State Support for Scripture in the Public Education System

many of which were at least partially funded by the colonial government. 6 However, further change was on the horizon.After it became apparent that the denominational system was leading to inefficient allocation of resources and the production of poor educational outcomes, and in response to intense sectarian tensions within Australian society, colonial legislatures one by one introduced government schools and abolished state funding for religious schools. 7 The colonies started to legislate on government schools in the Australian colonies in the following order: New South Wales (1848), 8 South Australia (1851), Tasmania (1868), Western Australia (1871), Victoria (1872), and Queensland (1875). 9However, the colonies abolished state aid to denominational Christian schools in a different order: South Australia (1851), 10 Victoria (1872), 11 Queensland (1881), New South Wales (1883), Tasmania (1885), and Western Australia (1895). 12 Importantly, there is now a heated contemporary debate over whether or not these secular education Acts were motivated by a desire to purge public education of all trace of religion, such that they fit within a 'greater secular liberal progress narrative in Australian culture'. 13 If this was so, then the current maintenance of Scripture teaching in public schools would arguably be a betrayal of the intent behind these legislative developments.However, scholars such as Hastie and Chavura, Gascoigne, and Tregenza have, with considerable force, rebutted the thrust of this argument, claiming that it is motivated by 'an explicit purpose of validating contemporary ideology' 14 and that it commits the fallacy of 'retrojecting [scholars'] own contemporary understanding of the secular-sacred distinction onto historic debates'. 15 In place of this ideological liberal view, Hastie and Chavura et al. have argued that the 'secular' education these statutes refer to, when read in context, denotes non-denominational Christian 6 Babie (n 3) 29; Barker (n 2) 150.The very first Appropriation Act of the NSW Legislative Council provided hundreds of pounds for Presbyterian clergy and Catholic schools (although, it should be noted that it provided thousands of pounds for Anglican clergy and Anglican schools): Appropriation Act 1832 (NSW) s 3. 7 Barker (n 2) 149-50; David Hastie, 'The Latest Instalment in the Whig Interpretation of Australian Education History: