When the Howard government created the National School Chaplaincy Program in 2006, it was created to fill a significant gap in the services available to school students. John Howard observed that chaplains would be "expected to provide pastoral care and spiritual guidance and support, comfort, advice in family breakdown situations (and) support for students grief-stricken by the loss of friends in tragic accidents, or the loss of family members."

Over the years I have heard from parents, principals, teachers, and students, who have all highlighted to me the value of the program. They've all recounted how, in their own experiences, the program has helped so many students deal with the pressures that life throws at them, and helped our wonderful teachers in their role in caring for our kids.

I spoke recently with a young woman who shared her story. She said her school life was dominated by what house her family were being evicted from for not paying rent, missing days of school because they couldn't afford the petrol to get there, looking after her younger sibling and working a lot, in the hope she could use the money to put food on the table or pay the rent. She attended a government school and her family were not of faith. But with tears in her eyes, she shared with me that the support she received from the chaplain really was the difference between finishing school and not, the difference between going down the path that she felt was most likely for her at that time, stuck in the cycle of drug dependence, and the life she leads now. She said there is every chance she could have become part of the heartbreaking statistic that is teen suicide without her school chaplain.

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This extra support is readily available in faith-based schools, and many parents choose a faith-based education not necessarily because they personally follow a particular faith, but because they are drawn to the pastoral and spiritual care which these schools offer. So the question for the ACT Labor/Greens government is: why should students in ACT government schools be denied similar types of pastoral care?

Our society recognises the value of chaplains, without compromising a diverse and pluralistic society, as evidenced by the fact we have chaplains here in Canberra in the Australian Defence Force, in ACT Policing, in ACT Fire and Rescue, and at our public hospitals. Why does the ACT government seek to deny them to our students?

School communities right around the country have embraced the school chaplains program since its introduction. Schools voluntarily choose to receive funding to hire a part-time chaplain to provide support to their students, and many schools and P&C associations conduct additional fundraising to enable their chaplains to spend more time in their school communities. Those communities, including here in Canberra, clearly see value in the program which the ACT government now seeks to deny them through their decision to cancel the Commonwealth government-funded National School Chaplaincy Program. In doing so, they are denying a valuable form of support to schools which comes at no cost to the ACT government, and also sending a message to people of faith that public schools are not for them.

Chaplains are already prohibited from evangelising or proselytising. Chaplains are already required to be qualified youth workers. And so any argument the Labor/Greens government tries to put forth that this will in any way improve outcomes for students should be seen as nonsense.

Likewise, the claim that the ACT Education Act requires ACT schools be secular and therefore they cannot have chaplains is equally as ridiculous. Secularism does not, nor should it, prohibit people who provide vital pastoral support to school communities, merely because their chief motivation for doing so is rooted in their faith. And, what's more, the act also requires schools to recognise the religious needs of students, and if a student's family requests religious instruction, then the school must provide that.

Finally, the argument that it is counsellors versus chaplains is flawed. The ACT government should properly fund school counsellors in addition to the chaplaincy program.

The National School Chaplaincy Program has proven its value over time. It is voluntary, and it comes at no cost to the ACT government. Sticking with the decision to cancel it will make our public schools worse off and will be another message to people of faith that this Labor/Greens government holds them in contempt.