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How David slayed Goliath twice by Stephen Hagan 20 June 2014
W
e all know the story behind David and Goliath where the nine feet tall Philistine giant Goliath wearing full armor mocked and terrified the Israelites when challenging their best warriors to a duel over forty successive days as opposing armies faced each other on opposite sides of a steep valley. The Israelite teenager David, as the story goes, challenged and defeated Goliath with a slingshot propelled rock that felled him and with ready access to his dislodged sword David’s next actions were swift, decisive and fatal. So whenever the metaphorical ‘little guy’ takes on a public challenge to fight an influential and politically connected individual or corporate entity, the loosely used ‘David and Goliath battle’ is rhetorically constructed for efficiency of words and to maximum effect. Little known father of four Ron Williams from my hometown of Toowoomba has, and will continue to attract headlines of ‘David and Goliath’ proportions to describe his win in the High Court yesterday over his challenge on federal funding of the school chaplaincy program. Ron’s victory, the second in the High Court on chaplaincy funding, will have consequences for the Abbott government’s $245.3 million that’s been allocated to 3700 schools nationwide. Unless State governments pick up the tab of the $72,000 salary paid to each contracted chaplain working
Stephen and Rhonda Hagan with a replica of the sign in question during the filming of their documentary on the case. Image supplied
in public schools at present, the program will cease. Ron’s victory yesterday is made even more remarkable as he has now taken on and defeated both Labor – former Prime Minister Julia Gillard and her Education Minister Peter Garrett - and now Prime Minister Tony Abbott and his Education Minister Christopher Pyne over the constitutionality of their chaplaincy funding on the grounds that it is beyond the executive power of the Commonwealth under s 61 of the Constitution. The High Court ruled that the funding agreement “does not provide material aid to provide for the human wants of students” but rather payment of wages for chaplains to “support the well being” to children. Chief Justice Robert French, Justices Kenneth
Hayne, Susan Crennan, Susan Kiefel, Virginia Bell and Patrick Keane found that “strengthening values, providing pastoral care and enhancing engagement with the broader community” may well be desirable ends, “but seeking to achieve them in the course of the school day does not give the payments which are made the quality of being benefits to students”. When I commenced legal action against the Toowoomba Sports Ground Trust back in 1999 to have the court direct them to remove the offending epitaph E.S. ‘Nigger’ Brown on a public sign conspicuously hanging at the apex of the premier sports stadium in my home town of Toowoomba in south east Queensland, the ‘David and Goliath’ battle analogy was habitually used in headline news
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articles. Little did I know at the time that Ron Williams was a keen follower of my decade long battle to remove the universally derogatory N word from a public sign. Ron told me he followed my case when I lost in the federal court, on appeal to the full bench of the federal court, on seeking leave to appeal to the High Court and finally when I had a positive outcome when I appealed to the Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination at the United Nations in Geneva in 2003. He told me he was also disappointed when Prime Minister John Howard and his Attorney General Darryl Williams didn’t abide by the UN’s ruling for the “State to remove the offending public sign”. Like Ron’s case where bipartisan support to federal funding to the tune of a quarter billion dollars to chaplains in public schools was evident, I too had issues with Labor and the Coalition governments to my case. On 7 December 2000, Greens Senator Bob Brown raised my N word case in Federal Parliament. His motion in the Senate called for the removal by the Toowoomba Sports Ground Trust of the word ‘nigger’ from the E.S. ‘Nigger’ Brown Stand. Bob Brown’s motion was supported by one Green and nine Democrat Senators, but was defeated, with all other parties voting against it. Yesterday’s High Court judgment was celebrated by the Greens but infuriated Labor and the Coalition members. The significance of this story to me is that Ron, a non-Indigenous man, was inspired by my N word campaign to undertake his David and Goliath battle against the might of the federal government, twice, and win.
Ron Williams, outside the High Court, slayed the Commonwealth twice in his David and Goliath legal showdown over school chaplaincy funding. Image The Chronicle
Ron approached me in the refectory at the university I worked at as an academic, when he was a mature aged student, for advice on what he should do about a chaplain teaching his children about Noah and the Ark. When he said he and his like-minded friends wanted to take legal action against Scripture Union Queensland along the same lines as myself with my N Word case I was happy to chat with him. I convinced him he should take up the battle by himself by dropping his friends from any litigation, as it was his children that they were using in their planned court case. I also told him that when the case became public knowledge it would grow exponentially and he alone should be responsible for media responses as well as offering direction to his legal team. Although reluctant at first to drop his friends he did however take my advice that it would be ‘impossible to run the case by consensus of friends with no emotional attachment to the case’. I also told him the journey ahead would be fraught with hurdles of public ridicule by the media in a very religious community of
Toowoomba, as I had experienced in my public case. I told him he needed to have his wife on side as she too would be subject to public vilification. Ron and his wife started to dine out together with Rhonda and I to share our experiences of the constancy of attacks by a motley union of the average working class populace, business and civic leaders, politicians and the KKK. After many coffees at uni and meals at my favourite Indian Restaurant Ron was ready, with the support of his wife, and committed to go all the way with his action against the federally funded chaplaincy program on the grounds that it was unconstitutional. I congratulated Ron on his victory and will catch up with him when the dust has settled and he is free from media commitments. Be ready for a book on this case, as I also advised Ron to chronicle his legal journey so he too could have his extraordinary ‘David and Goliath’ battle published, as I’ve done with my award-winning book The N Word: One Man’s Stand (Magabala Books).
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