Is funding them to the tune of $4000 less per student per year a subsidy or a tax?

Perhaps you should have been more specific with your question, rather than giving a complicated financial arrangement an overly simplistic label.

I vote no.

So, I'm guessing that FD is the only one that voted "yes".

There is a funding imbalance in favour of private schools over public ones. It should be the other way around.

There is a funding imbalance in favour of private schools over public ones. It should be the other way around.

Private schools get about $6000 per student per year. Public schools get about $10000.

This is about religious schools, not private schools. There is another thread about that:

public vs private education

http://www.ozpolitic.com/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1172911103

I don't believe in segregating our children on the basis of religion, take a quick look around the world and see what it does.

I voted that they shouldn't be subsidized.. However that is conditional, I would completely agree with you all if taxes were not as high as they are. The government shouldn't be taking so much money from people, if they didn't take so much then perhaps schools wouldn't need as much subsidizing and parents could pay the bigger fees.

I spoke to a gentleman today, him and his wife were earning about $110,000 a year together, they had a mortgage which costs $46,404 per year, because they have a kid and they both work to provide for their kid they send the kid to childcare which costs almost $12,000 a year, $20,100 going to taxes taken out by the government, about $8,400 a year towards groceries, $8,400 towards the regular family car's fuel, $1,100 towards the medicare levy, $1,650 for the medicare levy surcharge, $2,400 as a modest amount for entertainment and a kid, and other general costs (not including school costs) can total between $95-100,000 which is almost all of their income.

Our taxes are oppressive, there is no way that we can be a productive nation this way.

Lower taxes and then you can stop subsidizing things, it's not fair on family's.

Currently it is a controversial idea to separate religion from education, but I doubt it will remain that way.

We owe a lot to religions actually helping to instigate universally accessible education, as historically it was only available to the elite, hence the strong historical bond.

As in all things, we are seeing changes, due to societies changing views away from a general acceptance of religion as a central tenet of their life, to a more incidental role, as this continues, we will see greater separation of religion from secular activities.