National Secular Lobby

A US-based extremism research group has again listed the Australian Christian Lobby and FamilyVoice Australia among the organisations it tracks for anti-LGBTQIA+ activism. The Global Project Against Hate and Extremism's updated Australia report, its first since 2022, names the two religious lobby groups alongside Binary Australia and LGB Alliance Australia, saying they continue to campaign against LGBTQ+ rights, particularly transgender equality. Most of the report deals with One Nation's electoral gains and neo-Nazi networks that have kept organising despite this year's bans. The authors say violence is not their only test for inclusion. Both the ACL and FamilyVoice lobby MPs directly, and recently co-hosted Victorian upper house candidate forums with MPs from several parties ahead of the state election. #auspol https://www.outinperth.com/new-gpahe-report-examines-far-right-networks-and-anti-lgbtqia-activism-in-australia/

The Christian Brothers says it's broke and cannot pay the survivors its abuse created. The documents say otherwise. Land titles obtained by the Guardian show it has housed convicted child sex offenders on its own property — including one who preyed on orphans, and one kept in schools for almost thirty years after officials were first warned. Survivors have gone to the Victorian Supreme Court to pursue Edmund Rice Education Australia instead: the entity that took the order's property for a dollar a title and now reports net assets of $2.3 billion. And in the Saturday Paper, Judy Courtin, a lawyer for survivors, who was in the room when the order's lawyers gave her firm one day's notice, traces the architecture back to February 2013, when EREA was incorporated one month after the Royal Commission was announced, its council appointed by the Christian Brothers' own Provincial. Her conclusion is the sentence to remember: if EREA looks, acts, sounds and smells like the Christian Brothers, it is the Christian Brothers, and the Christian Brothers must pay. Welcome to the 11 July 2026 edition of the NSL Weekend Wrap, your weekly round-up of news and views on Australian #secular issues! #auspol #secularismhttps://www.nsl.org.au/columns/weekend-wrap-for-11-july-2026/

Parliaments are still in winter recess, but the week produced something rarer than a bill: a retreat. After weeks of public pressure and court action, Edmund Rice Education Australia — the entity gifted hundreds of millions of dollars in Christian Brothers property for $1 a time — agreed on Friday to compensate abuse survivors "in full", assume liability for current and future claims, and consent to replacing the Christian Brothers as defendant. The order had pleaded poverty; the assets were placed beyond survivors' reach; the survivors sued, and the entity folded. As their lawyers put it, transferring wealth away does not extinguish a legal or moral obligation. Welcome to the 25 July 2026 edition of the NSL Weekend Wrap, your weekly round-up of news and views on Australian #secular issues! #auspol #secularismhttps://www.nsl.org.au/columns/weekend-wrap-for-25-july-2026/

The Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion has asked the national charities regulator to consider barring hate preachers, people who spread bigotry and serious criminals from running registered charities — and the response has put religious privilege in the frame. ACNC chief Susan Woodward says the same standards should apply to all charities: religious charities currently enjoy extra exemptions, and the ACNC is wholly barred from removing the 'responsible person' of a religious charity, even for breaching the Racial Discrimination Act. She wants that power broadened. The sector's peak body, the Community Council for Australia, backs standardising the rules but warns against blanket bans on people with past convictions. Labor's charities minister Andrew Leigh was asked to respond. #auspol https://cathnews.com/2026/08/11/call-to-ban-hate-preachers-and-criminals-from-running-charities/