'Youth' spat paves way for Newington College's co-ed plans
Turning an elite private boys' school co-educational remains on foot after a court agreed a word written in a 150-year-old document was gender-neutral.
Newington College in Sydney 's inner west announced its intention to shift to co-education across its kindergarten-to-year 12 program in late 2023.
The school, which charges fees of up to $42,200 a year, has exclusively taught boys since it was founded in 1863.
While a group of parents launched street protests in January 2024, some backed a legal attack in the NSW Supreme Court.
That lawsuit hit a major defeat on Wednesday with Justice Guy Parker ruling that the school's 152-year-old trust deed did not prevent girls from being admitted.
'The object of such school shall be to provide an efficient course of education for youth,' the trust deed reads.
The parents argued that the word 'youth' in this document, while ambiguous, referred solely to boys because of circumstances at the time.
This stopped girls from being enrolled on the school's Stanmore land which it had acquired in 1873 months after the deed was finalised.
The school's council, on the other hand, said the term was gender-neutral.
Justice Parker agreed.
While the original Newington School was boys-only, and the church and government at the time had only considered single-sex schools, this did not mean the term 'youth' excluded girls, he said.
'I have concluded that the word 'youth' in the 1873 Trust Deed was used in a gender-neutral sense, and does not mandate male-only enrolment at the College,' he wrote in his judgment.
'The claim for a declaration to the contrary ... fails and must be dismissed.'
'Rich history' and 'next era'
Newington's principal welcomed the court's decision.
'We have been steadfast in our position throughout these proceedings and we remain excited to build on our rich history and traditions by taking Newington into our next era,' Michael Parker wrote in a letter sent to the school's community.
'We look forward now to uniting around our future vision for Newington College as a respected, modern and dynamic school for boys, girls, young men and young women from next year and into the future.'
The court case may not be over yet, however.
Justice Parker will later hear whether the parents will press claims that a male-only limitation applies to other property held by the school's council, including later-acquired lands.
Newington's co-ed plans come as the NSW government adjusts public school boundaries to ensure all students have guaranteed access to a co-educational school by 2027.
More than 150,000 girls and more than 130,000 boys attend single-sex schools across Australia, according to a 2023 Catholic schools discussion paper.
About five-in-six of those students are in non-government schools, like Newington.
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News.com.au
9 hours ago
- News.com.au
Man jailed for 21 years over sexual abuse of two daughters
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ABC News
a day ago
- ABC News
Is Trump the antichrist? — and other hard questions Christians should be asking - ABC Religion & Ethics
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It is a laying bare of the world so as to see it for what it really is underneath the distractions of celebrity, wealth or power. And one of the things unveiled, at least in the apocalypses in the Bible, is evil. What does the Bible say about evil? In the New Testament, evil is depicted in a variety of ways. The apostle Paul uses language of sin and its power to describe something that holds humans in its grip. Other writers refer to Satan or the Devil, a supernatural being usually thought of as a rebellious fallen angel who now acts against God and accuses God's people. But what about human evil? In the later apocalyptic texts of the New Testament, evil is described as manifest in human beings who are described as 'antichrist' or imaginatively depicted as a monstrous beast whose number is '666'. Both of these images — antichrist and 666 — have captured popular imagination and been (mis)applied to numerous figures throughout history. Barack Obama, the Pope, the President of the United Nations, Saddam Hussein and the prophet Muhammad have all been labelled as 'Antichrists' or bearers of the beastly 666. Is such a thing justifiable by thinking Christians? Perhaps. The antichrist appears in the Johannine epistles as a figure who opposes Jesus. He is literally someone who is anti-Christ. Notably, there are many of these: people who deny that Jesus is the Messiah and who oppose him and his followers. Such people are depicted as liars but compelling enough to deceive the world with their lies (see 1 John 2:22, 4:5; 2 John 7). Closely related to anti-Christs are pseudo-Christs or false Messiahs (Matthew 24:24). Deception is likewise their dominant trait, insofar as they lead Christians astray with signs and wonders (Mark 13:22). Implicit in their designation is the idea that they present themselves as Christ-like figures, messianic leaders and saviours who want people to follow them rather than Jesus — Which is to say, they set themselves up in imitation of, and competition with, Jesus Christ. For the author of the Book of Revelation, Nero is the manifestation of evil for Christians living in the Roman Empire in the first century CE. (belterz / E+ / Getty Images) The fullest iteration of an antichrist figure comes in the form of a multi-headed beast in Revelation 13. This figure has become monstrous and more than human. It has seven heads with ten horns and seven crowns, symbolising his power. Like Frankenstein's creation, he is hybrid in form, compiled from powerful and fast animals — leopard, bear and lion. And like the Lamb image for Jesus in Revelation, this beast has survived a mortal wound and yet is alive and healed. 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By any measure, policies that risk life, oppress the most vulnerable and do not meet basic standards of justice and due process are not in keeping with biblical values — values that inform the US judicial system, albeit i mperfectly. Vice-President JD Vance also tried to redefine Christian love, justifying mass deportation on the grounds that the Catholic idea of ordo amoris — the proper ordering of loves — sets priorities focused on family, local community and nation before others. Pope Leo XIV, at the time a cardinal, shared an article on Twitter rebutting Vance and wrote, 'JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn't ask us to rank our love for others.' Pope Francis likewise wrote that Vance's attitude did not reflect the fullness of biblical teaching on love. Humans are fallible and no one of us will perfectly embody Christian teachings. But what we are witnessing in the United States is something more sinister than ordinary Christian fallibility. The Trump-Vance government claims to be a defender of Christianity and free speech — even presenting a bill to 'eradicate anti-Christian bias' — while also arresting Christians for prayerful protest in the Capital. It appears that only regime-supporting Christians are worthy of freedom, revealing that the so-called defence of Christianity is a cover for a program of lies, injustice, fear-mongering, control and white nationalism packaged as true Christianity. What about Australia? What does any of this mean for our country? The recent federal election delivered a resounding affirmation of the political centre. Trump-style politics did not play well for those who tried them. But that does not mean we should not be alert to strands of Christian nationalism here. In her book Jesus and John Wayne , historian Kristen Kobes Du Mez writes that evangelical Christian support for Trump was: the culmination of evangelicals' embrace of militant masculinity, an ideology that enshrines patriarchal authority and condones the callous display of power, at home and abroad. Constantine Campbell puts it slightly differently in his book Jesus v. Evangelicals : 'The evangelical movement must be refashioned in Jesus' image, rather than cast Jesus in its image.' For him, Christ-like qualities of humility, peace-making, love and mercy have been replaced by arrogance, fortune building, manipulation, judgement and seeking after political power in much American Christianity. Thankfully, the majority of Australian Christians have no intention of going down the American path of Christian nationalism. We must be vigilant and work hard to keep it that way. When power, wealth, violence, control, patriarchy or divisiveness become the main game of any Christian movement, we need to ask hard questions about whether that truly reflects the Jesus of the gospels or what we are seeing might really be evil, in apparently Christian guise. Robyn Whitaker is Associate Professor of New Testament at the University of Divinity, founding Director of The Wesley Centre for Theology, Ethics, and Public Policy and author of Even the Devil Quotes Scripture.
West Australian
2 days ago
- West Australian
Film follows fight to heal Country from poison legacy
Traditional Owners call this place 'poison Country'. Spanning more than 46,000 hectares in Western Australia's Pilbara region, the Wittenoom Asbestos Management Area is the largest contaminated area in the southern hemisphere, blanketed in deadly asbestos. The contamination prevents Banjima Traditional Owners from accessing these thousands of hectares of Country. Yaara Bou Melhem was initially planning a film about the thousands of abandoned mines across Australia. But when she met the late Maitland Parker, a Banjima Elder, who spent his life campaigning to heal this Country, she knew the film had to be about Wittenoom. Mr Parker was battling mesothelioma, an aggressive cancer caused by asbestos exposure. "His story was going to be one of many in the film, but when you're confronted with how shocking Wittenoom is, the very clear social injustice meted out against him and his community, it was just too compelling for it to be just a small part of a larger film," Ms Melhem told AAP. Mining occurred at Wittenoom until the 1960s, and three million tonnes of tailings containing asbestos were left behind. Since then, asbestos fibres have been dispersed throughout the area by wind and water erosion, a West Australian government website says. Ms Melham said if nothing is done to remediate the asbestos waste, it will continue to spread for hundreds of years. She said Wittenoom is one of the most egregious examples of environmental, health and community impacts of legacy mine sites, and the film Yurlu/Country explores this. "There isn't a Banjima family that has not been touched by Wittenoom and his story represents that whole, and I think that's why [Mr Parker] really wanted to tell that story on behalf of his community," Ms Melhem said. Mr Parker was a co-writer and executive producer on Yurlu / Country, which follows his final year, and his campaign to heal Country. "He gave us permission to use his name, voice, image, even after his passing because he felt like his story had some power, and his name had power and he wanted us to be able to use it to advocate for Banjima and for the clean up of his Country," Ms Melhem said. "That's a responsibility we're very aware of and hoping we do his story justice." Ms Melhem said she hopes Wittenoom, which has long been "out of sight and out of mind" is brought into full view through the film, and Mr Parker's wishes for a clean up can be fulfilled. "What we're hoping is that people don't walk away from this film feeling like this is an intractable issue that can't be changed - we know it can be changed," she said. Yurlu/Country will have its world premiere on Saturday at Sydney Film Festival, then make its international debut at Doc Edge Festival in New Zealand. Sydney Film Festival begins on Wednesday and will run until June 15.
