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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The Exclusive Brethren have been desperate to repair some of the public damage caused to their reputation since their disasterous foray into international politics in 2003. Initially they attempted to handle their own public relations, but their inability to be persuasive in the media forced them to hire a public relations firm.
“In early 2007, senior members of the Exclusive Brethren Christian Fellowship approached Jackson Wells seeking assistance dealing with a sudden and intense increase in media interest…”
“At the heart of Jackson Wells strategy to assist the Brethren was to increase the Church’s engagement with the wider community, mainly through the media.”
“The Brethren Church still has some way to travel in gaining an accurate public understanding of the lifestyle of its members”
The Exclusive Brethren have a track record of hypocrisy. For example, while still maintaining that the Internet was a “pipeline of filth”, they created a website that even today spouts:
“The Exclusive Brethren practice separation from evil, recognising this as God’s principle of unity. They shun the conduits of evil communications: television, the radio, and the Internet…”
In an attempt to demonstrate a self-perceived commitment to public good deeds, The Exclusive Brethren used to trumpet the fact that they had offered unspecified assistance in the aftermath of 9/11 on their ‘evil’ website:
“The Exclusive Brethren assisted the rescue efforts at Ground Zero during the aftermath of the tragic attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.”
This changed following the February 2009 bushfires in Victoria Australia when Jackson Wells co-founder quietly leaked the fact that the Exclusive Brethren had donated $3 million to the Red Cross Appeal. (Source Peter Jackson blog )
Shortly afterward, the Exclusive Brethren website replaced their 9/11 self-congratulation with the Jackson Wells bushfire donation story:
“Members of the Exclusive Brethren donated more than A$3 million to the Red Cross Bushfire Appeal to assist those affected by the devastating Black Saturday blazes in Victoria on February 7, 2009.
Many Brethren live close to areas burned and employ people who lost loved ones and property in the fires.”
Source – The Exclusive Brethren website
To ensure that the public get the message, an Exclusive Brethren school has now published a book labelled as a fund raiser. In a remarkable public relations coup, they even persuaded Kevin Rudd, the Australian Prime Minister to offer support for the enterprise!
The public relations smoke screen follows on the heels of the recent announcement that the Exclusive Brethren schools system have been granted over $70 million (AUS) in Australian federal funds over the next two years.
Brethren schools get $70m in funding
The Australian
by Rick Wallace
January 12, 2010The Rudd government is handing more than $70 million to schools run by the Exclusive Brethren, a religious sect Kevin Rudd described as an “extremist cult” that breaks up families.
The sect’s schools have secured more than $8.4m under the government’s school building stimulus package and they will share in $62m in recurrent taxpayer funding.
Documents show a Brethren-run school at Swan Hill in northern Victoria was granted $1.2m for a library and $800,000 for a hall when its most recent annual report shows it had just 16 pupils and already had a library.
Grants data released by the commonwealth shows that Brethren schools in every state received funding under the $12.4 billion schools stimulus package. Despite the Brethren’s past disdain for computers, figures show its schools have received more than 300 under the commonwealth computers-in-school initiative.
Although it might appear that ‘flying under the radar’ has recently proved beneficial to the secretive cult and their advisors, the confused signals from the Rudd administration have resulted in increased media scrutiny. Rick Wallace of the Australian continues investigating the outrageous funding:
Exclusive Brethren enjoying $1m taxpayer windfall
The Australian
by Rick Wallace
January 13, 2010Despite being assessed as wealthy, the Brethren’s mushrooming network of schools is being funded at a higher rate than independent schools in battling regional communities such as Bourke and Longreach.
The secretive but financially savvy sect has taken advantage of a “no-disadvantage” clause put in the funding system by the Howard government, of which the Brethren was a strong supporter.
…
The no-disadvantage clause means that despite the wealth of the Brethren schools’ communities, their funding level is preserved at that awarded to the original campus at Meadowbank in Sydney. Australian Education Union federal president Angelo Gavrielatos said the funding guarantee was costing taxpayers $3.5 billion a year and must be urgently reviewed.
“The over-funding of the Exclusive Brethren’s MET school is a prime example of a corrupted funding system, with half the private schools in the country funded above their entitlement,” Mr Gavrielatos said.
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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Ever since the message eventually sunk home with Bruce Hales – that whatever he is as leader of the Exclusive Brethren, he is not exactly expert in matters political – governments and political circles have mostly breathed a sign of relief.
Not so Australia’s Peter Costello who has seemingly missed his old wealthy friends so much, he was forced to go find a replacement!
Costello continues to catch the fire
22 January 2009
by Bernard Keane
Canberra correspondent
Peter Costello will continue his long association with the extreme Christian group Catch the Fire ministries on Australia Day, when the group holds a “prayer celebration” at Melbourne Town Hall.
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September 21st, 2008
Sect attempted secret donations to Howard
WA Today / The Age
by Michael Bachelard
September 21st, 2008
Members of the Exclusive Brethren attempted to donate to John Howard’s re-election campaign last year in a way that meant the cash injection would never have been disclosed to the public.
September 21st, 2008
Members of the Exclusive Brethren were actively attempting to donate to John Howard’s re-election campaign last year in a manner that meant the cash injection would not have been disclosed to the public, according to a new book about the secretive Christian sect.
Fairfax newspapers say a senior Liberal Party source has confirmed in the book, Behind The Exclusive Brethren, that in the weeks leading up to the November election he was approached by a group of Exclusive Brethren men in a Sydney hotel who offered him a large, anonymous financial donation. Continue reading »
May 24th, 2008
A news article published today in New Zealand highlights one of the most outrageous and frankly, stupid projects the Exclusive Brethren ever funded during their laughable ‘political’ enterprises in the last NZ elections.
When the book is finally written on the political impact of a cult living separated from society whose then new leader (Australian Bruce D. Hales) arbitrarily decided during 2004 to throw bushel-loads of money in ‘supporting’ selected political figures, the names of their ‘chosen’ immediately tell the tale:
- George Bush
- Donald Brash
- John Howard
‘Firestorm: Black Saturday’s Tragedy’ and the familiar sound of Exclusive Brethren silence
Frequently, it is what the Exclusive Brethren do not say that speaks loudest.
Many will recall the first cult smear advertising that first hit the streets in New Zealand in 2005. Later, Australia suffered the same influx of brochures, pamphlets and handouts. They all had one thing in common - the group behind the material was never mentioned.
Rather than provide any normal route to identity, the Exclusive Brethren intentionally obfuscate their publications. When you consider the way they hide their tracks, this is perhaps understandable: false addresses, misleading names, even the business premises of their unsuspecting tenants … One thing is constant, the name of the Taylorite / Symington / Hales Exclusive Brethren never appears.
9/11 and now 'Black Saturday'
And now, in perhaps their most cynical effort todate, they use their own children in an effort to extract money from a public for whom they care nothing and even seemingly entrap a Prime Minister who has publicly declared them an “extremist cult” to assist them. And their public relations lever? The killer bush fires that swept across Victoria in southern Australia during February, less than a year ago.
‘ Firestorm: Black Saturday’s Tragedy‘ is published by Dennis Jones & Associates of Byswater, Victoria, Australia and there is even a website dedicated to the PR cause: http://www.blacksaturdaysfirestorm.com.au
The Glenvale School is an Exclusive Brethren school – one of those campuses that is set to receive some of the over $70 million hand-out authorized by Kevin Rudd over the next two years:
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