Back in March, I said that I was waiting on the arrival of the 2021 Census data to confirm some predictions I had made about religion in Clarence and Australia more broadly: that the combination of people expressing no religion or not adequately answering the question¹ would reach a majority in Clarence and just barely miss in the rest of the country. As I so like to be, I was right. Blame young people if you want, it is our fault. We’re not sorry, to be clear.

It didn’t matter on the night; as I’d been writing my deputation, an agenda brief happened, feedback was given, and the motion had somewhat changed in nature by the time it was moved at quarter past nine on the Monday. I don’t really blame anyone for this, I agree that the original motion probably didn’t have the legs to pass in the old council. Moving the Acknowledgement of Country up the order was a great and obviously correct move, but a cursory look over workshop sections of the intervening minutes tells me that that workshop on alternatives to the council prayer never eventuated. Someone can correct me if I’m wrong there, but we have this new motion in front of us, so it seems rather moot now.

The convictions I had in March remain. I’d like to thank those who provided a history of the council prayer and corrected my misconception of the denominational quality thereof. Now admittedly, my worldview is biased by the way I was brought up, but whether it is a generic prayer or not, I think we would all agree that in this field appearances are very important.

And again, as I said in March, it doesn’t matter. As a secular body in a secular and increasingly irreligious society, no level of government in Australia should be opening their meetings with a religious observance of any kind. This is not to say you should not observe, if you so feel, in your own time, but religion and politics are like oil and water, to be kept well away from each other.

The complaints I heard that night: “We have processes for this, this is policy on the run, what are the Christians supposed to do,” and all the while the processes don’t visibly seem to be turning over, and the Christians continue to be unoppressed, though I’d thought we weren’t bringing them into it. The time was right for this simple change, this removal of one insignificant five-word line from the meeting procedures, a watered-down milquetoast plea to no one in particular, eight months ago, and eight years ago, and many years ago besides, and remains right now. Assuming it has not again changed out from under me, I wholeheartedly commend the motion to council. For the record, a copy of the text of this deputation and some supplementary material was forwarded to councillors at 7pm on Saturday.