In 1969, the States Grants (Secondary School Libraries) Act extended Commonwealth capital aid to fund library facilities in both government and non‐government secondary schools. In 1972, capital aid for schools was significantly extended by the States Grants (Capital Assistance) Act, which authorised $20 million for capital spending on government primary and secondary schools. This act was amended in 1973 to include non‐government schools. Funding of students began in 1970, with general recurrent per student grants for non‐government schools, aimed specifically to help the struggling Catholic school sector. The States Grants (Independent Schools) Act authorised payments to non‐government schools at the flat rates of $35 per primary student and $50 per secondary student. From 1973, these grants were fixed at a rate equivalent to 20 per cent of the cost of educating a child in a government school. But the genesis of this policy shift harks back to the 1950s, and arose out of concerns about schooling in the ACT as the Menzies federal government was moving departments from Melbourne to Canberra. The problem of schooling in the capital, then a federal responsibility, became a critical issue. Parents of school-age children came to Canberra and faced an impossible situation. Many were Catholics and tried to get into what little Catholic schooling there was, but there was no room for them. So they approached the federal government. Robert Menzies faced a real dilemma: either he would need to expand the state schools in a very big way or do something for the non-government schools, something never tried before and fraught with political risk. Cardinal Norman Gilroy with prime minister Robert Menzies in 1964. Credit:Fairfax Media

Menzies needed advice and turned to John Carrick, then general secretary of the Liberal Party's NSW division (and, many years later, education minister in the Fraser government). Carrick, who died earlier this year, told me in an interview in 2002 that it was wrong at that stage to see Menzies manoeuvring politically, as has been suggested: his basic instinct was a belief in freedom of choice. If anything, there were very real dangers of a sectarian backlash within the Liberal Party and also the wider electorate. But Carrick, a shrewd strategist, saw political advantage in reaching out to Catholics, who had long been seen as largely Labor-voting. With the split in the Labor Party in the mid-1950s, many Catholics had shifted their vote to the breakaway Democratic Labor Party. Carrick had long pondered how to move them towards the Liberal Party, and now sensed an opportunity. "It was certainly not a vote-winner in those days," he told me. "Later, it became so. The benefits, of course, were 10, 15 years down the track. At the time, though, it just seemed the right thing to do." Loading Menzies called Carrick in Sydney and asked him to get in touch with Eris O'Brien, then archbishop of Canberra-Goulburn, who welcomed the approach.

"I remember to this day his words: 'Come and chew a chop with me, old boy.' I was to chew many chops with him. He said to be: 'You know, the trouble with we tykes and you bigoted Protestants is that we are remote. Look, if you are going down the street and you pass one of our schools and see the nuns in the playground, hop the fence and have a chat to them. The old girls will love it.' "That was the basic situation. We started by interest subsidies: they borrowed money and we paid a subsidy to cover their interest. It was good policy, good unifying policy, but still unpopular in some circles – very unpopular. That started a train of thinking, but the ALP platform was strongly opposed to state aid. "Then Menzies moved into science blocks, libraries and so on. As he did these things, an interesting evolution occurred in this country: whereas you had generations of Catholic families who had been told by their grandfathers that all Protestants had two heads, and in any case Protestants hated Catholics and wanted to keep them down, people started to say: 'I think that's wrong. Look, he's helping me. What is more, I am moving up the economic ladder.' " Carrick, as NSW Liberal Party chief since 1948, had presided over a despairing party that had not been in government since 1941. With the Liberals coming close in 1959, he began to focus even more on the Catholic vote, increasingly seeing it as the key to electoral victory in NSW. In his detailed analysis of the election, he noted a general state-wide trend away from Labor that was significantly arrested in four key seats the Liberals needed to win to secure office: North Sydney, Ryde, Concord and Rockdale. The explanation, said a Liberal Party state council committee report smacking very strongly of Carrick, for the reverse swing appeared to be that, in the key seats, a "successful attempt was made by Labor to secure the bulk of the [Roman Catholic] vote". Loading