Two members of the Western Australian Parliament have argued publicly for retaining the Lord’s Prayer in parliamentary proceedings, lending weight to the case Perth Catholics have been putting since petitions on the question began circulating through parishes this month.
Central Wheatbelt MP Lachlan Hunter, a Catholic and the youngest member of the Legislative Assembly, set out his position in The Spectator Australia on 10 August.
Mr Hunter sits in the very House whose Procedure and Privileges Committee is weighing whether to replace the prayer with a period of silent reflection, following a submission from Bassendean MP Dave Kelly.
Mr Hunter supports the review itself, being the first comprehensive look at the Standing Orders in almost 30 years, which Mr Hunter describes it as a chance to make sure the rules still work. But he draws a line under what modernising should mean.
“Modernisation should not be confused with amnesia,” he writes.
Mr Hunter’s argument runs wider than his own faith.
The Westminster system, he says, emerged from a long struggle to constrain power, protect liberty and establish the principle that governments are accountable to elected representatives.
The traditions of Parliament, he notes, including its ceremonies, symbols and conventions, help remind us that democratic institutions are bigger than the politicians who temporarily occupy them.
He is also direct about the Acknowledgement of Country, which Mr Kelly raised in his submission.
Mr Hunter says the practice has become an important part of proceedings and should continue.
He rejects the idea that Parliament must choose between the two, arguing a mature democracy should be capable of recognising multiple strands of its history simultaneously.
“We should be confident enough,” he highlights, to add to our traditions without feeling compelled to erase existing ones.
Liberal MLC Anthony Spagnolo has also published an article about the same issue.
As a Council member, Mr Spagnolo says it is not his place to tell the Assembly how to run itself.
“Though the question it finds itself considering at present does raise a broader issue: what are parliamentary rituals even for in the first place, and what do we stand to lose if we discard them? ” Mr Spagnolo questioned.
Mr Spagnolo is upfront that he is Christian and hears the prayer as prayer, not as heritage.
The public case for keeping it, he argues, does not depend on that.
“Film cameras have returned. People keep handwritten journals in an age when every thought could be stored in the cloud. We do not choose these things because they are more efficient. We choose them because a ritual slows us down, gives shape to a moment and connects us with people who performed the same act before us,” he explained.
“The Lord’s Prayer in Parliament is that kind of inheritance, but it is more than that, because its words still have something to say,” he said.