Trafficing in the politics of religion

The Good Folk of Camden, a growing bedroom community spawning from a small country town in the bucolic farmlands Southwest of Sydney rejected a Muslim community school development application on the grounds that it would have an adverse effect on traffic and the area's changing rural zoning.

Nothing racist there, mind you, just the usual planning objections.

But now there's an application pending to open a Catholic school. It's drawing widespread community support.

Catholics welcome, Muslims not

The president of the Camden/Macarthur Residents' Group, Emil Sremchevich, said the Catholic school plan "ticked all the right boxes", even though he is yet to see its development application.

"Catholics are part of our community so we should be supporting it on this basis alone. To become part of a community, you need to live in the community. You can't just turn up."

"Why is that racist? Why is it discriminatory? It's very simple: people like some things but don't like other things. Some of us like blondes, some of us like brunettes. Some of us like Fords, some of us like Holdens. Why is it xenophobic just because I want to make a choice? If I want to like some people and not like other people, that's the nature of the beast."

Kate McCulloch, said Muslims would not fit into the Camden community.

"The ones that come here oppress our society, they take our welfare and they don't want to accept our way of life," she said then, when she had hoped to follow Pauline Hanson into politics.

[T]he Catholic Education Office of Wollongong wants to build a 1000-student high school.... It is less complicated than the Quranic Society application, which would have required rezoning. The Mater Dei site is already zoned for a school.

"The council said they rejected us because of traffic and zoning, but I think if we didn't have the backlash from the community then it could have ended very differently. We want to integrate into the community but they won't let us."

Before the vote, protesters placed pigs' heads on stakes and draped an Australian flag between them on the proposed school site.

Camden's Mayor, Chris Patterson, said religion had nothing to do with the the council's decision in May. "And this DA will be treated exactly the same. The council will take into account traffic, amenity, noise."

Pigs Arse, you say? We'll see.