Kerikeri’s Westmount School pays sacked teacher Suzette Martin $27,700
Northern Advocate, New Zealand
by Imran Ali
April 23rd, 2011
COMPENSATED: Suzette Martin was sacked from the Exclusive Brethren High School and and won compensation after going to the Employment Court. (Photo / Apn)
An Exclusive Brethren school has to pay nearly $28,000 compensation to a teacher it sacked for handing her students a contemporary interpretation of text from Shakespeare’s King Lear without approval from the school committee.
Kerikeri’s Westmount School fired English teacher Suzette Martin in July 2009 – two years after she was employed – for “corruptly and morally defiling her students” in Year 13 through use of the text.
Her employment agreement required the 41-year-old single parent of Whangarei to seek and obtain the school’s approval for her use of teaching material.
Ms Martin had used a modern version of King Lear she had found on the internet to fulfil NCEA requirements.
She went to the Employment Relations Authority, claiming unfair dismissal, but lost and subsequently argued her case in the Employment Court, which has now ruled in her favour.
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Nick Xenophon targets "Tax lurk of biblical proportions"
For once, there is little to add to what Micheal Bachelard reports today in Australia’s The Age.
The penchant that the Exclusive Brethren have for creating networks of interwoven international, private, charitable and family trusts may at last undergo the scrutiny of Australia’s Tax Office.
Formidable cult-battler Nick Xenophon has his sights set – as Bachelard indicates below, the evidence speaks for itself.
Nick is no stranger to calling for investigations into cults; he is fearless, smart, well-respected and carries a big gun.
The old adage used by criminal investigators – “Follow the money” has never been more apt…
Exclusive Brethren parents claim ‘tax lurk of biblical proportions’
Michael Bachelard
March 25, 2011Parents in the Exclusive Brethren avoid paying tax on the bulk of their children’s school fees in an arrangement that would be illegal if sought by other Australian parents.
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Exclusive Brethren Schools
The following extracts are from Sect pupils in a class of their own, The New Zealand Herald, published on Sunday May 9th, 2010.
This furore commenced on May 2nd, 2010 when a former Exclusive Brethren school teacher was fired for using a non-approved textbook. The fired teacher spoke of clauses within her employment contract that includes proof that the cult attempts to prevent any of their children from going onto university education.
Why? They’re scared!
Imagine a school whose books had words blacked out or pages removed and large parts of the curriculum – particularly anything to do with puberty and sex – was simply not taught.
A school where teachers received unexpected late-night visits at home to check on their moral probity.
And where all aspects of school life are governed in every detail by a sacred text, but a committee has absolute discretion in deciding how to interpret it.
It may sound like the worst excesses of the Taliban in Afghanistan or the Iranian mullahs, but this is the prevailing orthodoxy in 15 Westmount schools across the country run by the Exclusive Brethren.
The Exclusive Brethren have replaced conscience with rules and directives. They do not practice faith, rather they separate themselves from society. They do not allow the strength of character that is built by learning right from wrong and the normal development of self-control – instead, they rip out pages from books!
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Who says Public Relations firms are ineffectual?
The news that Daniel Hales, brother to the Exclusive Brethren leader Bruce D. Hales, is to present a paper at the ICSA Annual Conference in New York in early July 2010 marks a new step in a carefully choreographed transformation.
Daniel Hales has lived in the shadow of his younger brother since not being selected as a suitable leader of the EB following the death of their father John S. Hales in 2002. Always heavily involved in the business and monetary aspects of the cult, he has nevertheless been carefully groomed over the past several years by Jackson Wells (http://www.jacksonwells.com.au/), the EB’s Public Relations Agency, to act as a spokesman for the group.
Several spokesmen have come and gone since Bruce Hales gained control in 2002. Due to the reluctance (some say inability) of Bruce Hales to face the media, a series of personalities have attempted to divert attention away from what many view as firm evidence of cultic behavior. Indeed, the Exclusive Brethren were recently described by current Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd as “an extremist cult and sect” who went on to state that he believed “they break up families“.
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November 21st, 2009
The impact of Australian senator Nick Xenophon’s comments in Canberra this week regarding the Scientology ‘church’ should not be under-estimated.
First there is the man. Nick Xenophon is an independant and carries no party allegience. His 400BC namesake was also a soldier as well as a respected historian. Nick has a background in law and is a resourceful and intelligent political warrior. Several are noting that the modern-day Xenophon seems to have a strategy in his carefully worded attack against the ‘religion’ of Scientology.
“There are a couple of things to know about Nick Xenophon. The first is that the independent senator from Adelaide has a genius for publicity. He’s a hustler par excellence. The second is he’s rationing his tabloid impulses in Canberra. Xenophon’s record to date suggests he’s opting for strategy rather than sensation; picking his political fights, not going at everything like a bull at a gate.”
This is not a ‘flash in the pan’. Xenophon has been planning his attack for some time:
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It is a remarkable moment – an Exclusive Brethren submission to the Australian Human Rights Commission is a newsworthy event indeed! The following submission was published a few hours ago on the Human Rights Commission website.
The three names shown as signatories: Daniel Hales, John Myhill and David Stewart, are representative elders of the cult in Australia. (Daniel Hales is the passed-over older brother to the current reclusive leader, Bruce D. Hales.)
There is little hint of the Jackson Wells ‘turn of phrase’ in this tangled document – some comments border on Incitement to Discriminate and the general appeal seems to be little more than a ‘self-pity party‘.
Submission to the Australian Human Rights Commission Continue reading »
on
Freedom of Religion and Belief in the 21st Century
by
Daniel Hales, John Myhill and David Stewart
[2009]
Are Jackson Wells now writing Exclusive Brethren advertisements for teachers in their schools? Surely we are not alone in recognising certain phrases and the old familiar half-truths and hidden meanings. Below is a July 2nd advert for a teacher in an Exclusive Brethren school in Australia. The EB are looking for a ‘teacher of Business and VET based Accountancy’ (a highly honored profession among the Brethren).
It is quite striking how impossible it is to tell that this is an Exclusive Brethren ad! This brings back memories of those notorious political smear leaflets – possibly the main difference between those and the advertisment below is that the address here is probably real!
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Many have been outraged at the recent Australian Family Court decision to separate an ex-member of the cult from his children. Most will look squarely at the Judge responsible and ask how this could happen? But this is only the latest case in a series of similar lawsuits.
The Exclusive Brethren do not recruit; they do not evangelise in order to increase membership. They increase from within. Great pressure is brought to bear on the young to marry and produce offspring. The resulting children are their future – estimated to be approximately 17,000 strong following the 1970 Aberdeen Incident, the cult today numbers in excess of 46,000 worldwide in over 10 countries.
The Exclusive Brethren protect their young with survivalist intensity. Putting their (and tax-payer) money where their mouth is, they have created a large international network of fiercely private schools that are there for one sole purpose – to keep their children separate from the outside ‘evil’ world. It is more than ironic that the Exclusive Brethren have to recruit non-member teachers to operate their growing number of schools as there is a worldwide ban on attending university for all children. The cult’s educational trusts are monitored closely by Exclusive Brethren ‘volunteers’ to ensure that there is no deviation from a carefully constructed EB-approved syllabus.
It is therefore vital to protect the young assets, those whom the Exclusive Brethren are raising protectively within themselves, behind intentionally closed doors. With this in mind, they weed out the troublemakers (normally young men) and do their utmost to prevent any further contamination of the cult’s ideas and doctrinal restrictions.
Dated January 2005, the following submission was made to Australian Parliament’s Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs by the Exclusive Brethren following a request by then Senator Evans. ((See original submission at http://www.aph.gov.au/Senate/committee/legcon_ctte/estimates/add_0607/ag/qon_18.pdf)
It lays out clearly their tactical approach to Family Court cases.
COMMENTS ON ASPECTS OF THE GOVERNMENT’S 10 NOVEMBER 2003 DISCUSSION PAPER
– A NEW APPROACH TO THE FAMILY LAW SYSTEM
– IMPLEMENTATION OF REFORMS
Key Points:
The key points made in this submission are:
• The importance of the institution of marriage must be paramount in family law issues;
• The concept of a child’s rights is wider than assumed in the discussion paper;
• The time a parenting agreement can be entered into must be examined;
• The age at which a child’s wishes should be seriously considered must be reviewed and a younger child should not be subjected to radical lifestyle changes without compelling reasons.
What do Don Brash, John Howard and Kevin Rudd have in common?
Answer: these three politicians came into contact with the Exclusive Brethren and have suffered political damage as a result.
Don Brash and John Howard are now history, but Kevin Rudd currently remains the Prime Minister of Australia. Will Rudd manage to retain his role in the next Australian General Election? Time will tell, but the informed media are sharpening their swords over a mounting list of unfathomable decisions that simply do not add up. Of greater import perhaps is the ‘chatter’ from members of the Australian electorate who are the final arbiters in the future of any politician.
For example, consider the voices of those who have objected to the seeming duplicity in Keven Rudd’s decision to allow over $70 million to be paid to the Exclusive Brethren school system in Australia. It is almost mystifying to watch the man who had the courage in late 2007 to call the Exclusive Brethren what they are – “an extremist cult and sect … who break up families” – and then just two years later, to fork out an almost obscenely disproportionate contribution to the school system blatantly designed by the cult for the cult.
These are not schools aimed at producing well-rounded citizens of the countries and communities in which they are located. They serve one main purpose –
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