RSA Weekly For atheists, rationalists and secular humanists in Australia
Saturday 9 August 2025 Hi , In our submission to the UN Human Rights Council last month, we raised the religious-based discrimination in the federally funded school chaplaincy roles as an example of
discrimination and unfair treatment against non-religious people. The Albanese government still requires school chaplains to have religious credentials to "confirm their faith". Yet, documents obtained by the RSA from the federal education department under freedom of information laws reveal an annual reporting process that masks this discrimination (see the top article). If
you'd like to share your thoughts about articles in the RSA Weekly, email me on: sigladman@rationalist.com.au. Si Gladman Executive Director, Rationalist Society of Australia |
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| RSA 'Inadequate' reporting process masking discrimination in
federally funded school chaplaincy roles, says RSA9 Aug: The federal education department is masking ongoing religious-based discrimination in chaplaincy roles in the National Student Wellbeing Program (NSWP) through inadequate reporting processes, says the Rationalist Society of Australia. Documents obtained under freedom of information (FOI) laws show that the states and territories are required to simply mark ‘Yes’ or ‘No’, or ‘Y’ or
‘N’, to the question of whether student wellbeing officers and chaplains employed in the NSWP “were of any faith or of no faith”. Read the full article |
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| RSA South Australian Attorney-General Kyam Maher “considering”
suggestion to abolish sacrilege laws6 Aug: South Australia’s attorney-general, Kyam Maher, has pledged to “consider” calls for the state to abolish sacrilege laws, but is yet to commit to action. In a letter to the Rationalist Society of Australia last month, Mr Maher said that he would consider the suggestion previously put forward by the RSA for the state government to get on with the job of addressing this issue. Read the full article |
| THE AGE Sydney mosque members receive ‘death threats’ in call to prayer furore 9 Aug: Members of one of Australia’s largest mosques say they have received
death threats since plans for new loudspeakers to broadcast the Muslim call to prayer sparked public backlash over “intrusive noise” and property price concerns. Read the full article |
| THE GUARDIAN ‘Nazis don’t belong in this country’: Victorian premier scathing over masked march by ‘goons’ 9 Aug: The Victorian premier, Jacinta Allan, has
condemned “goons” who took part in a neo-Nazi march through the streets of Melbourne in the early hours of Saturday morning. About 100 people dressed in black with face coverings marched through the Melbourne CBD, police said in a statement. Read the full article |
| FINANCIAL REVIEW Mormon church’s $490m spending spree exposes trade deal blind spot 8 Aug: The Mormon church has purchased almost half a billion dollars’
worth of Australian farmland in little more than six months, raising fears in the farming community that the Mormons could change the face of Australian agriculture. In response, Nationals leader David Littleproud is calling for changes to the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement. Signed in 2004 by former Nationals leader Mark Vaile, the AUSFTA gives US investors an almost unfettered right to buy Australian farmland. Read the full article |
| THE GUARDIAN Outrage as Spanish town bans Muslim religious festivals from public spaces 7 Aug: A local authority in south-east Spain has banned Muslims
from using public facilities such as civic centres and gyms to celebrate the religious festivals Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of Ramadan, and Eid al-Adha. The ban in Jumilla is a first in Spain. Read the full
article |
| CNN Judge blocks four districts from enforcing Arkansas law requiring Ten Commandments in classroom 6 Aug: A new Arkansas law requiring public classrooms
to display the Ten Commandments cannot be enforced in a handful of the state’s largest school districts where parents brought challenges on the grounds that it violates the separation of church and state, a federal judge ruled Monday. Read the full
article |
| THE GUARDIAN Sall Grover begins federal court appeal against Roxanne Tickle’s gender discrimination case win 4 Aug: Giggle for Girls and Sall Grover have
begun their appeal to overturn a landmark court decision that found the women-only social media app and its CEO had unlawfully discriminated against Roxanne Tickle, a transgender woman. On Monday, the full court of the federal court in Sydney heard that Grover’s team believes the app – designed as a “women-only safe space” – constituted a “special measure” under the Sex Discrimination Act. Read the full article |
| PARLIAMENT OF VICTORIA Coercive behaviours outlined at cults inquiry 30 Jul: Investigative journalist Richard Baker, who has been looking into cults for
several years and produced the podcast ‘Secrets We Keep: Pray Harder’, told the committee that the issues the inquiry is looking at regarding high control groups are not unique to Victoria. Read the full article |
In an ABC radio interview, Victorian Liberal MP Evan Mulholland said there were “lots of quite silly traditions” in the parliament but claimed the daily observance of Christian prayers was not one of them. What do you think? Email your comments to: editor@rationalist.com.au |
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| RATIONALE The dangers of exponential
growth Elizabeth Dangerfield: António Guterres understands something that most world leaders do not. He knows that exponential growth is unrelenting and immensely destructive. This is why climate change is so precipitous. No matter how forcefully Guterres urges immediate action, governments prevaricate, ignore it, or deny it even exists. Doing business as normal is familiar and politically safe. The ‘growth is
essential’ strategy has worked well for us if you are not worried about equity and equality. Read the full article |
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| RATIONALE The fast lane to a renewable energy
future Andrew Blakers: Solar energy is also causing the fastest energy change in history. Along with support from wind energy, it offers unlimited, cheap, clean and reliable energy forever. With energy storage effectively a problem solved, the required raw materials impossible to exhaust — despite some misconceptions in the community — and an Australian transition gathering pace, solar and wind are becoming a
superhighway to a future of 100 per cent renewable energy. Read the full article |
| FINANCIAL REVIEW The chequebook of Mormon: $500m on Australian farms in six months Greg Bearup: The Mormons had arrived, and it wasn’t long
before the rumours started to fly around Mungindi, a two-pub town that straddles the Barwon River, marking the border between NSW and Queensland. The locals were wary when late last year it became known that the church-owned, Utah-based Alkira Farms had paid more than $350 million for 27,000 hectares of prime cropping and cattle country. Read the full article |
| CRIKEY Inside the Islamophobia envoy’s private briefings to parliament Daanyal Saeed: The special envoy to combat Islamophobia has held private
briefings for federal MPs in Canberra ahead of his imminent report. The meetings left some attendees confused, others upset. Read the full article |
| THE SATURDAY PAPER ‘We grow up afraid’: Victoria’s public inquiry into cults Martin McKenzie-Murray: For a long time, Laura McConnell occupied a
no-man’s-land. Sometimes she wonders if she’s still there. It’s a lonely space between her excommunication and her estrangement from “normal” society. Now in her mid 40s, she remains an outsider to both: a “dangerous” pariah to the sect she was banished from and an alien to the broader culture whose touchstones she never felt. Read the full article |
| ABC RADIO An investigation into the Toowoomba cult called The Saints In a confronting documentary for ABC TV's Compass, award-winning journalist
Suzanne Smith enters the world of the religious cult the Saints and talks to their families and former cult members. Suzanne brings The Religion and Ethics Report exclusive access to audio of police interviews and conversations with some of the young girl's relatives. Listen to the full episode |
| THE AGE The flagship ABC show taking on a deadly cult Bridget McManus: Six-time Walkley award-winning ABC journalist Suzanne Smith – author of
The Altar Boys, about child sexual abuse within the Catholic Church in Newcastle – is no stranger to crimes against children. Her investigations helped instigate the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. Yet, she approached with trepidation a brief from Compass to follow up on the Toowoomba sect known as the Saints. Read the full article |
| SBS Don't think you're the type to join a cult? Gloria didn't think she was either Aleisha Orr: Gloria did not think she was the type of person
who would join a cult. For the first nine months of her involvement with Shincheonji, she, like other new recruits, did not know the name of the group she was being groomed into. It was revealed to her at a ceremony held around the nine-month mark, in which she and other new members were encouraged to signify their commitment. Read the full article |
| THE GUARDIAN Conspiracy theories have leached into public life. Is it scepticism towards power or a complete worldview? Ariel Bogle and Cam
Wilson: We’re living in an era where conspiratorial ideas have leached into public life thanks to politicians and the media. They help make them mainstream for political purposes, from fake claims about climate science, to raising doubts about the safety of vaccines. Read the full article |
| NEW SCIENTIST Homo naledi's burial practices could change what it means to be human Much controversy surrounds the claim that H. naledi buried
its dead, largely concerning the quality of the evidence. But since the mid-20th century, researchers have been busily narrowing the behavioural gap between our species and others, spearheaded by research showing that many animals have emotionally rich lives. Read the full article |
| THE CONVERSATION Jesus chatbots are on the rise Anné H. Verhoef: AI is now also being used to imitate God, through chatbots that simulate
conversation with human users and can be accessed on websites and apps. In Christianity, for example, there’s AI Jesus, Virtual Jesus, Jesus AI, Text with Jesus, Ask Jesus and many others. As a professor of philosophy and director of the AI Hub at my university, I recently conducted a study to explore these Jesus chatbots and discuss them critically. Read the full article |
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