Called 'The National School Chaplaincy Program' is in reality a 'Pastoral Care' program which falls in line with other community highly valued chaplaincies such as in the military, hospitals, industry and commerce, the Fire Brigade, SES, professional sport and the like, along with a ready component associated with the program to answer spiritual questions when and as requested.
This school pastoral care program has received considerable publicity over recent weeks. There is a High Court challenge under way, the 7.30 Report on ABC Television ran a segment, some in the community have come out against it, even some Christians have expressed views against it, but on the whole it is "agreeably applauded".
It needs to be stated that this is a "community" program of pastoral care and not a 'religious' provision for a school. The Christian community generally uses the word 'Chaplain' as it's a well recognised term for 'community pastoral care'.
The situation is that each school makes their own decision on whether they adopt the school 'pastoral care' model and the funding for the service is partially met by the Commonwealth to the tune of $20,000 a year for a chaplain.
The reality is that $20,000 is not a great deal of money in terms of a full time salary today, therefore the figure has to be supplemented. These additional monies are raised by the "community groups" that provides the chaplains. It needs to be said, that the chaplain is not required to be Christian, but on the whole, it's the Christians who establish these community groups and provide "Christian" chaplains.
Some of these 'community groups' are well established Christian organisations such as Scripture Union in Queensland and others are established Associations for the precise purpose of providing such pastoral care personnel to schools.
To offer several similar but not exact parallel illustrations.
The InterChurch Trade and Industry Mission (ITIM) provide industry and commerce chaplains to a range of companies who recognise the value of 'pastoral care'. These chaplains serve on behalf of the Christian Churches.
The military likewise have a well established Heads of Churches structured chaplaincy program, as do the Hospital Chaplains, similarly the Fire Brigade and SES and the like.
Mark Tronson explains that when in 1982 he initiated the Sports and Leisure Ministry providing 'Pastoral Carers' (known as the Chaplains) to Australia's professional sports, there was a proven methodology through Heads of Churches to establish this.
Community pastoral care by chaplains is a well established footnote across the nation's history, moreover, these people have consistently been highly valued.
These community groups that administer this national school program has as one of its major activities, that of raising the additional monies to provide a salary to the chaplains. Although the guidelines spell out that a school can engage anyone with accredited qualifications, the problem for that person becomes that of funding the additional monies to pay a salary when the Government grant is limited to $20,000.
The Christian groups are well organised with a wide net from which to seek this additional funding, where many business people make substantial contributions. There are some denominational churches who neither have the resources or the personnel who could be, or even want to be, a school chaplain. Therefore, sometimes there is a perception that this school program spirits away their young people to the local congregation where the school chaplain and his family worship.
He said that his wife and one of his adult daughters watched the 7.30 Report segment and thought it was a fair representation in that Federal Minister Peter Garret affirmed the program, as the "schools want it". This is the overwhelming anecdotal response across the nation. School communities want it.
A few weeks earlier Federal Politician Bill Shorten said on the ABC's Q&A that having seen school chaplaincy in action at grass roots level and how it was supported by the communities, he had become a convert to the school chaplaincy program.
Herein lies this school program's strength. It is grass roots. It is overwhelmingly appreciative.
Anyone who puts their "bib-in" at this local level in an attempt to truncate the program, will inevitably get it bitten off, because Australians stridently object to such interference from the outside, or the do-gooders of the latte-set who never get their hands dirty, or those who are philosophically left-wing whoopy ideologues.