Politics an Religion is Australia

[Bex]

I recently had it out with a good friend on Facebook over this topic. As a bit of a back story, we used to be in the Navy together and let's just say his actions back then gave me no clue he was a god botherer. That said, since leaving the Navy he's becoming very vocal politically, something I didn't know him for in his younger days, so it's quite possible faith has taken hold in his life also, much like politics.

Anyway, I can't recall the post exactly, but he was commenting on a newspaper article that he didn't agree with. His reply was something along the lines of Parliament swear an oath to god at each sitting etc etc and it was offensive to consider Australia anything but a Christian nation.

Now, religion and politics is all over the news in the USA at the moment, and I don't believe for a moment they're about to change their constitution. But I have to admit, my understanding of our own political/religious connections is something I'm not familiar with. Considering the number of non religious people (I believe) is in the majority, it would be odd for our country to have ties to the Christian faith.

Can anyone shed any light on this for me?

[Rogerb]

Austraian politics seems to be driven by opinion polls. The census is one big opinion poll on 'what religion are you?' rather than "are you religious?". The inference being that an individual may have been born into a particular religion eg catholic, and thus answers catholic on the census form. This does not answer whether a person is a practitioner or believer in an omnipresent mythical being.
The problem is, policies are influenced by this loaded question, and the result in no way reflects the number of believers versus non-believers. There is a movement to raise awareness of this, the "no religion" campaign where people are encouraged to answer "no religion on the census in an attempt to get a slightly less distorted account of religiosity in Australia.
Regards, Roger B

[Bex]

I guess what I want to know is, how tightly intertwined are religion and politics, from a constitutional point of view.