ABSTRACT
The years between the establishment of the British penal colony at Sydney in 1788 and the annexation of New Zealand following the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840 were years of remarkable change during which Georgian complacency gave way first to political reform then to Victorian improvement. The fifth phase from 1945 to the present has seen Australia and New Zealand moving in different directions. In Australia the separation of church and state has never been as complete as it has been in the United States. In contrast, secular universities in South Australia, Western Australia and New Zealand have offered training courses for both professional and, in certain cases, volunteer teachers. The twenty-first century world in which we live demands that students have an understanding not only of the basis and content of their own belief system, but also of the major world religions and of the diversity that exists within each of them.
