website defines their membership as follows:
In August 2010 the Commission released this report:
The important part of the report is below:
It appears that in the interim their view has changed, because the deputy commissioner was today quoted as follows:
I'm going to look past the rather bizarre assertion that "No government repeals legislation" and rather focus on the comment that the fight has been fought and lost.
There is little to no chance that the O'Farrell government will agree to repeal the legislation. Certainly Labor and the Greens are not going to be interested. Nile needs to keep his base happy (assuming, of course, that this is what his base wants) but he risks isolating himself on this issue.
It's good and well to make a stand on things you believe in, but there is also a time to concede defeat and focus on things that you are able to achieve, This is what the Commission has done, and Nile may just do well to consider that start seeking realistic outcomes.
The CDP is a minor party, and people do expect them to fight for their core issues. But Nile risks becoming a sort of parody of a party if he keeps flogging a dead horse
Before the 2011 election, O'Farrell seemed untouchable.
Everyone knew he was going to be elected, and this meant he could run a "safe campaign". As I have said on multiple occasions since, all O'Farrell needs to do to win at least 8 years is to not piss too many people off - and he started making sure he followed this edict well before the election.
The campaign was overwhelmingly a "safe" one, with policies calculated to keep people either happy or indifferent.
Of course it was obvious to anyone paying attention that this was what he was doing, but it was the Coalition's compensation for 16 years in the wilderness - people were so sick of Labor that they were willing to vote for just about anyone else.
This all made the kerfuffle about ethics classes so surprising - it was entirely of the Coalition's making.
In some ways, it was not dissimilar to the solar feed-in tariff drama - it could have been easily avoided had the Coalition managed it better.
Ethics classes are a touchy issue. It lies at the point where religion, politics and children intersect.
Church groups have long been permitted access to school by way of religious education. At present, children have a choice whether they wish to attend religious education.
However, if they choose not to attend, then they are not offered any alternative instruction or (often) even supervision.
The St James Ethics Centre has for years been agitating for these children to be given instruction in Ethics. The classes have been offered on a trial basis for some time now.
Predictably, churches have vigorously opposed the mooted changes, presumably thinking that these classes will reduce interest in the religious education.
For me, this position has never really made sense. I'm young enough that I remember school, and I know that given the chance to be in a class or goof around in a library, we would have chosen the library every day of the week.
I would have thought if the kids not attending religious education were rather forced to attend ethics classes, then there might be a newfound interest in the religious education.
But maybe that's just me.
In September 2010, as opposition leader, O'Farrell said "I don't favour ethics classes being an alternative to special religious education classes." In November, the Coalition announced that their policy was that the classes would not be retained.
In February, after a sustained campaign in support of the classes, the Coalition announced that the classes would stay after all. The excuse given for the backdown was that the Coalition did not believe that it would have the numbers in the upper house to make the changes.
Unsurprisingly Fred Nile was "disappointed" by the backdown, but said that he agreed that the "left" was likely to hold the balance of power in the upper house.
Of course, as it happens, the CDP and the Shooters and Fishers hold the balance of power, and since the election the trial of the ethics classes has continued unabated.
A rumour began to spread on twitter yesterday that Fred Nile, leader of the Christian Democrats, was only going to back O'Farrell's IR changes if ethics classes were dumped.
The rumour was confirmed today when Nile released this statement.
This part is the most telling:
This is a dangerous game for Nile to be playing.
On one hand, he is entirely right about the make-up of the upper house. There is no doubt the Coalition has the numbers to end the classes.
Having said that, no one seriously believes that the reason that the Coalition did not persist with the changes was that they lacked the numbers, The policy had become politically inconvenient, and was dumped.
To now revive it, and to change their position again, is going to make the Coalition look indecisive.
This is particularly a danger when Labor and the Greens are turning on the heat re the Coalition's relationship with the minor parties. A change in position at the direct, public command of one of those minor parties is going to be thrown back in the Coalition's face for years to come.
Fred Nile is, however, nothing if not a canny politician, and he may well suspect that whilst threatening to vote down the IR changes would make him look bad, it would get the IR changes back on the front pages for a few days, which would no doubt cause O'Farrell all sorts of trouble.
However, my view is that by making the threat so publicly, he is backing O'Farrell into a corner.
With this threat being made in the open, my view is that O'Farrell cannot relent, or else he risks this government being permanently labelled as being at the beck and call of the minor parties, much as Gillard is currently regarded by many as being controlled by Bob Brown.
On the other hand, O'Farrell is clearly committed to the IR changes, and has already spent a large amount of political capital getting them this far down the path to enactment.
It seems to me that the Coalition has to call Nile's bluff. Ideologically, there is no reason for the CDP to vote against the changes. Further, on 2 June, Nile gave a speech in the Upper House supporting the IR changes.
If he now votes against the changes, he will be described by the Coalition (and, in all likelihood, by certain sections of the media) as being a shameless opportunist, voting based on spite rather than policy.
The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that there must be a third solution that Nile is pushing behind the scenes. Perhaps he has now communicated privately that he will agree to vote for the IR changes if some change is made to the Ethics classes, such as allowing the classes but saying that they should be run at a separate time to Religious Education.
The IR bill is to be voted on on 2 August, but every day this threat stays out there is another day of IR being in the papers, and another day of unions building outrage and campaigning against the changes.
No doubt the Coalition will be hoping that Nile can be placated over the ethics classes without making the Coalition look weak, or else the image of the CDP running the state will be difficult to shake.
