A shadowy religious sect has entered the Tasmanian election campaign, spending thousands of dollars on half-page ads in newspapers decrying Greens’ policies in the lead-up to the March 18 state election.

The ads were authorised by a farmer from a small town in north east Tasmania, Roger Unwin.

Contacted by Crikey this morning, Unwin confirmed he was a member of the Exclusive Brethren. He placed the ads because of concern about “moral degradation in the world today” and concern that the Greens’ policies “undermined Tasmanian families.”

The ads zero in on Greens’ policies on sex issues, such as sex change operations to be funded by Medicare, and on drugs, such as the trial of prescribed heroin to registered users .”As a family man, I am seeking to alert every unsuspecting voter of these policies that will ruin our families and society in the future,” Unwin says in the ad.

The Exclusive Brethren reportedly spent $500,000 in the last New Zealand election, campaigning against both the Greens and Labour, and more than $US500,000 in the last US election, shoring up support for George. W Bush.

The world head of the sect, who rejoices in the title, Elect Vessel of God, is wealthy Sydney businessman Bruce Hales. Hales lives in Prime Minister John Howard’s electorate of Bennelong and reportedly prophesied the end of the world if Bush and Howard were not re-elected.

Australian Greens leader Bob Brown told Crikey this morning the Exclusive Brethren had pumped money into anti-Greens ads and pamphlets in the last federal election, and in particular, targetted Greens Tasmanian Senate candidate Christine Milne.

International link-up

“There is an international link-up,” Brown says. “They have supported the far Right with huge amounts of money, nationally, in the US, the UK, Canada and New Zealand, without saying who they are, and are now secretly intervening in Tasmania and supporting the Liberals, some of whose pamphlets are very similar.

“As a church group they are deliberately misleading the electorate by publicising Greens’ drugs policies which changed months ago, and are now very similar to both Liberal and Labor policies.”

The Exclusive Brethren — so called because of a desire to keep away from evil — is a breakaway sect of the conservative Plymouth Brethren, or Open Assembly — has a rigid code of conduct based on a strict reading of The Bible.

There are thought to be 70,000 members in English-speaking countries, tightly controlled by a few individuals. Curiously, given their foray into politics under Hales, who became world leader in 2002, the Exclusive Brethren code prohibits members
from watching TV, reading newspapers, accessing the internet, joining the armed forces, standing for elected office or voting in elections.

The editor of Tasmanian Times Lindsay Tuffin, grew up in a Plymouth Brethren family in a small town in north west Tasmania. He left as a teenager but remained a Christian.

Tuffin told Crikey he was alarmed by the Exclusive Brethren’s move into the political arena: “It’s very dangerous. They’re a sect which rails against the evils of modern society and exercises extreme, control- freak style moral and social authority over members, who are made to feel unsafe outside the sect.

“It’s the height of hypocrisy for a group which excludes itself from the mainstream to insidiously try to influence how people vote.”

Maragaretta Pos,
Battery Point