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National Secular Lobby
The National Secular Lobby is an Australian pro-secular organisation, founded in July 2017 and officially launched in January 2018. It aims to promote secular principles and the separation of church and state in Australia. The National Secular Lobby combines the building of grassroots awareness and action with the direct lobbying of parliamentarians by high profile ambassadors. It has made submissions to various parliamentary inquiries, including the Religious Freedom Review (2018), the 2021 Census Topic Review (2018), and the Parliamentary Prayers Inquiry (2018). Ambassadors Current National Secular Lobby ambassadors are: * Phillip Adams * Van Badham * Lazaras Panayiotou * Julian Burnside * Jane Caro * Fiona Patten * Chris Schacht * Dr Paul Willis * Dr David Zyngier See also * Secular Party of Australia * Secular state * Secularism * Secularity Secularity, also the secular or secularness (from Latin ''saeculum'', "worldly" or "of a generation"), is the state of being unr ...
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Secularism
Secularism is the principle of seeking to conduct human affairs based on Secularity, secular, Naturalism (philosophy), naturalistic considerations. Secularism is most commonly defined as the Separation of church and state, separation of religion from civil affairs and the state, and may be broadened to a similar position seeking to remove or to minimize the role of religion in any public sphere. The term "secularism" has a broad range of meanings, and in the most schematic, may encapsulate any stance that promotes the secular in any given context. It may connote anti-clericalism, atheism, Naturalism (philosophy), naturalism, Nonsectarian, non-sectarianism, Neutrality (philosophy), neutrality on topics of religion, or the complete removal of religious symbols from public institutions. As a philosophy, secularism seeks to interpret life based on principles derived solely from the material world, without recourse to religion. It shifts the focus from religion towards "temporal" a ...
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Separation Of Church And State In Australia
The Constitution of Australia prevents the Commonwealth from establishing any religion or requiring a religious test for any office:— : Ch 5 § 116 ''The Commonwealth shall not make any law for establishing any religion, or for imposing any religious observance, or for prohibiting the free exercise of any religion, and no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the Commonwealth.'' The language is derived from the United States' constitution, but has been altered. Following the usual practice of the High Court, it has been interpreted far more narrowly than the equivalent US sections and no law has ever been struck down for contravening the section. Today, the Commonwealth Government provides broad-based funding to religious schools and also funds school chaplains for public and private schools. All Australian parliaments are opened with a Christian prayer, and the preamble to the Australian Constitution refers to a "humbl relanceon ...
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Phillip Adams (writer)
Phillip Andrew Hedley Adams , (born 12 July 1939) is an Australian humanist, social commentator, broadcaster, public intellectual and farmer. He hosts ''Late Night Live'', an Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) program on Radio National four nights a week. He also writes a weekly column for ''The Weekend Australian''. Adams has had careers in advertising and film production and has served on many non-profit boards including Wikileaks, Greenpeace Australia, Ausflag, Care Australia, Film Victoria, National Museum of Australia, both the Adelaide and Brisbane festivals of ideas, the Montsalvat Arts Society and the Don Dunstan Foundation. Adams has been appointed both a member and subsequently an officer of the Order of Australia; and he has received numerous awards including six honorary doctorates from Australian universities; Republican of the Year 2005; the Senior ANZAC Fellowship; the Australian Humanist of the Year, the Golden Lion at Cannes; the Longford Award; a Walk ...
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Van Badham
Vanessa "Van" Badham (born 1974) is an Australian writer and activist. A playwright and novelist, she writes dramas and comedies. She is a regular columnist for the '' Guardian Australia'' website. Early life Badham was born in Sydney in 1974. Her parents worked in the New South Wales gaming and track industry, with her father eventually working as a manager in the registered club industry. She studied creative writing and performance at the University of Wollongong, graduating with Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Creative Arts (Honours) degrees. At university, Badham won the Philip Larkin Poetry Prize in 1997, and the Des Davis Drama Prize and Comedy Prize in 2000. In 2001, she went on an exchange with the University of Sheffield in the UK to study English literature. At the University of Wollongong, she was drawn into involvement with student politics and left-wing activism, and she was elected editor of the Student Representative Council newspaper, '' Tertangala''. She work ...
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Julian Burnside
Julian William Kennedy Burnside (born 9 June 1949) is an Australian barrister, human rights and refugee advocate, and author. He practises principally in commercial litigation, trade practices and administrative law. He is known for his staunch opposition to the mandatory detention of asylum seekers, and has provided legal counsel in a wide variety of high-profile cases. He was made an Officer of the Order of Australia in 2009, "for service as a human rights advocate, particularly for refugees and asylum seekers, to the arts as a patron and fundraiser, and to the law." He unsuccessfully stood for the Division of Kooyong at the 2019 federal election as an Australian Greens candidate, but achieved the highest vote for the Greens in the seat at a federal election and allowed the party to enter into the two-party preferred vote. Early life Burnside was born in Melbourne, Victoria to Kennedy Byron Burnside and Olwen Lloyd Banks. His father was a prominent surgeon and his grandmoth ...
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Jane Caro
Catherine Jane Caro (born 24 June 1957) is a feminist social commentator, writer and lecturer based in Australia. Early life and education Caro was born in London in 1957 and emigrated to Australia with her parents as a five-year-old in 1963. She attended Macquarie University, where she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts with a major in English literature in 1977. Working life Caro started her career in marketing, however soon moved into advertising. Caro has appeared on Channel Seven's ''Sunrise'', ABC television's ''Q&A'' and as a regular panellist on ''The Gruen Transfer''. Caro has worked in the advertising industry and lectures in advertising at the School of Humanities and Communication Arts at University of Western Sydney. Caro was a speaker at the 2014 Festival of Dangerous Ideas. She is on the boards of the NSW Public Education Foundation and Bell Shakespeare, and is an ambassador for the National Secular Lobby. In Australia, Caro is represented by Wall Media m ...
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Fiona Patten
Fiona Heather Patten (born May 1964) is a former Australian politician. She is the leader of the Reason Party and was a member of the Victorian Legislative Council between 2014 and 2022, representing the Northern Metropolitan Region until she lost her seat at the 2022 state election. Patten established the Australian Sex Party in 2009 to focus on personal freedoms after deep frustration with stagnation on censorship, freedom, Marriage Equality and drug law reform. On 22 August 2017, it was announced that the Australian Sex Party would be changing its name to the Reason Party. Before entering politics, Patten was the CEO of Australia's national adult industry association, Eros Association. She championed sexual rights and health movements for more than 20 years, particularly on HIV/AIDS, after initially starting out as a small businesses owner with her own fashion label. During her time as a Victorian MP, Patten has been credited for playing pivotal roles in achieving social ...
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Chris Schacht
Christopher Cleland Schacht (born 6 December 1946) is a former Australian politician and member of the South Australian branch of the Australian Labor Party (ALP). He was born in Melbourne and educated at the University of Adelaide and Wattle Park Teachers College. Career Schacht's political career started as a state party official in 1969 during the Don Dunstan era. In 1987, he entered Federal Parliament as a Labor Party Senator for South Australia. He was Minister for Science and Small Business and Minister assisting the Prime Minister for Science in the Keating Labor Government from March 1993 to March 1994 and then Minister for Small Business, Customs and Construction until Labor's defeat at the 1996 election. He left the parliament in June 2002 after 15 years as a Senator and 33 years in Australian politics. Post-parliamentary career In 2006, Senator Robert Ray said of Schacht's "long-winded critiques" of factionalism within the Labor party that "no-one practised f ...
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Paul Willis (science Communicator)
Paul M. A. Willis is an Australian palaeontologist, science communicator and former Director of the Royal Institution of Australia (RiAus). Career Willis studied zoology and geology at University of Sydney and went on to complete a PhD in palaeontology at the University of New South Wales. He has been a resident palaeontologist on ten Antarctic expeditions and has written or co-authored eight books on dinosaurs, rocks and fossils. While Willis found his first fossil when he was six, the earliest part of his collection was a small echinoid collected by his parents on their honeymoon. Willis completed a BSc at Sydney University in zoology and geology before conducting a PhD at the University of New South Wales. His Doctoral thesis was on The Phylogenetic Systematics of Australasian Crocodilians. Willis's doctoral studies resulted in the erection of several new taxa including the subfamily Mekosuchinae, and the genera ''Baru'', ''Kambara,'' ''Australosuchus'', ''Trilophosuchus'' a ...
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Secular Party Of Australia
The Secular Party of Australia is a minor Australian political party, founded in January 2006 and registered as a federal political party in 2010.History of Secular Party
It aims to promote ethical principles and the separation of church and state in Australia. In early 2022 it merged with other parties to become the .


History

The Secular Party was f ...
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Secular State
A secular state is an idea pertaining to secularity, whereby a State (polity), state is or purports to be officially neutral in matters of religion, supporting neither religion nor irreligion. A secular state claims to treat all its citizens equally regardless of religion, and claims to avoid preferential treatment for a citizen based on their religious beliefs, affiliation or lack of either over those with other profiles. Although secular states have no state religion, the absence of an established state religion does not mean that a state is completely secular or egalitarian. For example, some states that describe themselves as secular have Religion in national symbols, religious references in their national anthems and flags, or laws that benefit one religion or another. Origin and practice Secularity can be established at a state's creation (e.g., the Soviet Union, the United States) or by it later secularization, secularizing (e.g., France or Nepal). Movements for ''laï ...
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Secularism
Secularism is the principle of seeking to conduct human affairs based on Secularity, secular, Naturalism (philosophy), naturalistic considerations. Secularism is most commonly defined as the Separation of church and state, separation of religion from civil affairs and the state, and may be broadened to a similar position seeking to remove or to minimize the role of religion in any public sphere. The term "secularism" has a broad range of meanings, and in the most schematic, may encapsulate any stance that promotes the secular in any given context. It may connote anti-clericalism, atheism, Naturalism (philosophy), naturalism, Nonsectarian, non-sectarianism, Neutrality (philosophy), neutrality on topics of religion, or the complete removal of religious symbols from public institutions. As a philosophy, secularism seeks to interpret life based on principles derived solely from the material world, without recourse to religion. It shifts the focus from religion towards "temporal" a ...
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