Every sitting day in WA’s Parliament, before the business of the state begins, the Speaker reads the Lord’s Prayer. It is a short, simple act. And right now, there is a serious push to end it.
Labor MP Dave Kelly MLA has submitted to the Procedure and Privileges Committee that the prayer is outdated and should be replaced with a moment of silent reflection. He claims it makes Parliament more “inclusive.” What he’s actually proposing is that we quietly erase one of the most significant threads running through the foundation of Australian democratic life.
Where did this tradition come from?
Christian prayer has opened parliamentary sittings in the Westminster tradition since 1558. When Australia’s colonial parliaments were established, most states inherited that practice. When Federation was built, church groups across every colony petitioned the founding conventions to enshrine parliamentary prayer in the new nation’s standing orders, and they succeeded. The Federal Parliament has opened with the Lord’s Prayer since 7 June 1901. Here in WA, the Legislative Council carried the practice from Federation itself. The Legislative Assembly followed, adopting the Lord’s Prayer by resolution in 1928, and both chambers have continued that tradition ever since.
This wasn’t accidental. The men and women who built Australia’s democratic institutions understood something that is easy to forget: good government requires moral accountability. The prayer at the opening of parliament is a daily act of humility, an acknowledgement that those elected to serve are accountable to something greater than electoral politics.
Why does it still matter?
Some will ask: Isn’t Australia a secular country? It is. But secular doesn’t mean stripped of its history, and it doesn’t mean hostile to the faith that shaped its foundations.
Australia’s commitment to human dignity, equality before the law, the protection of the vulnerable, and the accountability of rulers to a higher moral standard: these are not secular inventions. They are deeply Christian ideas, woven into our legal and civic traditions over centuries. The Lord’s Prayer in Parliament is a living reminder of that inheritance.
Removing it doesn’t make our Parliament more inclusive. It makes it more amnesiac.
Some will invoke the separation of church and state, as though reciting the Lord’s Prayer makes WA’s Parliament a “theocracy.” But that argument misreads and misunderstands the principle entirely, thereby weaponising it to mean something that it doesn’t. Separation of church and state means the church doesn’t govern, and the state doesn’t dictate doctrine. It has never meant that public institutions must pretend the faith that built them never existed. A short prayer before parliament sits is not governance. It is acknowledgement: a moment of humility before the work of serving a free people begins. Removing it doesn’t make parliament more inclusive. It makes it dishonest about its own story.
What’s happening right now, and what can you do?
The WA Legislative Assembly’s Procedure and Privileges Committee is currently reviewing standing orders, and the removal of the Lord’s Prayer is on the table. This is the same path Victoria went down. When that happened, over 11,000 Victorians signed a petition to retain the prayer, 100 pastors wrote a joint letter to the Premier, and the Labor government backed down.
WA Christians can do the same. In the weeks ahead, we will be preparing a formal submission to the committee, and we will be calling on the WA Christian community to make their voice heard.
The Lord’s Prayer has opened WA’s Parliament for over 125 years. It deserves more than a quiet removal in a procedural review. Let’s make sure it gets a proper defence.
