Looking for the High Moral Ground on an Ethical Nullarbor Plain

[catsidhe]

Churches have the right to publicly opine on matters of public policy. Even when such opinions happen to have startling alignment with certain political parties' platforms.

But here's an idea: when a religion starts actively campaigning for one party or another, they lose the right to be recognised as a tax-exempt entity. Squared if they're doing it by lying.

You want to play partisan politics? You get to pay tax on your property and income, like the rest of us.

Comments

[sjl]

I reckon religions should be forced to split into two parts. One part handles the charitable work: helping the poor and underprivileged of society. That part is tax exempt (and funds donated to them are tax deductible.) However, in order to get the tax exemption, they have to open their books to everybody. What came in. What went out. What the money was used for, and who received it. Completely open and transparent.

The other part gets taxed like a business, like everybody else. If they don't like the open and transparent bit, they don't have to comply - but then, they don't get the tax deduction.

[(Anonymous)]

I agree.

Today noncatholics are funding catholic organisations to create their religio-political propaganda.

It's a profound unfairness of the Aussie Tax Office (ATO) rules that "the advancement of religion" is listed as a charitable purpose.

That item isn't helping needy individuals! It's greatly self-serving, it's their PR & Marketing department.

By waiving taxes the Aussie government publicly funds a religious organisation's mission. Typically gossiping about biblical characters, spreading their favourite church fictions as facts, moralising, retrograding to a bygone era, putting the breaks on civil progress, etc.

And on the topic of the politico-religious, the well-funded Aussie Christian Lobby have become so astoundingly one-eyed that their recent efforts are flying in the face of all empathy and fairness, http://thatsmyphilosophy.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/acl-graph.jpg


@blamer on twitter

[tangent_woman]

I entirely agree.

I remember thinking much the same thing when Catholic priests were "requested" to read out an anti-gay-marriage statement to their congregations in church a few weeks ago. A statement in which they asked members of the congregation to contact their political representatives to decry same sex marriage and demand that it remain illegal. If that's not participation in politics, I don't know what is. Separation of Church and State should be maintained and bolstered, and religious orgainisations should be required to play by the same tax rules as any other business, with the exception of the portion which acts as a charitable organisation, which should be subject to the same tax rules as any other charitable organisation.

[tcpip]

OK, how would you respond to Elder's comments in the article?

Stephen Elder from the Catholic Education Office says the letter is fair and accurate.

"We don't tell people how to vote but we actually inform them what the impact of the policies of the two major parties contesting this by-election will be," he said.

"The reality is that the Greens are looking to take us back to funding levels that were around a decade ago."

(NB: Personally, I'm an old DOGS supporter... )

[catsidhe]

People playing partisan politics almost always claim that their partisanship is "fair and accurate".

That statement can be reduced to "We don't tell people how to vote, we just inform them that the Greens eat puppies."

The section in question in the Greens Education Policy (¶65: "support the maintenance of the total level of Commonwealth funding for private schools at 2003-04 levels (excluding that re-allocated under previous clauses), indexed for inflation." is immediately after ¶64: "invest the money saved from ending public subsidies to the very wealthiest private schools into a national equity funding programme for public schools."

Or, in other words, the total level to non-government schools (assuming there is a distinction made between "non-government" and "private") will remain at that level, after cutting payments to places like Carey Grammar, Ivanhoe Grammar and Scotch College. That implies that while the amount of money to Catholic schools in toto will drop, this will be because the Greens would stop subsidising Xavier and Sacre Coeur, not St Josephs Brunswick.

[tcpip]

Look, I don't disagree with those policies - like I said, I'm a DOGS supporter since way back when.

However the Catholics do have a legitimate right to write to the people who use their services, and say "Well, if candidate X is elected this will effect funding to our school by Y".

[catsidhe]

Even when most -- almost all -- of those people are sending their children to a school for which this simply is not true?

Like I said, the funding for St Josephs of Brunswick probably wouldn't go down under a Greens government (as unlikely as that is), because the difference would come from the subsidies to Xavier, and Sacre Coeur, and Ivanhoe Grammar, and Geelong Grammar, and...

What the Catholic Church wrote was about their total subsidies, while managing to mention that 99% of the people they were writing to would not notice, unless, of course, that same Church decided to use St Johns to subside Xavier.

I'm sure that the effective lie misleading impression of the true effects of the policy were a simple oversight.


And besides which, at what point did one State Lower House member implement Federal Policy?

The actual effect to funding of any school, state or Catholic, rich or poor, if Cathy Oke is elected tomorrow? Absolutely none whatsoever.