I don't want my taxes going to some religious group, or that group to have a hand in drafting legislation to control my behaviour, thank you very much. I thought Australia was meant to be a liberal democracy.
The positive thing is, compared to the US, Hillsong Church _is_ the religious-right powerbase in it's entirety (plus it's branch offices like Paradise Community Church in Adelaide, thankyou Guy Sebastian). At the end of the day, fundamentalist Christianity is and always will be an absolute minority in Australia. These groups love to boast about the numbers of young people they have joining, but I know from first-hand experience that most of the kids joining the church at 16 have quit (sustaining major emotional injuries) by the time they're 23.
Given enough government support, could you not see it growing and expanding and changing the sociopolitical landscape of Australia to be more like the US, naturally advantaging the Right?
A whole lot of churches get money to operate support programmes, you know.
The Family and Community Services Website lists the Uniting Church, Jewish Care, the Salvation Army, etc. as recipients:
http://www.facs.gov.au/welfarereform/awt/programmesAndServices/personalSupportProgramme/providers/default.shtml
Do you want them all not to get money, or just Hillsong?
Though do they get quite as much money as those whose political agenda coincides with the Liberal Party's strategic planning and/or the Howard cabinet's social-conservative cultural bias? (Note that the Salvation Army also falls into this category.)
As for religious organisations getting less state funding, I'm all for that. Religion should be a personal matter, not a matter for the state.
an other fundamentalist state to add to the axis of evil list. the next target to diffuse their regression principles is school.
They are given money by the australian government for civic programs they run. They aren't church related programs. That money goes into things like feeding homeless people ect. Read about it on their websight, www.hillsong.com
Good for them. Ora et Labora I say. Or was that Live and Let Die ? *woot* insert clichee here *woot* Sorry, only gallows humour left on this topic :\