Australia Keeps Church-State Status Quo

Last week the Australian Senate, by a vote of 50-7 rejected a bill that would have changed church-state relations in the country. The proposal by Democrat leader Lyn Allison would have ended parliamentary prayer, ended preferential tax treatment for religious groups and removed religious references from oaths required of public officials. Catholic World News, reporting on the development, quotes Prime Minister John Howard who agreed with the Senate's rejection of the bill, as saying: "What the separation of church and state means in this country is that there is no established church as the official state religion. It doesn't mean that we abandon our Judeo-Christian heritage."