Bob Brown (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

‘Air-conditioned,’ says Senator Abetz. What we know is that these children have been forever psychologically traumatised by that experience. That is what the Exclusive Brethren have supported against the Greens, who stood up for the rights of children in those places. It is a very different set of circumstances when you analyse what they are up to. They just supported the election of a Labor government in Tasmania which rolled out poker machines throughout the community—nobody else was licensed to do so. The Exclusive Brethren supported Labor against the Greens, who campaigned against poker machines in the community. The point I am making is that here is an organisation which prohibits their members from voting but have got involved in a political support situation and in vilification of the Greens, and they do not like it. It is full of catches for them. They find themselves caught out. How do they get around that? They get around it by trying to be secretive and not to be seen, by flying beneath the radar, and that is the problem. They are pouring tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars into political campaigns in this country and elsewhere without saying: ‘We are the Exclusive Brethren. We’re involved in politics. We are backing this side of politics against that.’

The ex-Prime Minister of New Zealand, David Lange, who had a bit more fibre than the Labor Party here today, said:

There are some things my electorate could do without. There is an airport and a sewage farm, but less appealing still is the presence among us of a large number of Exclusive Brethren.

He went on to say:

While most religions have elements of wackiness in them, the incongruity of the rules by which the Brethren live is unusually abnormal. Their sewer pipes must go straight to the mains. They eschew shared driveways and prohibit cross-lease property ownership. Their cars must not be turbo charged. The closest they come to sense is banning television. Computers are out, as are radiotelephones, cell phones, record players and bar coders. All this newfangled stuff is the work of Lucifer, although aircraft conveniently are accepted. To engage in swimming, team sport, entertainment or friendship outside the membership brings swift exclusion from the sect. It goes without saying that their views on the status and role of women make Saint Paul look like a feminist.

Add this from Mr Lange, to the laughter of the Exclusive Brethren gentlemen, in the gallery:

The callousness of the faith is mortifying. A constituent who belonged to the Brethren had a son who was somewhat retarded and he, perhaps unwittingly, breached one of their codes. He was driven from the home and sought refuge in an emergency shelter. His parents totally disowned him. He was killed riding his bike. His parents didn’t attend his funeral. A photograph was sent to the parents by a man who had befriended this 19-year-old outcast. It was returned with the observation that the son’s face showed that he had passed from God’s grace.

Mr Lange went on to say:

These people are bringing up children who have no concept of the alternatives to the rigidity of their dreadful dogma. Should our education system allow nutters to stop their children using computers?

They are changing that rule at the moment because they have to. Mr Lange went on to say:

Should the schools be helpless in the face of parents who refuse to allow their children any contact with other children outside the classroom? Why can’t these poor kids play netball? Should we tolerate the nurturing of tunnel-visioned children because of the absurd convictions of their parents? The answer, of course, is that we allow all this to happen in the name of fundamental liberties. The tragedy is that the rights of the children have been subsumed in the rights of the parents, obscuring the point that parents have rights over their children only in so far as they serve the interests of their children. The Brethren make tolerance seem wrongheaded.

Testimony about the Brethren—and support for this motion, might I add—comes not just from Mr Mark Humber, who I quoted earlier; it comes from Warren McAlpin, the son of a supreme family in the Victorian Brethren, who lost his wife and children; it comes from Mr Ron Fawkes, a former Australian leader and second in the world, who lost his wife and children; it comes from Mark Painter, the son of the leader from South Africa. The South African Brethren were removed from that country in the last decade, under the organisation of the Elect Vessel of the time. Mr Ron Fawkes, who was the second leader in the world, gave this testimony—

An incident having occurred in the gallery—

The gentlemen in the gallery are laughing again, as they would do to somebody with whom they have a great disagreement. This is from Background Briefing on ABC Radio National:

Until 1987, the world leader of the Exclusive Brethren was an American, James Symington. The man recognised as the most senior member of the Brethren in Australia was Ron Fawkes. But Fawkes fell out with Symington because, according to Fawkes, the leadership was straying from Christ.

In the sudden-death politics of the Brethren, Ron Fawkes was excommunicated. He says he was informed his wife would be divorcing him.

Ron’s six children stayed with their mother, and he hasn’t seen them for 22 years, but they wrote to him to tell him why, and at his home on the New South Wales Southern Highlands, Ron Fawkes pulled out his children’s letters from a ring folder and read them out in a monotone.

You get the feeling he’s done this many times before. The message from the kids was all the same.

Dad, you’re evil.

                 …         …         …

I don’t want to see you because you are not right, and withdrawn from and out of fellowship—

that is, excommunicated. And so it goes on. When you have little children writing letters like that to a loving father, you have to worry. I ask you, Acting Deputy President, the Labor Party, the Democrats, The Nationals and the government in here: is this chamber satisfied with an extreme religious sect in this country which takes millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money for its education system—$4,000 per student this year—