Chairman Rudd, and a call for sects and cults to roll up for federal government funding ...

(Above: how to reward this kind of sneaky letterbox campaign back in 2007? Would a couple of mill for your schools do? Sourced from Crikey here)

The ongoing scandal of the Federal government continuing to fund cults received a little top up today with The Age's report Sect's small schools given $2m in federal grants.

It's a long time ago that Four Corners took an interest in the sect - with Separate Lives in September 2006, and then in October 2007 with The Brethren Express, in which John Howard's willingness to play footsy with the sect was given healthy exposure.

Howard was consistently defiant as he shovelled money into private education involving whichever religious sect could arrange a half way decent application form:

JOHN HOWARD, PRIME MINISTER (archive footage, 22 August 2007): I do not deny for a moment I've met representatives of the Exclusive Brethren, and why not? They're Australian citizens, it's a lawful organisation, and as Prime Minister I have met an enormous number of organisations - it's my job.

Back in those days Chairman Rudd sang a righteous tune:

KEVIN RUDD, OPPOSITION LEADER (archive footage): I believe this is an extremist cult and sect. I also believe that it breaks up families.

That was then, but in August 2009, it was revealed that the Rudd government had increased funding of schools run by the sect by fifty per cent. In Howard government days in 2007, the sect received just over $9 million, but in 2009 they copped $13.9 million (Govt increases funding to Brethren 'cult').

The cult showed remarkable skill in milking the teat of the taxpayer dollar, by getting new schools dubbed campuses of already established schools - which meant a school based in Sydney might have a "campus" in Albury.

So it's hardly surprising that the latest news is just a riff on a well-established angle:

A tiny school campus in Bendigo run by the controversial Exclusive Brethren religious sect is receiving $1.2 million in federal funding to upgrade its library, despite having just 11 primary students last year.

Documents also show that the Exclusive Brethren-run Glenvale School's Swan Hill campus - which has just 16 primary students - received $800,000 for a hall under the schools building program.

There'll be the usual squawking, the usual robust defence from sect representatives, and the usual dissembling from the Rudd government, and nothing will happen.

Since this is an equal opportunity site, it's worth mentioning that Scientology is also a beneficiary of the current 'system'. Around the corner from us is a dour former Catholic school there's a school now running with the name 'Athena', which handily has a listing on the nsw.edu.au site, here:

The Athena School is inclusive of all denominations and cultures and encourages the recognition of our spiritual nature. Importance is placed on developing such virtues as kindness, tolerance and respect, as well as those which appear on our school logo: persistence, integrity and understanding.

In order to develop such virtues, we teach from the booklet "The Way to Happiness", which is the first nonreligious code based wholly on common sense. This was written by L. Ron Hubbard as an individual work and not part of any religious doctrine.

Yep, I've always associated L. Ron Hubbard with extreme common sense, and what better way to reward his common sense educational ways than tip some $1.4 million of government funding into the hat (Scientology school defends funding).

So while Nick Xenophon jumps up and down in the Senate, nothing will happen.

Meanwhile it would be remiss not to mention the way Islamic schools also have their hand in the pie. Way back in 2005 The Age published a story Muslims sound alarm over schools:

The teacher could not believe what he overheard. The "visiting" imam was launching into a tirade against the Jews and Americans that bordered on the ludicrous.

But then came the clincher, he recalled. "The imam told the students that the Jews were putting poison in the bananas and they should not eat them." ...

Werribee College is from all accounts an Islamic school with a difference. According to former staff it was a longstanding practice of the school principal, Omar Hallak, to have Muslim staff sleep on the premises after big international terror attacks such as those in Bali and the London tube bombings to prevent retributive attacks.

The Sunday Age has been told that Werribee College appears intent on exporting its particular brand of Islam to Indonesia, an achievement made possible by generous commonwealth and state grants — estimated to be in excess of $3 million a year.

Well the Werribee College continues to flourish, and you can get its mission statement here.

Back then, it was calculated that combined state and federal funding offered $7,000 a student, which resulted in a cool $32 million a year to Islamic schools in Victoria.

If you want to check on why the Exclusive Brethren deserve your tax dollars to support their schools, why not head off to the only site endorsed by the Exclusive Brethren to get a whiff of their views, here:

All the passages which speak of the resurrection (Romans 8; 11, John 5: 21, Luke 20, 1 Cor. 15, Philippians 3: 10, 1 Thess. 4 and Rev. 20) in the New Testament show clearly that the resurrection of the saints is an entirely distinct thing from the resurrection of the wicked, being founded on their redemption and their having received life from Christ. These scriptures all show clearly that there will be 1,000 years between the resurrection of those that are the fruit of redemption and those that are the fruit of the rejection of redemption. See J.N.Darby, Collected Writings vol.11 page 264.

Those, like our deluded writer, who wish to prove a “general resurrection” quote Matt. 25 where the division between the sheep and goats is detailed. There is not a single syllable about the resurrection in that scripture! End of argument!

Indeed. But who are the sheep and who are the goats, and how many chickens can you pluck in order to provide a decent schooling in the mysterious ways of the Rapture?

It's hard to know who to blame for this wretched state of educational affairs. Back when it was brooding about extremist Islamic schools, The Age blamed David Kemp:

Canberra's big spending laissez-faire approach to non-government school funding, intended by former education minister David Kemp to boost the numbers of Christian schools, has fuelled an increase in community-based Islamic schools across Australia which qualify for the same subsidies ...

Although the Federal Government seeks to promote "a pluralist and tolerant society" in providing hundreds of millions of dollars to non-government schools, it carries out no day-to-day monitoring of courses or management standards. This is left to the states, whose monitoring is at best cursory.

But it actually started way back when the big concerns (Catholic and Anglican) got to dip their paws in the coffers, and then a fair dibs mentality took over, and any other lunatic group with a barrow to push could turn up at the trough, and make out like a pig on a fattening campaign in a well-run piggery.

Week after week you can read the commentariat fulminate about militant atheists, and the way they're ruining things, but last I looked there wasn't an atheist chaplaincy program of the kind the Howard government offered the true believers - though it was consoling to read the creationists getting agitated about Atheists to do religious eduction in schools.

And week after week you can read the commentariat fulminate about the Rudd government, but truth to tell, in its funding of private schools, it's not even Howard lite, it's full cream homogenised pasteurised Howard.

Stories will keep dribbling out, about money going here, and money going here, but it's only further proof that everything changes only so that everything can stay the same, and nothing will happen.

By the way, Gillard's response to the latest story?

A spokesman for Education Minister Julia Gillard said schools with multiple campuses were treated as a single school.

He said the department had been advised that the combined enrolment for Glenvale School was 206 primary students and therefore it was eligible for a $2 million grant.

QED. And not a word about the troublesome bothersome worrisome business of funding cults and sects.

So on goes the educational circus, roll up cults and sects, come one and come all, and Chairman Rudd will see you right. Just make sure you know the angles, know the pitch, and then you can head off and teach whatever you like ...

Militant atheists?

Poor meek and mild atheists played like all-day suckers and saps ...

(Below: poor little persecuted tadpoles descended from monkeys).