The NSW Opposition’s commitment to rolling back the Government’s schools Ethics course was welcome news for students and voters in NSW, Presbyterian Youth General Manager, Murray Norman, said today.

Mr Norman, who heads up the arm of the Presbyterian Church of Australia’s organisation responsible for Special Religious Education (SRE), said the Opposition appeared to be listening to the electorate across the whole of NSW.

“Parents and community leaders across the State are very concerned that some Government ministers re promoting a radical ethics course for a few vocal parents,” he said. “The marginalisation of SRE teaching in preference for an ethics course where the students make up their own mind on what is right and wrong is an issue of substance to thousands of people.”

Mr Norman said in the event of an Opposition election win, the community would at least have an opportunity to discuss how ethics could be integrated into the curriculum for all students.  At present the proposal only includes a handful of students whose parents decided to prevent their children from receiving SRE.

“Obviously the Opposition has understood that rolling out the ethics course in its present configuration is beyond the resources of the St James Ethics Centre,” Mr Norman said.  “If the Department of Education became involved in supporting this ethics course it would be manifestly unfair and discriminatory.

“The NSW Opposition is to be congratulated on understanding it is a fallacy to imagine that this issue is just of interest to Christian churches.

“NSW is a multicultural society and the ethics course as proposed by the Government was contemptuous of people of faith, arguing that children, without their parent’s guidance or faith communities, arrived at the best solutions by themselves.”