Here to help: Scripture Union Queensland's Peter James. Credit:Glenn Hunt Tony Abbott's decision returns the program to its 2006 roots, when former prime minister John Howard opened the public purse to gift chaplains to public schools. But it will also render jobless hundreds of those without the requisite faith, and reboot the ideological divide on how secular our schools should be. Williams, who lives with his wife, Andrea, 39, and their children aged five to 15, is now looking for other ways to disrupt the national chaplaincy program. "It's disgraceful," he says. "It deserves a Senate inquiry." Williams left school at 14, formed a duo with his older brother Les, and performed around Brisbane before heading to Melbourne with his band, the Five. Music has always been his bedrock. Singing. Making jingles. Producing music. He even met Andrea while performing in the bar of Toowoomba's Spotted Cow Hotel. He taps his foot as he speaks, his staccato speech emphasising every word as though missing one will mean you'll miss the point. It used to be only music that could create this passion, but now Ron Williams is hell-bent on stopping the mission creep he sees in public schools, and the school chaplaincy program is front and centre. It fills both his mind and his days.

School chaplain Kym Dixon, at Sydney's Woolooware Public School. Credit:Nic Walker Williams won't succeed in setting up a Senate inquiry because of the program's bipartisan support, but he's certainly embarrassed the Abbott government, lifted the lid off a trail of shabby laws, highlighted the willingness of politicians to bypass the High Court, and pointed to the political hold of the Christian lobby. "These are cases that we will teach in the law school for decades, if not centuries," University of Sydney constitutional law professor Anne Twomey says. "His name will be there forever." Twomey is referring to those two High Court wins by Williams. The first was in 2012, when the chaplaincy program was ruled invalid because it was not supported by specific laws passed by parliament. And it was ruled invalid again this year because new laws the federal government rushed through to save the program are not supported by a constitutional power. "It may well be that they still keep the chaplains in Mr Williams' school, but the Commonwealth is a lot more constrained now in the way that it does things," Twomey says. "There is a victory overall for Mr Williams, but it doesn't give him the outcome he wanted." Almost $700 million has already been spent, or earmarked, for school chaplains. Howard's $90 million started it, Labor leader Kevin Rudd continued it, before Julia Gillard, an atheist, expanded it and opened it up to non-faith-based welfare workers.

Now, under Abbott, about 500 workers who benefited from Gillard's edict that non-faith-based workers be allowed in our schools will be replaced by chaplains sourced predominantly from big Christian organisations: Scripture Union in Queensland, the ACT and Tasmania, Generate Ministries in NSW, Access Ministries in Victoria and the Schools Ministry Group in South Australia. Williams is now doing the rounds of politicians, finding an infrequent sympathetic ear, and seeking another way to stop it. "The fight's not over but I don't want anyone to think I'm a serial challenger, either," he says. "I would never pursue something for the sake of it. It would be like the Rocky movies. We'd have 'Williams 24' being handed down involving my children." Williams is as polite as he is frenetic. "When it comes to attacking people, I'm a chihuahua, not a rottweiler. I think if you snap at heels long enough ..." He's won strong support along the way, evidenced by the $600,000 he says he's raised so far. That's come from big donors, including atheist (he prefers the word humanist) organisations, as well as individual amounts from as little as $5 from like-minded parents. But beating Abbott's move to directly fund the chaplains will be harder than any High Court case. "Basically, he's run out of luck," Twomey says. "The ability to overturn that would be extraordinary. He must have been advised somewhere along the line that, 'Even if you win, there's another way the Commonwealth can do this.' If he really wants to win in terms of keeping the chaplains out of his children's school, then he needs to convince the school that it shouldn't have a chaplain." It was Toowoomba's Middle Ridge State School, back in 2005, that seeded Williams' crusade. His eldest son, Andre, was enrolled in year 1 when Williams and Andrea told the teacher they did not want him attending religious instruction. She stood, Williams says, underneath "a large, suspended, hand-lettered and lovingly embellished rendering of the Lord's Prayer, which was running with 'Protect us from the evil one' in favour of the King James [Bible version] 'Deliver us from evil'. " He says Andre was left out of the class but forced to remain in the same room. "Before the next occasion, we asked if he could be placed out of earshot of the singing and clapping," he says. That wasn't received well.

Soon, the Williams family's list of complaints grew: from a teacher wearing a crucifix to a child telling their son he would go to hell because he "didn't believe in God". A little late-night Googling revealed "a substantial subculture" of state-school parents Australia-wide protesting "enough already". Ron Williams had found a cause to match his passion for music. Peter James, 50, who runs Scripture Union Queensland and is the spokesperson for the National School Chaplaincy Association, was born the day the Beatles came to Brisbane in 1964. His father was a jazz pianist. "I remember him dragging us around smoky jazz bars and hiding us behind the piano with a lemonade while he played," James says. His phone rings, to the tune of Led Zeppelin, the drum introduction to When the Levee Breaks. He has five children. But that's where the similarities between James and Ron Williams end. "He's a nice guy," James says. "I'd gladly have a coffee or dinner with him. But we do have different views about what choice means and we do have different views on what secularism should mean." That underplays two massive issues enveloping Abbott's recent decision: the role of chaplains and how they change the secular tradition of public schools. James paints the school chaplain as the cool dude who hangs with kids, an ear open when they need it. "They are not psychologists. They are not counsellors. They are youth workers," he says. Trained to "recognise, not treat", they meet students at the school gate, mix with them, and are guided by the school in fulfilling their role.

A sullen or disengaged student might be sent by a teacher to the school's "chappy" for a chat and a piece of toast. Or to draw a picture, if that is easier. "Sometimes it's horrendous stuff," James says. "We've had school principals talking at events where they say [a student has told them], 'Dad attacked Mum with a machete last night, so I didn't get my homework done.' " Chaplains (and student welfare workers) need a basic certificate and their roles differ slightly between states but include "social, emotional and spiritual support", with chaplains expected to model the "unconditional love demonstrated and taught by Jesus, as recorded in the Bible", according to Scripture Union Queensland's website. Williams says the role, which stops short of religious instruction, amounts to a "full-on ministry". Despite that, chaplains are forbidden from proselytising or trying to convert students to Christianity. That's a fine line, though, as pointed out by Queensland Liberal Senator Brett Mason during a 2008 Senate Budget Estimates hearing. "If a chaplain says to a child, 'God loves you', would that be proselytising?" Mason asked. The officials before him remained unclear. "How do you tell, and who gets to say, what is evangelising and what's not evangelising?" says Professor Marion Maddox, author of Taking God to School. "If having Christianity is a prerequisite for hiring people ... then why do you need it if they're not actually doing anything religious when they're there?" Kym Dixon, 35, is a counsellor at Woolooware Public School, in Sydney's Sutherland Shire. A Christian from the local Kingsway Community Church, Dixon says she is careful not to cross the line tending the school's 470 students.

But God is never far away, and Dixon has even set up an academic mentoring program, modelled on World Vision, linking members of her church to individual students. She seeks parents' permission to talk to any child referred for help. "On that form, they can choose whether the child has a support session or whether the child can have spiritual mentoring; whether I can talk to the child about God," she says. So where do you draw the line? Liberal Senator Scott Ryan, parliamentary secretary to the education minister, struggles with that same question. "Where it is initiated by students or parents or teachers, my personal view is that I wouldn't consider that to be proselytising," he says. Since 2007, only six of 31 complaints of proselytising have been substantiated. But that's the official record. At the school level it's much higher, and Good Weekend has spoken to parents, teachers, academics and even chaplains who pointed to the blurred edges of proselytising. A chaplain sitting in a year 10 science classroom when human-relations topics are discussed. A skateboarding demo, during class time, organised by the chaplain, in which God is mentioned repeatedly. Breakfast clubs where "Happy Chappy", as he or she is often called, high-fives students and where God might pop into the conversation. Lunchtime programs where visiting bands impart a Christian message and invite students to attend a Christian outreach group. Invitations in school newsletters to Christian activities on weekends. Church-inspired deportment programs targeting teenage girls. Concerned Toowoomba parent Mark Dew, 54, who has six children aged five to 17, says evangelisation is now so prevalent at his children's Toowoomba school that "chaplaincy is only a small part". He points to free-dress days held at the school to raise money for the program. His family's request for a similar day to raise money for people with disabilities was denied.

"There's been cases when my children have asked questions and been sent from the room for questioning the faith," he says. "My daughter was telling me that a teacher was telling the kids unashamedly that everything in the Bible was gospel-true. I'm actually agnostic. I take the stand that we can't know these things. But I'm deeply offended by it because for me, state schools should be sacrosanct from any form of proselytisation." None of it comes as a surprise to David Stokes, the acting executive director, professional practice, at the Australian Psychological Society. "There are instances where people have reported that chaplains were talking to students with sexual identification issues and calling them sinners. God help us. Please." He says chaplains regularly overreach; more than 70 per cent admit to dealing with issues of mental health and depression, yet relatively few seek out specialist help for affected students. "If those sorts of patterns continue, it's a frightening prospect. So when you wonder what the future is going to look like, 'scary' is our word." Two elements further confuse the chaplain's role. The first is the conduit it provides: the invitation to an after-school group leads to the church youth group, which becomes the entrée into church. The second relates to how parents can exclude their children from activities. A lunchtime prayer meeting, specific Christian program or individual counselling requires parental consent. That means parents have to "opt in". But other activities are less clear and require parents to "opt out".

"They say it's voluntary, so the voluntary part is you can volunteer to not let your kids go to the awards night, you can volunteer for your kid not to go on the school camp because the chaplain would be there, you can volunteer for your kid not to play soccer because the chaplain coaches the soccer team," Williams says, shaking his head, tapping his foot. "One of the biggest complaints we get is that chaplains work as teachers' aides. The voluntary part is not to have your kids in the classroom." The battle over the chaplaincy program extends beyond the school gate, opening a bigger debate on whether the target is the nation's free, compulsory and secular public education system. Almost 40 per cent of students attend non-government schools; most of those are religion-affiliated and the Abbott government's latest move is seen by many as the next step in an ideological Christian push into school grounds. Former high court judge Michael Kirby warned three years ago that the decline in secularism was evident in "the enormous funds" provided to the chaplaincy program, unmatched by the political will to "provide basic facilities for schools". A small pocket of MPs, on both sides of parliament, agree and are privately trying to find a way to overturn Abbott's latest edict. So, too, are several states, now charged with running the program. Labor's Jennifer Rankine, South Australia's Education Minister, says it was "immature" for the government to insist that workers had to have a faith background. "It's not a stipulation about the quality of the work or the quality of the care," she says. "It's just simply that they want somebody who comes from a religious background." NSW and the ACT, too, were trying to force a rethink, although no state is now rejecting the government's cash. So why is the Abbott government doing it? "That's the $64,000 question," Rankine says. Senator Ryan scoffs at any suggestion it is a sop to the powerful Australian Christian Lobby (ACL). "I don't think that's fair when you look at the number of schools that apply for this," he says.

The ACL's managing director, Lyle Shelton, labelled the ACT's early stance that it would not accept the funds unless non-faith-based workers were included "churlish". Denying local schools the choice of extra resources amounted to "an anti-faith bias", he says. But Professor Greg Craven, a constitutional expert and vice-chancellor of Australian Catholic University, dismisses the Christian vote as a motivator for Abbott's latest move. "I don't think there is any sort of vote in chaplains in schools," he says. "You can look at it another way: what is so weird about having people who happen to come from a religious background?" Peter James agrees. "People are spiritual ... If it's a part of your identity as much as sexuality or anything else, why is that the one part of your identity that's not welcome once you leave home?" Ron Williams will never accept that. "There's no place in public schools for Scripture Union chaplains having access all areas, including to my children, working as teacher aides or whatever it might be, sidling up to my little year 2 son as he's eating his lunch," he says. "I'll fight this with the same passion that achieved two High Court wins. They said I wouldn't get to the High Court, then they said I wouldn't win. The overwhelming driving force is that it's not right."