Bishop Charles Gauci wants the Northern Territory government to shelve its plan to remove the right of religious schools to employ staff who share their faith.

The NT parliament is considering government amendments to the Anti-Discrimination Act.

The change will end an existing provision that lets "religious educational institutions discriminate against staff based on their sexuality''.

Bishop Gauci has warned that the draft bill has the "unintended consequences'' of preventing religious schools from requiring staff to teach in line with the school's faith.

"Denying faith schools the right of ensuring that their belief systems are upheld by employing the right people is a violation of religious freedom,'' he wrote in his Bishop's Reflection on Thursday.

"Can you imagine a Catholic school employing a leader of a school who advocates atheism, or thinks that the beliefs of our church are silly?

"Now, it doesn't mean that every teacher is a Catholic or even a believer. But we certainly have a firm policy that the principal, the deputy, the director of religious education, are practising members of our faith community," Bishop Gauci said on Darwin's Mix 104.9 Radio on 16 November.

"I'm taking this very, very seriously.

"It's really questioning whether we are going to be viable in all of our schools. And we have plenty of them, giving a great contribution to people across the NT," Bishop Gauci said.

Government taking a "radical approach''

He said the legislative amendments could force Catholic schools to let teachers promote atheism or polygamy to students.

"If I cannot have a faith school … then we would have to seriously consider closing them, and then all the kids would have to go to the state schools,'' he said on Wednesday.

"We are not talking about a teacher's personal beliefs or even their own private lives; we are talking about what they do in schools and what they teach.

"I repeat: more than half the students to come to our schools are not Catholic, but they value what we present and what we hold."

The Australian Association of Christian Schools said the NT government was taking a "radical approach'' towards anti-discrimination laws by removing the longstanding employment exemption for religious schools.

"Completely removing (section) 37a from the Discrimination Act leaves our schools vulnerable to claims of discrimination when it comes to employing staff who share the faith,'' AACS executive officer Vanessa Cheng said on Thursday.

The Australian Christian Lobby also called on the NT government to reverse the amendment.

"Everyone understands the right of political parties to hire staff who are members of their parties, and for other values-based organisations to hire staff who adhere to their ethos,'' the ACL's NT director Christopher Brohier said.

"And yet the NT government plans to deny faith-based schools this same right.

"Religious schools should not be forced to hire staff opposed to, or out of step with, their beliefs.''

Mr Brohier said the NT bill "discriminates against parents who choose to send their children to religious schools".

Sources

• Catholic Weekly
• The Australian

But for now we are up there, on the ridge, a drive and a hard walk from the camp through remote Northern Territory gums and pandanas, beneath squadrons of whistling kites, the scrubby ground crackling in the heat of the dry season. When we reach Yenmilli, the sacred rock art site, the boys and young men are suddenly still. They can talk all day and all night for hours on end in two languages and perhaps more, but not for now.

The sacred caves are small and under the crook of the ridge. The art is dots and hands, ancient and largely intact. Only one white person has seen it before, according to the family. Everyone sits. Black hands start tracing the white outlines on the cave walls and then black hands are placed over the drawn hands and most are an exact fit, like slipping into a glove.

Jules Dumoo, the eldest of the nine Aboriginal men here, a father to some of them and also a brother and uncle and guardian, sits in the dirt of the first cave where kangaroos now live but where his ancestors did also. He's only about 45 years old but his own uncles and his father are now gone. Continue reading

Sources

• The Sydney Morning Herald
• Image: The Sydney Morning Herald