-Caveat Lector- >From the melbourne Sunday Age. http://www.theage.com.au/news/20001119/A60108-2000Nov18.html Revealed: Santamaria's schools scam CRUSADE OR CONSPIRACY By PAUL HEINRICHS Sunday 19 November 2000 R E L A T E D The man behind Labor's darkest hour The power and the glory Startling evidence has emerged that the late B.A. Santamaria, the controversial lay Catholic powerbroker, tried to siphon off 10 per cent of Victoria's state aid to Catholic schools to support his right-wing National Civic Council. The plan - which Santamaria himself describes as "pretty desperate" - is proposed in an astonishing 1967 letter from Santamaria to Bishop Bernard Stewart, Bishop of Bendigo from 1950 to 1979, that has turned up in the church's Bendigo archives. If it had worked out, the scheme would have diverted about $180,000 a year for six years from State Government per capita grants to non-government schools into a capital fund for the National Civic Council, the successor to Santamaria's Movement. After six years, the $1 million or more the fund would contain would generate about $70,000 a year to help cover much of the salary and other costs of the council's 50 staff around Australia. "To give this proposal legal form," Santamaria wrote, "I would suggest that the Victorian dioceses would enter into a contract to hire Catholic Adult Education Association Ltd (the incorporated name of the Movement) as `consultants' on education matters for the period of six years at such a commission." But there is no record that the Santamaria plan was accepted by the late Bishop Stewart, or other bishops, and put into effect. The letter has emerged from the research by a Catholic priest in the Redemptorist order, Father Bruce Duncan, for a massive new book, Crusade or Conspiracy? Catholics and the Anti-Communist Struggle in Australia, to be published in February by the University of New South Wales Press. Some of the information about the plan is also contained in a chapter of another book, Santamaria, The Politics of Fear, a series of critical reflections edited by journalist Paul Ormonde and published last week by Spectrum Press. The chapter's writer, Emeritus Professor James Griffin, formerly of the University of Papua New Guinea, and a long-time Santamaria opponent, is trenchantly critical of the plan. "Leaving aside that such a diversion of public moneys was unethical, perhaps even criminal conspiracy by deceit, the irresponsibility towards the Catholic Church and its schools is astonishing," he wrote. "Had the spokesmen for the anti-state aid DOGS (Defence of Government Schools) gained information about this, there could have been a major setback for state aid for which Catholics had agitated for a century. "It was serious enough that some Catholic schools were suspected of using state grants for religious icons (for example, a grotto to the Blessed Virgin of Lourdes) rather than exclusively for the secular purposes for which state aid was given. "Fortunately even the `Movement' bishops seem not to have been so naive as to cooperate in such misappropriation." The seven-page letter, with a covering note signed "Bob", amounts to an extraordinary plea to the church to find a way of supporting and improving the calibre of the staff of the NCC (Santamaria still calls it the Movement in the letter). The Movement, Santamaria's controversial and secretive agency to fight communism and communist influence in the trade unions, became central to the 1955 Split which helped keep the ALP out of power for another 17 years. But the church was supposed to have cut its ties with the Movement by order of the Vatican in 1957. The NCC was its successor, and the Democratic Labor Party, which emerged from the Split, became the political and parliamentary vehicle for Santamaria's goals. The undated handwritten covering note says: "My Lord, The enclosed will almost certainly seem outlandish to you and your colleagues. It is, however, the fruit of much reflection. I have discussed it fully with Michael Chamberlin and I believe that he agrees with what I have written, Sincerely, Bob. P.S. The contents are, of course, open to all the Victorian bishops." The letter was written at the time of an historic deal struck by Santamaria and Sir Michael Chamberlin, prominent in the Knights of the Southern Cross Catholic business group, with the Victorian Premier, Sir Henry Bolte, to obtain state aid for the Catholic and independent school system. As Santamaria himself explains in his writings, in 1967 he took advantage of an unusual opportunity because Sir Henry Bolte's Liberal government was threatened with the prospect of being forced into coalition with the Country Party. Faced with seeing DLP preferences diverted to the Country Party, Sir Henry agreed to give per capita state aid to pupils in all non-government schools ($20 for secondary students, $10 for primary), a deal sealed at the home of Sir Michael Chamberlin, former general manager of the National Trustees. Before this, the only state aid had been Federal Government help with science blocks, but the Bolte deal established the principle of per capita funding, adopted by the federal Liberal government in 1969. In his letter, Santamaria argues that the state aid was a "totally unexpected windfall" that would not have been achieved "if there had not been an agency like the Movement". He says the death of Archbishop Daniel Mannix in 1963 meant lost support of $12,000 a year, and another of his ideas, that the church donate to the Movement the value of land being sold around the archbishop's Kew residence, Raheen, did not eventuate. He concludes: "You can guess, my Lord, that I must be pretty desperate to write like this. Indeed I am. I want the Movement to do an honest job, or not at all." Rather than have it become an ineffective facade, he hinted at its disbanding. "Yet it would be a dreadful pity - for lack of a sum which, compared with other expenditure of the church, is not really so great - to give up a nationwide organisation with 50 full-time men and women who, in addition to the tangible financial gains in the sphere of education, have in some ways changed the course of Australian history." <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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