For naturalman or others who know: What’s with the 19 million in federal funding?
Australia provides limited Federal funding to private schools - under our Constitution state schools/government schools (what Americans call public schools) receive most of their funding from state governments, but the Federal government is permitted to (though not required to) direct funding as well and can do so to private or government schools.
Exactly how much funding receives is based on some complex formulas but in simple terms, it’s mostly based on the socio-economic status of the students - so low fee private schools catering to kids from poorer backgrounds receive significant government funding, while high fee private schools catering to kids from richer backgrounds receive less. Virtually all private schools receive less money than government schools - on average, it works out to private schools getting half the funding per child a state school gets.
In a sense, it’s a pseudo-voucher system and it’s been in operation for over fifty years now.
While Australia’s constitution does contain similar language on religion and church/state issues to the US constitution (that part was specifically based on the US constitution in fact), our High Court has ruled that this type of funding is constitutional provided it’s only spent on secular activities related to education - even a religious school is still going to teach secular subjects like mathematics, etc.
Islamic schools are as entitled to the money as private schools of any other religion or secular private schools - as long as they follow the rules concerning such money. The schools in this case didn’t follow those rules - in particular funding intended for education was funnelled off to non-educational activities and a non-educational body.
The system is, in my view, overall a good system. It creates a high level of school choice (a third of Australian children attend private schools) and reduces the likelihood of a government monopoly on schools - meaning state schools have to have decent standards or it becomes obvious if they don’t. It improves the quality of public schooling, creates school choice, and also saves taxpayer money in the end (because every child who goes to a private school costs the taxpayer less than if they were in a government school).