Editorial [Maxwell Newton], The Australian, October 21, 1964, p. 10.

There were many deplorable aspects of the Prime Minister’s decision to promise a limited form of State aid before the 1963 elections.

It was a sharp break with traditional practice, interrupting the pattern of secular education and opening the way for major changes in the financing of Australian education.

Like some other recent actions of the Prime Minister, including the airlines case, it represents a sudden change in traditional policy preceded by little or no discussion.

But no doubt many people in the community are prepared to countenance the breaking down of secular State education tradition in order to see some improvement in the low, often appalling, standards of Catholic schools — starved as they are of funds and professional teaching talent.

In other words, many Australians were probably prepared to countenance Sir Robert’s blatant electoral bribery for the sake of doing something for the one quarter of Australian children getting substandard education at Catholic schools.

So there may be some sort of argument for State aid on the grounds of social relief, of improving for Catholic children the inferior opportunities to which they are condemned — albeit through their parents’ religious conviction, which is strictly their own affair and for which they should surely be asked to pay the bill themselves.

But when it comes to extending aid in any form to the greater public schools in our capital cities, surely the whole argument for State aid becomes nonsense.

The parents of children who go to schools like Sydney Grammar, Wesley College, Hale School or Geelong Grammar send their children there because they can afford to give them a privileged education.

The issue of religious principle hardly comes into the question. The parents aim to lift their children out of the ruck by giving them some additional privilege.

Whether this is a very sensible thing for parents to do can be left aside for the time being.

The fact is that the greater public schools are a means whereby parents with the money can attempt to give their children a privileged education.

Why should the mass of Australian taxpayers be expected to make a contribution to the financing of these schools?

What possible argument is there to justify this?

The argument for giving a helping hand to underprivileged Catholics is surely weak enough and can really only be justified on the basis of saving Catholic children from the consequences of their parents’ religious conviction.

But who can justify subsidies from the taxpayers to help solve the financial problems of places like Geelong Grammar?

Only a Government with little understanding of social principles could think of such an inequitable proposal.

The dissidents in the Sydney Anglican Synod were therefore entirely correct in agitating against acceptance of State aid for Anglican schools.

It is not to be wondered that the Methodists and Presbyterians are also going through a period of difficulty in agreeing to accept the Commonwealth offer of aid.

If they have any shame at all they must reject it.

Their own sense of decency should surely oblige them to reject it.

How do you justify State subsidies to the parents of children who are literally queuing up for years for the chance to pay the fees asked by Australia’s greater public schools?

How can the churches behind these schools calm their Christian consciences or steady their trembling hands held out for Commonwealth gold?

Of course, the aid for science laboratories is not the first privilege accorded by the present Government to the parents of privileged children.

The Government allows parents to deduct up to £150 per child per annum for education fees, uniforms and the like.

Knowing that the parents of greater public school pupils are already receiving such socially unjustifiable subsidies from the rest of the community, how can the churches controlling most of these schools — the Anglicans, Methodists and Presbyterians — possibly reconcile with their Christian teaching the acceptance of further handouts?