The deceitful Brethren

Christine Milne, Senate

This matter is a lot more complex than the cheap and thoroughly offensive remarks of Senator Abetz. I found his reference to yellow stars appalling and demeaning of the Senate. He might want to grandstand in here about what happened with the Nazis, but I am a student of history, and I know, as well as anyone in here who has read history, what happened with the Nazis and their vilification of minorities, academics, homosexuals and Jews. We know about vilification, and that is why we are asking for an investigation, because we would like to have any engagement by third parties in political campaigns to be open and accessible to the Australian people, so that they know who is putting what in their letterbox and what motivation they have. The motivation behind that material is sinister, and it is not honest.

I have never come across a more deceitful explanation of involvement in the political system than I have seen with the Exclusive Brethren. In years to come, as this becomes more and more exposed, people will look back and recognise the naivety that was engaged in when this house failed to investigate what was going on in the Australian community, and the fostering of that intolerance. And that is what it is — intolerance. That is why the Greens will always stand up for tolerance, transparency and openness. I regard it as disappointing that this motion is not seen in that light, because that is what it is about.

Community Affairs References Committee

Proposed inquiry into the Exclusive Brethren

15 August 2006

Senator MILNE (Tasmania) (5.25 p.m.) — I rise today to support this motion and to note the feigned concern from many in this house about minorities. There is no group of people in this house who have stood up for minorities more than the Greens. I take you back to the Tampa, Senator Watson, and your colleagues on that side — where was the tolerance; where was the generosity? What about children overboard, where were you then with your concerns about minorities?

Senator Vanstone I’m not deaf.

Senator MILNE — I am delighted, Senator Vanstone, that your hearing is intact and I will take that into account.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Forshaw) — Order! I can hear all of you at the moment. Senator Milne, would you address your remarks through the chair and other senators should refrain from interjecting. Senator Watson was heard in relative silence as were other speakers.

Senator MILNE —— As I was saying, where was the concern for minorities at the time of the Tampa? Where is the concern for David Hicks and his family? Where is the concern for the West Papuans? Where is the concern for oppression and illness in Indigenous communities? It is not borne out in budgets, it is not borne out in actions, but today we hear the coalition standing up and supposedly having this great concern for minorities in Australia. I would add to that, where is the concern for the gay, lesbian, transgender and intersex community in Australia? I do not hear anyone standing up for that minority either. That is the heart of where we are in this debate.

I would hope that the Australian community would ask themselves: why is it that Senator Brown and the Australian Greens are asking for a Senate investigation into this sect when they have spent their entire political career defending minorities, defending religious rights and standing up for people? Could it just be that there is a case to answer? That is the point that I am coming to today. What we are asking for in this motion is an investigation and we have had, as Senator Brown pointed out and I am not going to reiterate, numerous letters and emails from people who have been excommunicated and divided from their families for the rest of their lives for the crime of leaving a religious organisation. But I am not going to go into that because we have endless evidence of that.

I want to tell you about a situation when I was teaching in north-west Tasmania at a time of very poor retention rates to years 11 and 12. I spent my teaching career encouraging young girls and boys to go on to higher education. There was a complaint made to the principal. I was called in and told that a complaint had been made because I had been encouraging one of the grade 10 girls to go on to a higher education — to years 11 and 12. I was told that her parents were offended, that her religion said that she would leave school at grade 10, work in a shop owned by the family or the community’s business, that the marriage would be arranged and that I should mind my own business and stop encouraging this young girl to go on to higher education. I have been really concerned about that going on around Australia and to this day women who marry in the Exclusive Brethren sect are not allowed to work. Girls or boys either, for that matter, are not allowed to go on to higher education.

This is happening in a Western democracy like ours where the Convention on the Rights of the Child says very clearly that young people have a right to achieve their full potential and goes on to talk about equality in education and so on. That just is not happening. That is not what I am going to focus on mainly today either. That is my personal experience of this sect. I can tell you the children at that high school had a very difficult time because they were not allowed to eat with other students, with the ‘worldlies’. They were not allowed to be part of the school community.

Today I want to address the issue of political activity. You are quite wrong to misrepresent the Greens’ concern. We welcome everybody’s involvement in politics. Participatory democracy is one of the four fundamental platforms of the Greens. What we do not support is people entering into election campaigns and remaining anonymous, as they describe it themselves ‘flying beneath the radar and affecting the outcome of elections’. That is why we have electoral disclosure laws. They are based on the principle that people who fund political parties, political advertising and so on ought to be upfront about it so that people know where that perspective is coming from. That is the point I make. Throughout this entire debate, every single time an Exclusive Brethren advertisement appears in the paper, the excuse is constantly, ‘This is an individual act. It has nothing to do with the church. It is just that as an individual in Scottsdale I woke up one day and decided to put an ad in the paper. The fact that it is exactly the same in content as a whole lot of ads is just a spontaneous thing.’ That happened in the last election.

It goes further than that, to connections with the Liberal Party. I think the Australian people would appreciate a bit of honesty here. At the last election, we had ads authorised by people from the Exclusive Brethren community saying, ‘We are happy, John. John Howard provides.’ Then we had the anti-Green ads, ‘Why the grass won’t be greener.’ In my own case in Tasmania, a pamphlet was distributed everywhere and there was no upfront declaration to the electoral office, but now there will be a disclosure to the electoral office about the funding of that advertisement, entirely appropriately under the law. Now we have a situation where the government has changed the electoral disclosure laws so that it will be virtually impossible for people in the Australian community to find out who is writing the ads, placing the ads and paying for the ads.

As my colleague Damian Mantach admitted in the Tasmanian election, the Liberal Party in New South Wales had met with the Exclusive Brethren and the advertisements in New South Wales were almost identical to the Liberal Party ads in South Australia — funny thing that. They had exactly the same wording and font as the Liberal Party ads, even though they were supposedly placed by individuals. What is the connection?

Senator Vanstone If you want to run our ads, we’ll let you do it.

Senator MILNE Senator Vanstone has hit the nail absolutely on the head. The way the electoral laws are written allows it to happen and the Australian people have no idea that a religious sect is funding advertisements to support the Liberal Party or any other party for that matter. They deserve to know that it is happening and they deserve to know why. In a newspaper article about why, one of the Exclusive Brethren elders — I welcome them to the gallery today — said, in talking about these ads:

We do it as individuals … It’s got no church involvement. It’s got no school involvement. You’ve got to allow for spontaneity.

But it is quite clear that the principal reason they are engaged in politics in Australia is that they are anti-homosexual. The real attack on minorities in this country is coming from this organisation, secretly funding political parties that oppose tolerance to homosexuality. That is the fact of the matter. That is where it is coming from. In this newspaper article, Mr Hales insists the brethren are not endorsing people or parties and says:

We don’t support the political party per se. We support a principle. If somebody is promoting the right principle — that homosexuality is a sin — we’ll support that person.

If you look at the Exclusive Brethren involvement in the US campaign, in the Canadian election, in the New Zealand election, in the Tasmanian election and in the federal election, you find that the absolute basis of it is an attack on tolerance of homosexuality. That is where all this is coming from. The real attack on minorities here is on those people who do not even see where the attack is coming from because the people mounting the attack are so cowardly that they hide. They are not prepared to be upfront about who they are. A statement made to the Standing Committee of Privileges and signed in part by Phillip McNaughton says:

The Exclusive Brethren Church has never at any time or for any reason involved itself in any political activity whatsoever, either by means of advertisements, media releases, leaflets, publications or any other propaganda.

Is that a fact? So you go to a company registered in the UK called Ratby Distribution Ltd and who are its three executives? Phillip Bruce McNaughton, the very same person, and two people from Surrey and Leicester in England. What is the purpose of this Exclusive Brethren company? It is ‘to make grants and loans to any person, association, company, local authority, administrative or government agency or public body, as may be thought fit, or towards charitable or other purposes in any way connected with or calculated to further the objects of the company; to make donations to any political party; to take and defend legal actions’. And what is more? What is the involvement of Australian Bruce Hales in this company? This company gives ‘the Minister of the Lord in the Recovery’ — that is, Bruce Hales — ‘absolute power of veto in all matters’.

Mr Hales has the capability of receiving automatic admission to the board should the existing board members become unavailable — and this is the head of the church in Australia. What we are seeing is that Mr Hales already seems to have ultimate authority in possibly hundreds, and maybe even thousands, of Exclusive Brethren companies, charities, trusts and enterprises on a worldwide basis. We now see a new initiative called National Office Assist, which seems to be a global fiscal structure that controls the finances of all Exclusive Brethren businesses.

I note the amusement of the Exclusive Brethren members in the gallery. I welcome that, because I think we should have an inquiry and see what the tax arrangements are and find out exactly what is going on with this funding that is distributed around the world. It went in to the US campaign and contravened US electoral law. It went in to New Zealand and was exposed at the last minute, but not fully, and we still have not got to the bottom of the connection between the Liberal Party and the Exclusive Brethren and their advertising during the last federal election. And we never will, because of the new disclosure laws regarding donations of $10,000 or more, and we will never know about in-kind support — the printing businesses that are involved in printing this material.

As I said during the debate on electoral donations — and it is why I opposed the change — it is my view that the Liberal Party writes the ads, places the ads, and that they are paid for by the Exclusive Brethren.

Senator Scullion — Where’s the evidence?

Senator MILNE I thank Senator Scullion for his interjection. Have a look at what happened in South Australia at the time of the last federal election. Look at the ads placed by the Liberal Party. Side by side with them, day after day, the Exclusive Brethren was mentioned in the regional newspapers. Have a look at it. Look at the fact that Exclusive Brethren school addresses were used to authorise ads — and those schools get federal government funding. They get federal government funding because they supposedly comply with curriculum guidelines in each of the states, but they are not allowed to have computers, for a start; they are not allowed to have fax machines, TVs or anything like that. So I am not entirely sure how they comply with curriculum guidelines around the country.

I return to the other powers that Mr Bruce Hales, the head of the church, wields. He has the right to take over any corporation that contains the clauses already mentioned, with regard to National Office Assist. He has the right to take ownership of Exclusive Brethren meeting rooms in the event of a dispute. That gives him the power to take over a huge amount of real estate. I know that at the last election the address that was given by the person who authorised the Exclusive Brethren leaflet which attacked the Greens, in the election that I was involved in, gave the address as 11 Baden-Powell Court in Sydney. The person concerned did not live there at the time. All of these properties owned by the Exclusive Brethren have been taken from other Exclusive Brethren people over time — repossessed, virtually, from within their congregation — and that property forms the basis of a considerable amount of wealth in the church. They are entitled to wealth, the same as anybody else is. If they work hard and earn a living, they are entitled to the benefits and to the fruits of their labour. What they are not entitled to do is to use exemptions for churches in order to get out of obligations under the tax system. We know that they oppose unions, and that it is one of the reasons why they support the coalition. They are emphatic about opposing unions in the workplace, and they are emphatic about supporting the government’s new Work Choices legislation — because it leads to exploitation, effectively. That is the kind of thing we are dealing with here.

I believe that in a democracy people have a right to transparency, and that is my objection to what is going on: there is no transparency. We are dealing with a sect who defend their activities on the basis that they are individual people — and these individual people suddenly come up with $10,000 or whatever to put an ad in the paper, or wherever it is that they place the ads. Then somebody else will make a gift to them, so that it is not officially from the church. It is never officially from the church, because officially the church never gets involved. But if you go and have a look at Ratby Distribution Ltd, you will soon see the involvement in sending money around the world for political donations.

Whilst the coalition will continue to work with the Exclusive Brethren coming into next year’s federal election, we will see the same vilification of homosexuals, transgender people and intersex people. We will see that around the country because they believe it is a sin and that it must be wiped out, and they will support ‘right-thinking’ people who are prepared to wipe it out. That is a fact. That is where this is coming from. It is the most intolerant, mean-spirited, unChristian perspective that is being brought to bear here. And it is being dressed up as something else.

Australian people need to think very carefully about that. I think they would be horrified to know that ads that say, ‘We are happy, John. John Howard provides,’ are coming from people whose agenda is fundamentally to exhibit intolerance of homosexuals. That is what we are dealing with. As they have said themselves, ‘Homosexuality is a sin; we will support that person if somebody is promoting that right principle.’

This matter is a lot more complex than the cheap and thoroughly offensive remarks of Senator Abetz. I found his reference to yellow stars appalling and demeaning of the Senate. He might want to grandstand in here about what happened with the Nazis, but I am a student of history, and I know, as well as anyone in here who has read history, what happened with the Nazis and their vilification of minorities, academics, homosexuals and Jews. We know about vilification, and that is why we are asking for an investigation, because we would like to have any engagement by third parties in political campaigns to be open and accessible to the Australian people, so that they know who is putting what in their letterbox and what motivation they have. The motivation behind that material is sinister, and it is not honest.

I have never come across a more deceitful explanation of involvement in the political system than I have seen with the Exclusive Brethren. In years to come, as this becomes more and more exposed, people will look back and recognise the naivety that was engaged in when this house failed to investigate what was going on in the Australian community, and the fostering of that intolerance. And that is what it is — intolerance. That is why the Greens will always stand up for tolerance, transparency and openness. I regard it as disappointing that this motion is not seen in that light, because that is what it is about. (Time expired)