Oct 16, 2:01 PM
Divine Intervention or Political Machine? The Exclusive Brethren's Election Amnesia
Parliamentary inquiries struggle when spiritual guidance and political campaigning blend into seamless deniability.
When thousands of devout believers happen to deploy identical campaign slogans, man the exact same polling booths, and rally behind a single political party, one might suspect an organized effort. Yet according to the leadership of the Exclusive Brethren, it was all merely a cosmic coincidence of spontaneous civic spirit.
Appearing before an Australian parliamentary inquiry into the 2025 federal election, Bruce Hales, the supreme leader of the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, offered a masterclass in institutional detachment. Pushing back against accusations of covert political coordination with the Coalition, Hales insisted he had zero knowledge or involvement in his followers’ electioneering. He stated explicitly: I did not plan such activities. I did not coordinate such activities. I did not direct such activities. I did not fund such activities.
The testimony sits awkwardly alongside the physical reality of the 2025 campaign. Barely two weeks before the vote, Hales delivered a sermon urging his congregation to pray for good government and suggesting Australia needed to be happy and smiling again. Unsurprisingly, those precise phrases quickly materialised on Liberal Party campaign billboards. When questioned, the church leader maintained his words were never meant as a call to mobilization and denied knowing how they migrated onto political advertising.
His son, Gareth Hales, added another layer of corporate ambiguity to the proceedings. While acknowledging business meetings with far-right figures associated with disruptive anti-Labor stunts, the younger Hales rejected reports that his firm, Sante Global, financed political agitation. When asked about text messages encouraging members to keep polling booths manned, he offered the comforting legal logic that church members trailing politicians in regional electorates were acting not as religious devotees, but as concerned business owners and private citizens.
The spectacle predictably devolved into partisan theater. Coalition politicians like Senator Bridget McKenzie shouted accusations of religious persecution, likening the grilling to a Spanish Inquisition, while crossbench figures such as Andrew Gee openly ridiculed the church's defense.
The inquiry exposes the persistent absurdity of modern political investigations. When faith, business networks, and political ambition overlap, formal hierarchies vanish into thin air, leaving lawmakers to shadowbox with convenient deniability.
Written by Thorben Thiede thorben.thiede@alpineweekly.com
