The Australian Council of State School Organisations called chaplaincy ''the wrong response and for the wrong reasons''. Chaplaincy organisations rejected these criticisms, saying parents and principals welcomed chaplains, seeing them as a valuable adjunct to other welfare services at schools. Queensland parent Ron Williams is organising a High Court constitutional challenge to the chaplaincy program, and top-flight Sydney barrister Bret Walker, SC, has agreed to take the case. The constitution prevents any law being passed that provides ''for establishing any religion, or for imposing any religious observance''. Mr Williams said that while the rules of the program prohibited chaplains from proselytising, the Queensland provider, the biblical literalist Scripture Union, has as its aim ''to encourage people of all ages to meet God daily through the Bible and prayer''. ''It's absolutely, totally out of control here. You can't prevent your children being exposed to chaplaincy,'' Mr Williams said.

In Victoria, state school chaplains are employed by ACCESS Ministries, the same group that provides non-compulsory religious education. Chaplains in Victoria are better qualified than in other states, and are required to have at least one degree in teaching, theology or counselling, as well as further training in another of those fields. ACCESS Ministries chief executive Evonne Paddison said that children would rather go to chaplains than to other professions because they were ''independent, significant adults'' who were around full-time at schools rather than for the ''clinical hour'' of visiting psychologists. Chaplains picked up what other professionals might miss, she said, then referred them on. But Psychological Society spokeswoman Monica Thielking pointed to a recent ACCESS publication that quoted one school chaplain saying: ''At the moment … I've got two grade 5 kids on suicide watch.'' She said chaplains were not qualified to deal with such sensitive issues, and when they tried to, it was ''dangerous professional behaviour''. Dr Thielking said early-intervention programs for children's mental health were too scarce because of lack of money, and the government was wasting money on chaplaincy.

Victorian Principals Association president Gabrielle Leigh agreed that money for welfare was scarce. But she said that where chaplains existed, school communities had found it to be positive and ''another dimension'' to the services in the school. Balwyn High School chaplain Roy Hamer, an Anglican minister and former bank manager, said his conversations with students were all about how they were going, and rarely about God. ''I see myself as a friend, someone they can talk to like they do with their own friend,'' he said. And he was well aware of the danger of straying outside his expertise. ''If I'm talking to a kid and I know that this conversation needs to go to the next level, we've unearthed some really deep stuff … that's where I try to end it and say 'Let's talk to the psychologist.''' In Tasmania, Australian Psychological Association state chair Darren Stops said he was aware of one psychologist who was replaced by a chaplain ''working as a full-time student counsellor'' when she left her school. Of the 467 independent schools nationally that were funded under the first three years of the $163 million program, most were low-fee Christian schools. But others are high-fee private schools. Xavier College in Kew, for example, has taken $60,000 from the government to subsidise its Centre for Faith and Service.