Evan Whitton notes that the Scientology “church” crops up now and again via people like Tom Cruise, John Travolta, and even Jamie Packer.
Stephen Mayne reported in Crikey (13 March 2012): “When James Packer threw himself into Scientology after the disastrous One.Tel collapse in 2001, many eyebrows were raised, including his father’s.
Mayne: “According to veteran journalist Alex Mitchell, Kerry Packer made some late changes to his will ( here ), which ensured executors David Gonski and Lloyd Williams would be able to prevent Tom Cruise and his mates from getting their hands on the family fortune … young Packer appears to have moved away from Scientology since his father’s death in late 2005.”
Paul Byrnes gave Alex Gibney’s documentary on Scientology, Going Clear, four stars in The Sydney Morning Herald of 22 June 2015. The documentary is based on the book, Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of Belief by the New Yorker’s Lawrence Wright.
Byrnes began: “What kind of church decides to break up your marriage, snoop on you with private detectives and turn your kids against you? All of that happened to Nicole Kidman during her marriage to Scientology’s poster-boy, Tom Cruise, according to Alex Gibney’s fascinating and trenchant documentary.”
L. Ron Hubbard (1911-86), founder of Scientology, bigamously married Sara Northrup Hollister in 1946. In 1950, he was writing Dianetics, the basis of Scientology. The documentary quotes Sara: “He said many times that the only way to make any real money was to have a religion … he could have an income and the government would not take it away from him in the form of taxes.”
Byrnes notes: “This tax question became crucial in the early 1990s, when the US Inland Revenue Service presented Scientology with a bill for $1 billion in taxes. They had refused to recognise Scientology as a religion. [Hubbard’s successor, David] Miscavige then hit the IRS with 2400 lawsuits, in every possible jurisdiction. The IRS caved in and Scientology became tax-exempt. A billion-dollar debt soon turned into $3 billion in property.”
All of which reminds me of something I wrote in Justinian on 25 November 2009:
What Melbourne Truth thought 46 years ago, Senator Nick Xenophon thinks today. Well done, that man.
Truth forced an inquiry into Lafayette Ron Hubbard’s organisation, Scientology, in 1963. I assume the driving force was my future pal, the editor Billy Williams (Justinian, June 23, 2008). Billy was known to Truth readers, perhaps with some scepticism, as Marc Brody, Melbourne’s Most Exciting Man.
In the High Court (Church of the New Faith v Commissioner of Pay-Roll Tax 1983), Justice Lionel Murphy noted the upshot of the Victorian inquiry: “The Board of Inquiry reported in September 1965: ‘Scientology is evil; its techniques evil; its practice a serious threat to the community, medically, morally and socially; its adherents sadly deluded and often mentally ill … In a community which is nominally Christian, Hubbard’s disparagement of religion is blasphemous and a further evil feature of scientology’.”
The inquiry report “led to the Psychological Practices Act 1965 (Vic), which made the teaching of Scientology an offence”.
But, said Lionel: “The church was recognised as a religious denomination [presumably by Lionel himself as AG] … on 15 February 1973 … it is granted exemption as a religious institution from pay-roll tax in South Australia, Western Australia, New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory.”
So much for the strict separation of Church and State.
The Victorian Commissioner of Payroll Tax’s rejection of Scientology’s claim for exemption was upheld by Bill Crockett in the Supreme Court and, on the ground that Scientology was not a religious institution, by Sir John Young CJ, Bill Kaye and Bob Brooking in the Appeal Court.
But in the High Court, L. Ron’s disciples won 5-zip: Tony Mason, Ged Brennan, Billy Deane, Ron Wilson, and Lionel.
Lionel’s judgment is hilarious. He demolished several arguments for organised religion, and noted: “The crushing burden of taxation is heavier because of exemptions in favour of religious institutions, many of which have enormous and increasing wealth.”
But Lionel then concluded: “Any body which claims to be religious, and offers a way to find meaning and purpose in life, is religious.” Scientology was thus entitled to the exemption.
That surely leaves it open for law firms and other businesses to declare themselves religions, if they haven’t quietly done so already.
Xeno wants a new inquiry into Scientology, but other politicians may calculate: if we proscribe one dubious religion, the others might rise up and bite us.
Footnote: Senator Nick Xenophon said in the Senate on 17 November 2009 that Scientology is a criminal organisation engaged in blackmail, torture, violence, labor camps, imprisonment, coerced abortions.
The Politics of Poltroonery: the Coalition and Labor have thrice combined to prevent Xenophon’s requests for an inquiry into Scientology’s tax exemption.
Xenophon got 24.9% of the vote at the 2013 federal elections. Citing lack of trust in politics, he has formed NXT (Nick Xenophon Team) to run candidates at the next federal election.
• John Davidson in Comments:: Your teeth magically become like that when you reach a certain level in Scientology.
