AUSTRALIAN COUNCIL FOR THE DEFENCE OF
GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS
Press Release #1075
Church School Administrators, and their Political Use of Taxpayer Funds .
On 30 July 2026, an editorial entitled Time for Catholics to be transparent about their use of other people’s money appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald
The editor referred to the recent Independent Commission against Corruption’s (ICAC) inquiry into Liberal factionalism and lobbying in NSW politics which has traced a money trail used to undermine democratic processes.
The Head of Catholic Schools NSW and right-wing power broker, Dallas McInerney has been accused of funnelling $165,000 of his organisation’s funds in undeclared political donations to factional colleagues .
There have been a number of other articles by investigative journalists following young and not so young Catholic conservatives planning on imposing their peculiar values upon the rest of the population. These are
- Catholic Schools rort was a ‘running joke’. You wont hear parents or taxpayers laughing and
- From God to Godfather – the secretive young men behind the Reformers.
What is perhaps the most telling is the following excerpt from the editorial:
Unlike government schools, which must remain politically neutral, Catholic priests and principals are free to advocate for particular parties and have done so when they have detected threats to their funding or their freedom to decide how it’s spent.
The lack of accountability has long been a sore point for politicians. But they fear political consequences if they call it out, or attempt to change the rules to require private schools to explain how this multibillion-dollar handout is spent.
Australia has always had an inclusive approach when it came to the separation of church and state, that delivered religious freedom, religious fairness and state neutrality, but we now have a real example of government funding being used for political purposes.
DOGS note that entanglement of church and State through the provision of public funding for private religious schools will inevitably lead to situations like this. Accountability has long been a joke and in fact will always be a joke.
But what is more deleterious for the body politic is the subtle and not so subtle division of children and their parents into ‘religious tribes’ and the breakdown of social cohesion.
This is why DOGS believe that if we are to have separation of religion from the State there should be no public funding for private religious schools.
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