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The Exclusive Brethren and the rare public grilling of its ‘Man of God’ · The Morning Edition

0:04
S1: On Friday, the world leader of the exclusive brethren, Bruce Hales,
0:08
S1: gave evidence before a federal parliamentary inquiry. This was a
0:12
S1: significant moment in a story with many twists and turns
0:16
S1: about power and influence in Australian politics.
0:19
S2: Do members of the church believe that you are a
0:22
S2: direct messenger from God?
0:25
S3: Well, I would think that they would say that what
0:29
S3: I get, I get from the Lord.
0:34
S1: I'm Samantha Salinger Morris, and you're listening to The Morning
0:37
S1: Edition from The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. Today,
0:41
S1: senior writer Michael Bachelard on the exclusive Brethren, now called
0:45
S1: the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church and their man of God,
0:48
S1: Bruce Hales. Welcome, Michael, back to the podcast.
0:53
S4: Thanks for having me.
0:54
S1: Okay, before we get into all the news, can you
0:56
S1: just take a step back for us just for a moment?
0:59
S1: Tell us about the exclusive brethren now called the Plymouth
1:02
S1: Brethren Christian Church. What defines this church's beliefs and way
1:06
S1: of life?
1:07
S4: Well, it's basically based on recognizable Christian theology. It was
1:11
S4: set up in the 1820s by a theologian and minister
1:15
S4: called John Nelson Darby, who had a a real set
1:18
S4: against the established church. And he wanted to kind of
1:20
S4: revolutionize the way in which religion was done. And over
1:24
S4: the years, there's been various splits in it. And at
1:27
S4: each point, the church that we now call the Plymouth
1:30
S4: Brethren Christian Church, but most people know as the exclusive
1:33
S4: brethren at each point they've taken the more exclusive, the
1:36
S4: more separatist, the more secretive side of that split. So
1:41
S4: what we see now is a very secretive church that
1:45
S4: is governed by what they call the doctrine of separation.
1:49
S4: It's based on the Darby translation of the Bible that
1:51
S4: you need to withdraw from iniquity. And they take that
1:54
S4: to mean you can't, if you're a member of the church,
1:58
S4: eat or socialize with or have friends of anybody who's
2:03
S4: outside the brethren themselves, the people they call the saints.
2:08
S4: In fact, Bruce Hales, the current global leader in what
2:11
S4: they call the unbroken line of leadership since Darby, he says,
2:15
S4: you have to get a hatred of the world, an utter,
2:18
S4: utter hatred, he says. You have to despise the world
2:21
S4: and everything in it, because he fears that it will
2:24
S4: defile and contaminate his members.
2:27
S1: Okay. And it's probably worth pointing out listeners here that
2:30
S1: you have written a book on the exclusive brethren. So
2:33
S1: you know a lot about this particular church. So I guess,
2:35
S1: tell us what other main criticisms or controversies there are
2:38
S1: surrounding this particular church.
2:41
S4: Uh, well, there are many, but its theology is incredibly strict.
2:44
S4: As I've said, it's, it's very closed. And it's also very,
2:49
S4: in some ways, what we might say is traditional, but
2:52
S4: they still hold these values. So women are not allowed
2:55
S4: to talk in church other than to what they say.
2:57
S4: Give out the hymns, which is read out the numbers
2:59
S4: of the hymns they can't preach, whereas the men can speak.
3:03
S4: It's frowned upon for a woman to have an opinion
3:05
S4: in a social setting in the brethren. And women essentially
3:10
S4: can't work beyond marriage except in the family business. They
3:13
S4: can't have a role of leadership over men. Homosexuality is
3:17
S4: completely not tolerated. I interviewed a guy a few years
3:20
S4: ago who was gay in the church, and a church
3:24
S4: doctor had prescribed him prostate cancer medication to try and
3:28
S4: suppress his sexuality. So they take these kinds of things
3:31
S4: very seriously. So they are some of the criticisms. But really,
3:35
S4: I guess the main one is that this doctrine of separation,
3:40
S4: enforcing that means if somebody leaves the church or is
3:43
S4: shunned from the church for transgressing any one of its
3:47
S4: hundreds of rules, they essentially become subject to the doctrine
3:51
S4: of separation, which means they can't socialize or eat with
3:54
S4: their family. They can't have relationships with their family. That
3:57
S4: includes their wives and children. parents. They are often not
4:01
S4: invited to the funeral of their parents. You know, they
4:04
S4: have grandchildren that they don't know exist because nobody's talking
4:07
S4: to them. The shunning is complete and extraordinary, and the
4:12
S4: amount of trauma, intergenerational trauma that that causes is astonishing.
4:18
S1: Okay. And I wanted to ask you about, I guess,
4:20
S1: the connections that this particular church has to power in Australia.
4:24
S1: Because you broke stories in 2025 that members of the
4:27
S1: brethren were involved in the Liberal Party's campaign in the
4:31
S1: last federal election. So can you just explain to us,
4:33
S1: I guess, how strong are their connections to power in Australia,
4:37
S1: and what was that particular story about with regards to
4:40
S1: their involvement in the Liberal Party's campaign?
4:43
S4: So the first thing to note is that traditionally they
4:45
S4: haven't voted because they believe that it's God's job to
4:49
S4: select governments. And so democracy is kind of somehow suspect
4:53
S4: under that regime. But they do believe that it's the
4:56
S4: responsibility of Christian men like themselves to try to influence governments.
5:02
S4: And so they've been very free in their attempts to
5:05
S4: do so through lobbying. They became very close, for example,
5:08
S4: to John Howard when he was the prime Minister. So
5:14
S4: the amount of money that has flowed to the Liberal
5:16
S4: and national parties is immense over the decades from the brethren,
5:20
S4: but hardly any of it is ever disclosed. How do
5:22
S4: we know this? Because back a few years ago, an
5:25
S4: anti-corruption inquiry by ICAC in New South Wales dug through
5:30
S4: the Liberal Party's funding history, and they found 66,500 dollars
5:36
S4: coming from dozens of brethren entities, all under the $1,500 threshold.
5:42
S4: Many of them were $1,499, and they were all collected
5:46
S4: together on a document that the Liberal Party had put together.
5:49
S4: And the head of the document it said, friends. So
5:53
S4: these brethren, these brethren friends, had been donating under the
5:57
S4: threshold to the Liberal Party to some considerable degree. I
6:01
S4: know certainly in the past, when we were allowed to
6:03
S4: know these things, that there were a number of senior brethren,
6:05
S4: elders who had parliamentary passes so that they could move
6:09
S4: freely around Parliament and lobby people. You know, their public
6:13
S4: facing charity, the rapid Relief Team who provided food to
6:17
S4: the poly pedal bike ride recently, which Angus Taylor and
6:20
S4: Tony Abbott were on. That's a brethren entity and one
6:24
S4: of the jobs of that entity. Documents reveal that one
6:27
S4: of their jobs is to lobby people of influence at
6:29
S4: the local level. So we know that they have enjoyed
6:33
S4: and do enjoy excellent contacts across the conservative side of politics.
6:38
S4: And a couple of times in the reign of the
6:41
S4: current man of God, Bruce Hales, they have got deeply
6:45
S4: involved in election campaigns. One was for John Howard in 2004,
6:50
S4: when they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on electoral advertising,
6:54
S4: but tried to hide their involvement by being. They called
6:57
S4: it flying under the radar. of the second period of
7:00
S4: election interference, if you like, was in 2025. And that's
7:05
S4: when they ran a two pronged campaign. Really. The first
7:08
S4: prong was the thousands and thousands of brethren members who
7:12
S4: kind of stacked into polling booths in seats that Peter Dutton,
7:16
S4: as Liberal leader, then thought they might win and tried
7:19
S4: to hand it out and talk to people and tried
7:22
S4: to sway the vote in favor of the Liberal and
7:25
S4: national parties. Even that campaign was pretty covert. Brethren were
7:29
S4: told to wear clothes that they would never normally wear.
7:32
S4: The women were allowed to wear pants. For the first time.
7:37
S4: I've heard stories of people going out and buying sort
7:40
S4: of fake tattoos and and fake earrings and wearing those
7:44
S4: to disguise the fact that they were brethren. And if
7:47
S4: they were asked whether they were brethren, they would deny it.
7:49
S4: The even more covert part of the campaign was organized
7:53
S4: by a number of very senior brethren people and coordinated
7:56
S4: with a number of very sketchy far right figures, including
8:00
S4: neo-Nazi associates, who they organised in secret chat groups on
8:06
S4: encrypted apps to stalk, heckle and film politicians from Anthony
8:12
S4: Albanese through to Greens politicians and also some of the teals.
8:17
S4: Monique Ryan specifically, and the filming was then put on
8:21
S4: social media on far right websites to try and influence
8:24
S4: the campaign in that kind of covert way. And it
8:28
S4: wasn't until quite recently that Sharon Groch and I, reporters
8:31
S4: at the Sydney Morning Herald discovered this and were able
8:35
S4: to unveil the brethren hand behind these extraordinary stunts that
8:40
S4: we'd seen during the campaign a year earlier.
8:46
S1: After the break.
8:47
S4: He seemed old. He spoke fairly slowly. It's the first
8:50
S4: time he's really ever been seen in public, and there
8:53
S4: was a lot of anticipation around this, not just in
8:57
S4: the people who are interested in politics, but also very
9:00
S4: much among his own flock in the brethren community.
9:11
S1: Okay. Now, this latest reporting that you're referring to with
9:13
S1: Sharon Gross, which is these allegations that the brethren secretly
9:17
S1: recruited neo-Nazis to harass MPs. That's pretty incredible stuff, right?
9:21
S1: But aside from that, aside from an allegiance with neo-Nazis,
9:25
S1: which I'm sure many listeners would, you know, would find objectionable.
9:29
S1: Why does the election interference, as it's called, like, why
9:33
S1: should that matter? Only because I'm sure people and organizations
9:37
S1: from all parts of our society, they're involved in political campaigning.
9:41
S1: So why is this deserving of scrutiny?
9:45
S4: So it matters, I think, in in several ways. One
9:48
S4: is that it was secret. It wasn't transparent. They took
9:51
S4: elaborate steps to try to hide their involvement. I think
9:54
S4: we all have a right to expect that the people
9:57
S4: who are trying to influence our elections should be public
10:01
S4: about it. The second thing is that it is against
10:06
S4: the charity law for a charity of any kind to
10:10
S4: involve themselves in partisan political campaigning. You can campaign on issues,
10:16
S4: but you can't campaign in support of one or other party.
10:20
S4: That is not a charitable purpose. And the Plymouth Brethren
10:23
S4: Christian Church have something like a dozen charities across Australia,
10:28
S4: part of a huge charitable network globally. But in Australia,
10:33
S4: their charities are worth well over $200 million in net assets.
10:37
S4: And money moves around this charitable system in a tax
10:39
S4: exempt environment, meaning that the rest of US taxpayers are
10:44
S4: giving them a leg up for all this money circulating
10:48
S4: around their ecosystem. So if it's proven that they were
10:54
S4: as an entity involved in partisan political campaigning, then that
10:59
S4: could threaten the charitable status, which is worth millions of
11:02
S4: dollars to Australian taxpayers. So that's probably the second main reason.
11:06
S4: But honestly, I think any attempt by any group to
11:11
S4: influence a campaign to hide who they are and to
11:15
S4: run these covert operations without being transparent about who they are,
11:20
S4: to me, that is a threat, ultimately to democracy. And,
11:23
S4: you know, very much the role of journalism and the
11:26
S4: media to bring out.
11:27
S1: And then on Friday, of course, big news broke that
11:30
S1: the world head honcho of the church, this is Bruce Hales,
11:33
S1: who we should note is an Australian originally from Sydney.
11:36
S1: He was expected to appear at a parliamentary inquiry examining
11:40
S1: this issue. So who is he and why was this
11:43
S1: such a big deal?
11:45
S4: Well, this was extraordinary. So Bruce Hales, I mean, you
11:48
S4: might just think of him as a bit of a
11:49
S4: peanut sort of leader of a religion that nobody knows
11:52
S4: very much about. But he is the kind of Comptroller
11:58
S4: general of a group that was described by the prime minister,
12:02
S4: Anthony Albanese, as a cult of 56,000 people globally. So
12:06
S4: it's quite a large number of people and sort of
12:08
S4: 16,000 or thereabouts in Australia. If you want to get
12:12
S4: married in the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, you need his permission.
12:16
S4: If you want to travel anywhere, you need his permission ultimately. Now, obviously,
12:22
S4: he's got other people. People refer to sending their requests
12:25
S4: for for marriage to, quote unquote, Sydney. And you'll get
12:29
S4: an email back from Sydney telling you, yes, you can
12:31
S4: marry this person or not. But behind that all is
12:34
S4: Bruce Hales. So for the 56,000 global flock, Hales essentially
12:40
S4: the man who controls many aspects of their lives, and
12:44
S4: since he's been the leader, he's never appeared publicly. He's
12:47
S4: got like a popemobile vehicle that drives directly into his
12:51
S4: meeting halls so that he's not spotted in public. He's
12:55
S4: got close personal protection, security. He's very a secretive man.
12:59
S4: So to to really drag him out into a public
13:02
S4: forum and to have him answer questions was quite an
13:06
S4: extraordinary feat by this committee.
13:09
S1: And so what did you make of Bruce Hale's evidence
13:11
S1: during that parliamentary inquiry, and what did it reveal?
13:15
S4: Bruce Hale's appeared before the committee in the morning on
13:18
S4: Friday for.
13:19
S5: The Hansard record. Sir, would you please state your full
13:21
S5: name and the capacity in which you appear before the committee?
13:24
S3: Bruce? David Hale's, and I'm appearing here as the senior
13:31
S3: leader of the brethren worldwide.
13:35
S5: Thank you very much.
13:36
S4: He was wearing a tie, which is not part of
13:39
S4: the brethren uniform. And it's sure proof that he's kind
13:43
S4: of put his armour on to confront the world. He
13:45
S4: was sitting in a room with quite a tight crop
13:48
S4: on his screen, with a vase of flowers and a
13:51
S4: Britannica book behind him. And he seemed old. He spoke
13:55
S4: fairly slowly. It's the first time he's really ever been
13:58
S4: seen in public, and there was a lot of anticipation
14:01
S4: around this, not just in the people who are interested
14:05
S4: in politics, but also very much among his own flock
14:08
S4: in the brethren community. So to see what he'd say
14:10
S4: and how he'd perform, he spoke quite slowly, deliberately, but
14:14
S4: other times that he was kind of just a humble
14:17
S4: church leader of a group of 56,000 people, whom Anthony
14:22
S4: Albanese has called a cult. So he had obviously been
14:25
S4: well prepared to come and deny his own personal involvement
14:29
S4: or the involvement of his church, per se, in this campaign.
14:33
S3: I had no involvement in the 2025 federal election. I
14:37
S3: want to be clear and unequivocal. I had no involvement
14:41
S3: whatsoever in relation to any members who volunteered or took
14:45
S3: part in any aspect of the 2025 federal election. I
14:50
S3: did not plan such activities. I did not coordinate such activities.
14:54
S3: I did not direct such activities. I did not fund
14:57
S3: such activities. This could not have been stated more clearly
15:00
S3: in my letter. The church does not engage in any
15:03
S3: political activity and if members do so, they do so
15:06
S3: in their personal capacity.
15:09
S4: After Bruce Hales finished his evidence, his son Gareth, his
15:12
S4: eldest son Gareth gave evidence. Now he's the one we've
15:15
S4: named as having been involved in the campaign that included
15:19
S4: far right figures, including some associates of neo Nazis, and
15:23
S4: that he'd been involved in some group chats. We've got
15:26
S4: evidence of that, in which some of these stunts that
15:29
S4: we've written about have been organised.
15:31
S6: In these chat groups. Uh, there is also discussion around
15:36
S6: engaging with known far right personalities who, who attend white
15:44
S6: supremacist neo-Nazis events.
15:46
S7: So I've had no contact. I've had no contact with neo-Nazis,
15:51
S7: and I completely reject their views.
15:53
S4: Now, he distanced himself from all that as well. He
15:56
S4: said perhaps he was added to some chats, but he
15:58
S4: hadn't participated and he disappeared after a while. He said
16:02
S4: he he didn't know most of these figures.
16:05
S6: You were not at a meeting in the election to
16:09
S6: talk about behavior that included. And tactics that included stalking
16:15
S6: and following and using various apps to surveil the Prime
16:19
S6: Minister and his location, to then send people who are
16:23
S6: being paid for to go and interrupt and harass the
16:27
S6: Prime Minister and candidates. You were not at such a
16:29
S6: meeting at a golf course in Sydney at the in
16:32
S6: the first week of the election campaign.
16:34
S7: No, the only meetings I've had at the golf course,
16:36
S7: at business meetings, business related, nothing to do with stalking,
16:42
S7: following all these other things that you're speaking about.
16:45
S4: When Gareth Hales appeared, he was in this kind of
16:48
S4: large conference room. There was a little subhead on his
16:51
S4: screen saying, Gareth Hales Santé Global. That's his company and
16:55
S4: a company that actually we've proven was involved in, in fact,
16:59
S4: hiring a room for one of these crucial meetings with
17:01
S4: far right figures. And he was pretty nonchalant. He was
17:04
S4: kind of sitting back in his white shirt. He wasn't
17:07
S4: wearing a tie. He was quite scathing at times of
17:11
S4: questions he was receiving and seemed to be sneering really
17:15
S4: at some aspects of the questioning.
17:16
S1: As you've reported, there isn't just a connection between the
17:19
S1: brethren and the Liberal Party, because you've reported that following
17:22
S1: the coalition's crushing election loss in the federal election in
17:25
S1: May last year, that sources within the church say elders
17:28
S1: and ordinary members of the exclusive brethren have begun shifting
17:32
S1: their allegiance to Pauline Hanson's One Nation. So is that
17:36
S1: something you're looking out for now, Michael?
17:37
S4: Yeah, we are looking at this. We haven't seen any
17:40
S4: practical sort of expression of this yet. But given the
17:45
S4: opacity of one Nation's finances, it's hard to tell how
17:49
S4: much of that large amount of fundraising that they've managed
17:52
S4: to do in recent times has come from brethren, members
17:55
S4: and businesses run by brethren. But we can expect, I think,
17:59
S4: given the kind of imprimatur that Bruce Hales has now
18:02
S4: given to what he called the red headed lady, that
18:05
S4: that will flow more freely. I've been told from insiders that,
18:10
S4: you know, they are not immune. They are residents of
18:12
S4: Australia as well. They're not immune to the pull of
18:15
S4: the Pauline Hanson One Nation message that we're all seeing
18:18
S4: in the polls, and that they had perhaps started shifting
18:22
S4: or asking questions, but that Hales recently, in ministry in church,
18:26
S4: gave her his imprimatur, as well as saying we should
18:30
S4: dig up a whole lot of uranium, build bombs and
18:33
S4: drop them on the Middle East.
18:35
S1: And finally, Michael, what are the main lessons then from
18:38
S1: this saga? You know, what do you hope is perhaps
18:40
S1: put into place to protect the integrity of future elections?
18:44
S4: Look, what I hope happens here is that the authorities
18:47
S4: being the Australian Electoral Commission, the Australian Charities and not
18:50
S4: for profit Commission, I hope that they are able to
18:55
S4: look through the patina of respectability of this group. Look
19:01
S4: through the covert nature of their operations and their spending.
19:04
S4: See the tens or tens of millions of dollars that
19:08
S4: this campaign spent, and be able to have a very
19:12
S4: close look at the charitable status of this group. More broadly,
19:16
S4: this has always been my aim, and I've been writing
19:18
S4: about these people for for 20 years now, is to
19:21
S4: just let politicians particularly know that the people, the polite,
19:28
S4: short haired, brown trousered men who are knocking on their
19:34
S4: doors to seek contracts or grants or favorable treatment are
19:42
S4: not a mainstream Christian church with the interest of their
19:46
S4: members at heart and in fact, a very damaging, high
19:49
S4: demand organization who have their own best interests, their best
19:54
S4: financial interests at heart. And, you know, that includes extremely
19:59
S4: generous funding for their network of high schools, which are
20:03
S4: set up really well to educate their children, but also
20:06
S4: to indoctrinate them in this group. And I think to me,
20:11
S4: that's a terrible use of our federal public money.
20:19
S1: Well, thank you so much, Michael, for your time.
20:21
S4: It's always a pleasure.
20:35
S1: Today's episode was produced by Josh towers. Our executive producer
20:39
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20:43
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