Denis Moriarty | Here's a better prayer for Australia Parliament

When the Australian nation came into being in 1900, we were a branch office of the British Empire and an English cultural fiefdom. Back then, diversity meant that we didn't discriminate against Scots and irreligion meant not Church of England. We were proud of our descent from a line of empire-expanding white heroes.

But, as Philip Larkin pointed out, descent is complicated:

They [stuff] you up, your mum and dad.

They may not mean to, but they do.

They fill you with the faults they had.

And add some extra, just for you ...

... which is the Australian constitution in a nutshell.

In government matters, the English bequeathed Australia a full suite of outdated Victorian fumed oak furniture that doesn't fit our modern lifestyle and which we keep tripping over and barking our shins on.

Every day in Parliament, for example, opens with a reading by the Speaker, of the Lord's Prayer (the Anglican version).

That prayer, as prayers go, is comparatively consensual. Yet if parliamentarians took it seriously, it would probably bring about a rash of embarrassed blushes. If members really did, for example, forgive other people's trespasses as they themselves would hope to be forgiven, we wouldn't have had Robodebt. If they actually believed God took close account of everybody's daily bread rations, they'd certainly up the rate of Jobseeker and give some extra money to Foodbank.

But parliamentarians don't take it seriously.

Breaches of the prayer are not grounds for censure by the Speaker. If I was at all religious, I'd be offended that my Lord's name was being taken in vain just to rub a patina of tradition over the secular stratagems of the opposing frontbenches.

The prayer isn't there to promote repentance in party hacks. It's a watermark, a badge of ownership to remind us all that this country was designed around the shibboleths of landowning white men and that non-Anglicans are strictly in this country on sufferance. It's exclusive and exclusionary, the parliamentary equivalent of a Melbourne Club card, and that's a feature, not a bug.

This exclusivity hasn't gone unnoticed. The ACT has abolished its prefatory prayer in favour of a moment of silent reflection. In 2021 Fiona Patten moved a motion in the Victorian parliament to strike out the Lord's Prayer there, and while it didn't get through at the time the then attorney-general, Jaclyn Symes, promised that " if re-elected Labor would "commit to workshopping a replacement model that is purpose fit for Victoria.

Unfortunately, Fiona Patten wasn't re-elected to help with this, so I'll have to chip in. What would be an appropriate reflection for those we choose to rule over us?

The Speaker already reads out a Welcome to Country each day which does something to take the curse off the Anglican prayer. One can only imagine how Deakin and Barton and the other founding fathers would have choked at having to acknowledge the rights of peoples they were hustling off their land.

What else is called for? Well, my suggested alternative prayer would be closely contextual, and directed towards the sins that parliamentarians are prone to.

O people of Australia, whom we serve, punish us unless we work for the maximum improvement we can get through, not the minimum we can get away with.

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O Newton, Darwin, and Einstein, who built our science, help us to follow the evidence, even if it overrides what we confidently said yesterday. Make us go out and look for the evidence, not just wait for it to fall in our lap.

And O ye party faithful, don't let us think we're uniquely necessary. If you think anyone else can do the job better than me, push me aside for them. In particular, we pray that more men will stand aside and let more women get there on merits - as some of the blokes among us certainly didn't. Amen.

That'll do: we don't want to overload them. Separately, though, we should ask our parliaments to go through the long list of colonial hangovers and bring them in line with how we live now. Shift Australia Day to commemorate something done by an Australian, for instance. Take the chaplains out of the Army and the schools. Put the Indigenous wars into the national War Memorial. Abolish the monarchy.

Once we've cleaned off the dead wood, we can start applying ourselves to the real problems of a diverse and increasing irreligious country. Which is a story for another day.

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