State aid has been a highly controversial issue in Australian politics almost from the beginning. Three times there have been bitter and long-drawn-out political battles over the responsibility of governments to provide finance for non government (mostly denominational) school. In the first half of the nineteenth century denominational schools were successful in gaining a significant measure of aid, despite intense rivalry among the denominations. By the second half of the nineteenth century all colonial governments in Australia moved to gain control over elementary education with the result that the earlier forms of aid were withdrawn. Of the major denominations only the Roman Catholic Church offered strong and continuing resistance to government monopoly of education, so that Australia entered the twentieth century with system of school: one State controlled and funded, the other independent (mostly Catholic) and not supported by the State.