The Exclusive Brethren sect has been cleared of two out of three allegations of breaching federal electoral law after a nine-month police investigation.

A third investigation is continuing, but has so far yielded no evidence of wrongdoing.

Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty said yesterday the police investigation into the Brethren's spending of $370,000 on pro-Liberal Party advertising had turned up no evidence that the sect broke campaign disclosure laws.

Mr Keelty told Greens senator Bob Brown in a Senate estimates hearing that police had also been unable to find any evidence that the Brethren were behind an unauthorised advertising pamphlet, distributed in Wentworth, in the lead-up to the election.

Mr Keelty said police were still examining revelations that a Brethren member deposited $340,000 into the bank accounts of a company that paid for the advertising.

The company, Willmac, was set up by a Brethren member and paid for dozens of pro-John Howard and anti-Greens pamphlets.

The Brethren has always denied the church itself was behind the ad blitz.

Willmac was set up three weeks before the election and deregistered 18 months after it.

Over the last few weeks, a series of Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) articles have revealed the corruption of the federal Socio-Economic Status (SES) funding model, used to allocate education funds to private schools.

The articles followed the leaking of a report of a closed-door review by the Department of Education, commissioned by the Howard government and completed in 2007. The Rudd government refused to release it to the SMH under a freedom of information request.

A NSW Teachers Federation (NSWTF) press release on February 12 identified the key inequities inherent in the SES model. “The current federal system of funding private schools is based on census data (postcode) not family income. Schools’ resources are also not taken into account when determining funding. Wealthy private schools in particular are able to use government funding to expand facilities while continuing to increase student fees.”

The 2007 review found that the Exclusive Brethren schools — of which there are 16 campuses throughout NSW — is one of the “biggest winners” in this funding arrangement, increasing its funding by building new campuses, according to the February 11 SMH. The Brethren’s MET school at Meadowbank “is the parent school for the other 15 campuses. Only one of these, at Kellyville, is within 50 kilometres of the parent school. One, Lavington, is 600 kilometres away in Albury … If they were called new schools, they would not qualify for the same generous funding. But as ‘campuses’, they keep it”, the article says.

The MET school was found to already be receiving more funding than the funding formula entitles it to, and according to the report this is not uncommon: half of all private schools are funded above their entitlement.

“This overfunding has cost taxpayers more than $2 billion over four years”, the SMH article says “and, according to the review, will cost taxpayers $2.7 billion over the next four-year funding cycle, starting next year”.

By establishing new campuses, schools such as MET have been able to work this already unequal system to their greater advantage.

Australian public schools are open to all children and educate the overwhelming majority of students from Indigenous, non-English speaking, low income and special needs backgrounds. However they receive only around a third of the total federal government funding allocated to schools.

The NSWTF is calling upon state and federal governments to increase the recurrent, sustainable funding for public schools. The federal government’s own ministerial taskforce has estimated that an additional $2.9 billion minimum per year is needed for public schools to reach national educational goals. The NSWTF has called on the federal government to commit the additional funding required for public schools.

Prior to the federal election, and after a massive advertising and lobbying campaign conducted by the Australian Education Union, ALP education spokesperson Stephen Smith was explicit in stating that no federal government funding would be taken away from private schools.

Following the series of SMH articles, the federal government has now decided to conduct a review of the SES funding model. On January 5, the NSWTF called for the review to be an open inquiry into funding arrangements for public and private schools, with the opportunity for individuals and organisations to make submissions. Announcing the review on February 11, education minister Julia Gillard claimed that it will be open and transparent.

From: Comment & Analysis, Green Left Weekly issue #740
20 February 2008.

The Labour Party leadership has become involved in an embarrassing dispute with its wealthiest backer, expatriate multimillionaire Owen Glenn, after he claimed that Prime Minister Helen Clark tried to lure him into politics to become Transport Minister.

Helen Clark said yesterday: "It never happened."

Mr Glenn also suggested in an interview that his $500,000 donation to Labour before the 2005 election was prompted by concerns about the Exclusive Brethren campaign against Labour and the Greens.

But Labour Party president Mike Williams said that was not correct: "Owen is confused about the timing."

Mr Glenn also revealed that he lent the Labour Party money after the election to employ fundraisers which had since been repaid.

Mr Williams confirmed the loan but said it was made last year and therefore its worth as a donation would be included in the declarations that had to be made to the Electoral Commission by April 30 this year.

Mr Glenn and Helen Clark will be able next week to personally discuss their differences over his recollections because she will be opening a new building named after him at Auckland University Business School.

Mr Glenn, who lives in Monaco, donated $7.5 million to the Business School. He made his fortune in international freight. He was made an officer of the NZ Order of Merit for services to business and the community.

He is visiting New Zealand for the opening and was reported yesterday as telling the Dominion Post that Helen Clark had tried to lure him back and into the Labour Cabinet.

She had suggested that with his background, he would be a sitter for the transport portfolio. He said he was not convinced because with all the major transport assets sold off to private owners, there would have been little for him to do.

He told the Dominion Post he had made the decision to donate to Labour while on his yacht in the Caribbean.

"There was a little bit of controversy to do with some church that had done something," he said in reference to the Brethren's $1.2m campaign to support the election of National.

Mr Glenn did not return calls by the Herald and Helen Clark issued only her short denial through a spokeswoman.

The Exclusive Brethren's "sneaky" campaign to oust the Labour government at the last election prompted one of New Zealand's richest men to level the playing field with $500,000.

It was not, said expatriate billionaire Owen Glenn, a payment for his New Year's gong, as some had claimed after he was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit.

"Everyone thinks there is a subplot here, but there's not," he said. "I just thought it would be a good thing to do ... spice up the race a little bit."

Born in India and raised in New Zealand, Mr Glenn now lives in Monaco. He is still a New Zealand citizen and returned this week to open Auckland University's business school.

He has given $7.5 million toward the $50 million cost and $600,000 a year in scholarships. The school has been named after him and the study hall after his late mother.

With tongue firmly in cheek, Mr Glenn quipped that he had paid far more to get his name on the building than he did for the gong.

In fact, the donation to the business school was the biggest he had made in New Zealand, and possibly the world, he said.

Mr Glenn did not go to university because his father fell ill while he was a teenager and there was no money. Instead, he worked his way through a series of labouring jobs in New Zealand and in Europe.

Eventually, with $200,000 capital, he started his freight forwarding business, OTS Logistics. Today, he is reportedly worth $1 billion - a claim he refuses to confirm: "Everything is held in trust, so I can truthfully say I have about $200 million."

Having set up a charitable foundation 27 years ago, Mr Glenn has given money to many projects across the globe. He made the decision to give $500,000 to the New Zealand Labour Party while on his yacht in the Caribbean.

"There was a little bit of controversy to do with some church that had done something."

That controversy was a $1 million campaign by the Exclusive Brethren to get National elected, a move that sparked the Government's race to bring in new electoral finance laws before this year's election.

What really riled Mr Glenn was the "sneaky" way in which the Brethren had reportedly tried to hide the fact it was behind the campaign.

"I thought, `Poor old Labour; let's make this a little more interesting.' There's a little bit of imp in me."

Besides, he believed Prime Minister Helen Clark had been doing a good job of running the country.

She was determined, honest and really cared about the country and its people, he said. "I think you get a fair deal from her."

So he settled on $500,000 - because $100,000 was not enough and $1 million was too much.

In the past, Miss Clark had tried to lure him back to New Zealand and into the Labour Cabinet, suggesting that, with his background, he would be a sitter for the plum role of transport minister.

But Mr Glenn was not convinced, saying that, with all the major transport assets sold off to private owners, there would be little for him to do.

He had not given any thought to whether he would donate to Labour's campaign again this year, or to any other political party, but believed they no longer needed his help.

After the last election, he told the Labour Party to ditch the begging bowl and lent the party "a relatively small amount of money" to employ the services of fundraisers.

"From what I'm told, they got some very good advice ... they should be self-supporting now." The loan has since been repaid.

As for Labour's performance since his controversial donation, Mr Glenn said Miss Clark had done an "adequate" job, having got a free trade deal with China. But now, for the sake of expediency, New Zealand needed to drop its no-nuclear stance and do a deal with the United States.

"Get the bloody thing. Pump another $4 billion into the country so we can afford another beer and put another ten bucks on the horses."

A 73-year-old former Nelson Exclusive Brethren member has been committed to trial on historic sex charges.

Clive Allen Petrie faces seven representative charges of indecently assaulting four girls between 1951 and 1985.

All evidence at today's depositions hearing in the Nelson District Court was suppressed.
Defence counsel Hamish Riddoch sought a suppression order saying if the evidence was published it could prejudice a trial.

He said some charges dated back 56 years and an application would be made to stay the proceedings and for the charges to be discharged.

That application would be heard by a district court judge and there could possibly be a judicial review.
Crown prosecutor Glen Marshall did not oppose the suppression application.

Justices of the Peace Harry Baigent and Jill McKnight ordered the evidence be suppressed until a further court order.

The JPs remanded Petrie on bail for callover on April 24.

Private schools identified as receiving an already too-generous share of government funding are exploiting a loophole to claim even more money from taxpayers - simply by building more campuses.

Among the biggest winners is the Exclusive Brethren, a controversial sect which has established 16 campuses around NSW, a secret review by the federal Education Department, leaked to the Herald, reveals.

The review singles out the MET School at Meadowbank, run by the Brethren, as an example of what it sees as schools getting an unfair advantage. It is the parent school for the other 15 campuses. Only one of these, at Kellyville, is within 50 kilometres of the parent school. One, Lavington, is 600 kilometres away in Albury.

If they were called new schools, they would not qualify for the same generous funding. But as "campuses", they keep it.

The report says that MET School already receives more assistance than it is strictly entitled to under the federal formula for funding private schools. That, in itself, is not unusual.

As the Herald revealed on Saturday, the review points out that half the nation's private schools are funded above their entitlement under this formula, which measures each school's need according to the socio-economic status of the regions where families of its students live.

The department is critical of the "inequities" being entrenched because these schools, under a deal struck with the Howard government, have had their funding maintained at the same level as before the SES system was introduced in 2001.

The overfunding has cost taxpayers more than $2 billion over four years and, according to the review, will cost $2.7 billion over the next four-year funding cycle, starting next year.

But schools such as MET have been able to extend this generous treatment even further

by establishing the campuses. "A pattern is emerging among Funding Maintained schools to establish campuses in preference to new schools," the department review says.

"A campus of a school has the same funding status as the parent school and where the parent school is Funding Maintained, this provides a funding advantage for the newly established campus."

If the campuses were to be established as new schools, it says, they would be assessed on their socio-economic needs and funded accordingly.

Under current laws there is no restriction on where a non-government school may set up a campus, provided it is accredited by the State Government and in the same state. The review says the loophole should be investigated before the next four-year funding agreement, from 2009, is settled later this year.

A spokeswoman for the MET School, Jacqui Van de Velde-Gilbert, said the campus network had nothing to do with funding incentives and was "perfectly legal". She said the school had established 16 campuses, including the parent school, in NSW to centralise governance, administration, teacher networking and education programs, ensuring they were consistent. Some schools were in poorer areas and would attract high levels of funding in their own right.

"Had the campuses set up as stand-alone schools, they would have struggled to continue without access to the central support," she said.

"The school's decision to develop this model was based on need. Families in particular areas requested help in establishing educational facilities for their children, not on the basis of funding."

The NSW Greens MP John Kaye said the Melrose Park School in South Australia was also an Exclusive Brethren school and included in the Funding Maintained category.

"Its Mt Gambier students are counted under the Funding Maintained system even though they are at a separate campus, established well after the SES system was introduced," Dr Kaye said.

Despite having previously criticised the Funding Maintained system as unfair, the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, locked Labor into keeping it before the federal election.

The Department of Education's internal review of the funding for private schools was commissioned by the Howard government and completed last year.

The Rudd Government refused to release it to the Herald under a freedom of information request. The leaked report recommends dealing with the extra funding by gradually taking money away from many schools until they receive their correct entitlement.

Dr Kaye said: "Any claims to having implemented an SES-based model are a sham as long as almost half of all private schools are sheltered from the formula."

Former members of the religious sect that has taken over a Heaton Mersey school have spoken of their disgust at the way the group allegedly splits up families.

Last week, the Express revealed that the site of a former Catholic primary on Didsbury Road has been taken over by the highly secretive Exclusive Brethren.

As a result, Mereside Education Trust, a small independent school of 60 pupils, moved into the former site of St John Vianney primary in January.

But former members of the Brethren, which bans TV and is described by some as a "cult", say the group forcibly breaks up families by shunning anyone who leaves.

David Shorto, who left the Brethren with his wife and daughters in 1981 after being ostracised for watching the royal wedding on TV, says he has had no contact with his siblings or parents since - despite them only living round the corner.

Mr Shorto, of Abingdon Road, Bramhall, said: "I think the whole thing stinks. I don’t suppose their base philosophies have changed - they’re the church, and everything else is an error.

"They have no interest in anything other than themselves.

"I’ve got five siblings, most of whom live in this area, and they will have no contact with me at all. I wasn’t even told when my parents died."

And international website Peebs.net, a forum for ex-Brethren members, also got in touch with the Express. The website campaigns against the splitting of families - known as Separation - that can be caused by the group’s exclusivity.

They pointed out that the group’s beliefs should not be confused with evangelism, or right-wing Christian fundamentalists either, describing Separation as "sick", and adding: "They are in a self-made category of their own making and choosing."

Other people who read the story online were also vocal in their criticism of the sect, posting messages on our website.

One, calling themselves ‘Lyn Parry’, said: "The EB have a way of getting what they want and they have the money to do it with.

"No Christ in this religion. More wanting to get out that stay in, but can’t because of family ties.

"Plenty to keep people in too, security. If they leave they lose everything."

With the Rudd government in office- where to now for the Exclusive Brethren? John Kaye MP (Greens) on the Exclusive brethren, Federal funding and the tax-payer dollar.

Listen to the broadcast

Extract from Transcript:

John Kaye: On August 22nd, speaking in Adelaide, the Prime Minister described the Exclusive Brethren as an extremist cult and sect. He sent on to say, 'I also believe that it breaks up families. I also believe that there are real problems with the provision of modern education for kids under their system, for example, not giving access to the full range of information technology assistance.' He went on to say that Mr Howard has responsibility to level with the Australian public, 'remember the Exclusive Brethren are currently under investigation by the Australian Federal Police concerning previous election activities. Mr Howard needs to be fair dinkum with the Australian community rather than pretending this just "some other group". They are not. They split up families and I am deeply concerned about their impact on communities across Australia.'

Stephen Crittenden: Well one of the interesting things there is that Kevin Rudd made specific mention of his qualms about Exclusive Brethren schools.

John Kaye: Kevin Rudd makes a major issue out of education and the Exclusive Brethren schools. He could have, but did not go on to say that they're probably the only schools in Australia that are closed, in the sense that they do not allow people, students who do not belong to their particular religion to go to those schools. I don't know of any other publicly-funded religious education institution that does that in Australia.

Stephen Crittenden: Yes, I know you've made a particular point about that, their refusal to accept enrolments from children who aren't members of the cult, but why is that an issue? I mean presumably they would get an exemption under the Anti-Discrimination Act if they needed to there on the grounds of religious belief.

John Kaye: Well look, all private schools have automatic exemption from the Anti-Discrimination legislation, both State and Federal across Australia, but our point is that these schools around Australia in 2008 will receive m ore than $10.1-million. That's public funding, that's money which is being spent on a public purpose. That money is not intended for private purposes. People pay taxes with the understanding that money is going towards expenditure for all children in Australia, not for the education that is conducted by a sect for a sect internally and behind closed doors.

Stephen Crittenden: Julia Gillard, the Education Minister, has indicated that the new government will retain the funding formula that it inherited from the previous Prime Minister for at least another four years. Presumably you would want to be mounting an argument that the Exclusive Brethren schools somehow represented important exception to that funding formula.

John Kaye: We think Julia Gillard's unconditional commitment to the Howard funding formula was irresponsible. This will lock in something like $50-million going to the Exclusive Brethren, when the leader of her party has acknowledged that they're a sect, has acknowledged their real issues about their education system and has acknowledged that this is an organisation that breaks up families. It seems to us that to make a blanket commitment to a funding formula which the Labor party has been critical of, is not the right thing to do. There need to be exceptions made where the funding is going to schools and institutions which are simply not acting in the public benefit.

Stephen Crittenden: I'm presuming you have no problem with the Exclusive Brethren running their own schools, that where you do have a problem is that the Australian taxpayer should be paying for them when the Exclusive Brethren is so hostile to Australian democratic political values.

John Kaye: We certainly don't believe that the Australian government should be paying for the destruction of Australian values as goes on in Exclusive Brethren schools. The issue of whether they should be allowed to run schools or not, comes back to child protection issues, whether it's appropriate that children be so profoundly excluded from opportunities in society by not giving them opportunities to learn about information and communication technology, whether this is an appropriate way for an organisation to behave or not is another question, and one that I think needs more investigation.

Stephen Crittenden: Would you agree that Kevin Rudd, in his statement last year about the Exclusive Brethren being an extremist cult and sect, seemed to have opened the door in fact to just that kind of broader investigation?

John Kaye: I suspect Kevin Rudd regrets having said those things inasmuch as not that he thinks they're not true, but as much as he's opened up a Pandora's Box; it's difficult for a Prime Minister of Australia to have said those things and to continue to allow funding to flow in the way it is and in the way it will, and to preside over that without any critical examination of the way in which the school operates.

Stephen Crittenden: OK, let's gaze deeply into this Pandora's Box then. We know that you're a proponent of support for public education. Is it too easy for new independent schools to get accreditation at present, do you think?

John Kaye: The situation with the Exclusive Brethren and also the situation with teaching Intelligent Design as science in a large number of schools around Australia, indicates to the Greens that there are real problems with accreditation and with the way new private schools can set up. When the Howard government came to power in 1996, they abolished a thing called the New Schools policy, so there's no federal regulation on the way schools are set up. In New South Wales alone, there are a large number of schools - teaching about 15,000 students - which teach Intelligent Design as science. ...