The relationship between religion and the Howard Government
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While the idea of reading Liberal Party policy documents and speeches by John Howard was frightening, cultural studies PhD candidate Holly Randell-Moon persevered with her choice of topic after some valuable advice from her supervisor.
Randell-Moon, who is examining the relationship between religion and politics under the Howard Government, initially thought she should change her topic to something more enjoyable such as an analysis of the popular television show Desperate Housewives. "Fortunately, I have a sensible supervisor (Dr Anthony Lambert) who pointed out that it would be unwise to start a thesis about a show of which I had at that point only seen three episodes," says Randell-Moon.
Liberal Party as a 'Broad Church'
Randell-Moon is principally looking at the Prime Minister's notion of the Liberal Party as a 'Broad Church'.
"This metaphor attempts to express how the Party can accommodate diversity and unity through an underlying set of common values, transposed by John Howard through a religious metaphor of the church," says Randell-Moon. "I take this metaphor to be an important symbolic description of the way religion has come to be utilised and spoken about by the Howard Government in an otherwise 'secular' Australian politics.
"To this end, my thesis explores the idea of the 'Broad Church' at a rhetorical level, how it is used to describe national identity and Australian values, as well as at legislative level, how policy may be influenced by religious values and what this may mean."
Separation between Church and State
While there is much said about the separation between Church and State during a literature review on some of the legal and constitutional definitions of secularism and religious freedom, Randell-Moon found an almost total consensus that there is no legal separation in Australia.
"A Government report from 2000 called Conviction with Compassion: A Report on Freedom of Religion and Belief, acknowledges this and the limitations in existing legal protections for religious belief, but nevertheless recommended against legal reform," says Randell-Moon. "This makes it interesting when both the Federal Treasurer Peter Costello and the Prime Minister invoke Australia's constitutional separation of church and state to criticise sections of the Islamic community for failing integrate into 'secular' Australian culture."
Ultimate aims
By the end of her thesis Randell-Moon hopes to answer questions such as: who belongs to the Howard Government's 'Broad Church' and who is excluded and who benefits and who is disadvantaged by the integration of particular kinds of religious beliefs in government policy?
"Hopefully my thesis will show how the construction and use of the metaphor a 'Broad Church' is a racialised one," says Randell-Moon. "That its use is grounded in representations of Australianness as implicitly Anglo-Celtic and white through the ways in which Christianity is framed as a legitimate marker of national identity."
For further information contact Holly Randell-Moon
holly.randell-moon@scmp.mq.edu.au or to explore study and research opportunities in the Department of Critical and Cultural Studies visit www.ccs.mq.edu.au/