Religion - Year 9 - The Catholic Church in Australia: Goulburn Strike 1962

Image: Front cover of The Canberra Times (source: National Museum Australia)


A 'Strike' Changed It All - And it all started over a toilet block. On July 16, 1962, some 600 of Goulburn’s catholic students were enrolled in local public schools in protest over the state government’s lack of funding. The city’s movers and shakers, parents and religious were out to make a point. If the government couldn’t fund vital infrastructure at the city’s Catholic Schools, it should absorb them into the public system. The mooted six-week “strike” exerted maximum pressure and won national publicity...

‘Without Discrimination’ - By the 1960s the number of children attending secondary school had skyrocketed. Catholic schools, which relied on funds raised by the church in their local community, were suffering. They didn’t have enough teachers, school buildings were old and classrooms were overcrowded. In 1962 St Brigid’s Primary School in Goulburn was told that it needed to upgrade its toilet blocks right away, to meet health and safety standards. But the local Catholic community couldn’t afford to fix the problem. In what became known as a strike, the Catholic community decided to close all seven of Goulburn’s Catholic schools for six weeks.

  Podcast - The Goulburn School Strike

There aren't too many political movements that begin with a toilet block. But that's the inauspicious origin of the Catholic political juggernaut that now finds its sharpest expression in school funding.

Video - Goulburn School Strike