Invoking Religion in Australian Politics

Abstract

As religious engagement in the Australian population continues to decline, the apparent increased prominence of religion in Australian politics is puzzling. This article examines the characteristics of 2422 speeches given by prominent Australian federal politicians between 2000 and 2006 to assess whether religion has become more prominent in early twenty-first century Australian politics, and whether or not the explanations provided to explain the increase are compelling. It is argued that the framing of the September 11 terrorist attacks and the subsequent ‘war on terror’ as a religious conflict weakened adherence to Rawls' (2005) liberal consensus (exclusion of religious beliefs from the public forum) and normalised the use of Christian terminology and ideas in Australian political discourse.

Notes

¹Maddox (2005) provides a comprehensive discussion of the occurrences listed.

²For example, Anglican Archbishop of Brisbane, Peter Hollingsworth was appointed Governor-General in June 2001 and prominent lay Anglican Ian Harper was appointed as inaugural Chair of the Australian Fair Pay Commission in October 2005.

³‘Prominent Commonwealth Members of Parliament’ were defined as MPs that have served as leader or deputy leader of the ALP or the Coalition parties, or as minister or shadow minister, in portfolios responsible for the ‘most important’ federal issues. The ‘most important’ federal issues are the ten issues that were most consistently identified as ‘very important’ or ‘fairly important’ in 19 ‘Newspoll’ opinion polls conducted between January 2000 and October 2006 (Newspoll Market Research 2007). This sampling method was chosen because it is assumed that the issues that voters nominate as most important for their voting decision are those that feature most prominently in political debate.

⁴This paper will refer to the position that the MP held at the time the quotation was recorded.

⁵The difference in the number of Coalition and ALP politicians in the sample reflects the continuity of politicians in prominent Coalition positions as opposed to the greater number of ALP politicians in the equivalent shadow ministry roles.

⁶The author acknowledges that some of these terms also relate to religions other than Christianity. In choosing these terms, the author assumes that they: (i) are the terms used commonly in association with mainstream Christianity in the contemporary Australian context and (ii) are not limited to one Christian denomination. Erroneous references that did not relate to religion were excluded from the sample (e.g. ‘Labor continues to put its faith in the Kyoto Protocol’ (Howard 2006)).

⁷Some speeches contain references to multiple policy domains so this figure is higher than total number of speeches that contain Christian terms.

⁸Maddox (2004) explores this dynamic extensively in her discussion of the ‘us’ and ‘them’ strategy.

⁹This figure refers to speeches given by Prime Minister John Howard (1 January 2000 to 31 December 2006), and by Deputy Prime Ministers John Anderson (1 January 2000 to 6 July 2005) and Mark Vaile (6 July 2005 to 31 December 2006).

¹⁰This figure refers to speeches given by Leaders of the Opposition Kim Beazley (1 January 2000 to 22 November 2001 and 28 November 2005 to 4 December 2006), Simon Crean (22 November 2001 to 8 December 2003 and 1 January 2000 to 23 August 2002 as Deputy Leader of the Opposition), Mark Latham (8 December 2003 to 18 January 2005), Kevin Rudd (4 December 2006 to 31 December 2006). As well as those given by Deputy Leaders of the Opposition Jenny Macklin (23 August 2002 to 4 December 2006), and Julia Gillard (4 December 2006 to 31 December 2006).

¹¹This figure refers to ministers in ‘prominent’ portfolios.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anna Crabb

Anna Crabb completed her Honours degree in the School of Political Science at the University of Melbourne in 2007. Thanks are due to Professor Brian Galligan who supervised the thesis on which this paper is based. Correspondence to: [email protected]