Continuing to open Parliament with the Lord's prayer is not helping us to achieve a more inclusive society.

Making both the structure and trappings of government truly secular is the best way to ensure everybody has real religious freedom, which entails not merely an absence of persecution, but also full inclusion.

I'm a pretty committed atheist, which, since "The God Delusion" made the bestseller list, everybody seems to think is the equivalent of being anti-religious.  But I'm not. I studied religion at university because I'm fascinated by it, and despite all my scepticism, I honestly believe that religious faith and structure contributes very positively to most societies most of the time.

Nearly everybody on the planet has some kind of religious or spiritual beliefs.  Even people who go to great lengths to deny they are religious, when pressed for the specifics of their belief system will normally reveal some leaning that disqualifies them as an atheist, which by my definition is not just somebody who doesn't believe in any particular religion, but someone who is also both a monist and materialist.

To demonstrate, let's imagine we conducted a worldwide poll on the question, "do you believe in at least one of the following: a God, Gods, an afterlife, or the soul"? then global public opinion would concur in saying I was wrong.

If we conducted a poll that got any more specific, then there'd be hardly any consensus on anything, and of course it is these differences which can ignite wily passions.

As I am so spectacularly outnumbered, I've tried to consider that I might be wrong, and concluded I'm not. However, along the way I've developed a much more inclusive attitude toward religion and spirituality.

So, I'm a friendly atheist. I'm all for freedom of religious expression. What I am quite annoying and uptight about is secularism.

Leaving a tip is a much more compicated transaction than you may have ever imagined as poor regulation has created a moral minefield that needs to be carefully navigated.

In the eyes of the law, what exactly is a tip?  

Not long ago, tipping was considered an American custom, but it is now common practice here. It's on the rise in synch with the explosion of Australia's dining culture in general. It seems pretty straightforward: happy customers might leave a little extra payment at the end of the night as a thank you for excellent service.   

Patrons do this with the expectation that the person they leave the tip for receives it, but this is not always the case.  

Tips are classed as earnings and should be listed as additional benefits on one's income tax return. Now, I'm not naming any names, but I worked as a waitress whilst putting myself through university and I would be very surprised if the ATO had any statistics showing that this practice is dutifully followed by the majority of hospitality workers.  

People aren't declaring their tips, so that money then exists outside the grid.  

Probably because it doesn't show up in the paperwork, this section of the economy has been left completely unregulated. There is no national legislation, and no state or territory laws I know of (although I'd be happy to be corrected) that addresses the issue of who tips belong to.