EXCLUSIVE: The Exclusive Brethren has once again been rewarded by its friends within the Liberal Party with the already supremely wealthy extremist Christian cult given $250,000 by NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian under the guise of charity work to help communities in remote areas facing the consequences of the Coronavirus pandemic. Serkan Ozturk reports.
It was a media release this week trumpeted with so-called good news from the NSW Government amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. A quarter of a million dollars would be given to Aussie charity, the Rapid Relief Team (RRT), to help deliver much-needed food supplies to people undergoing quarantine in regional and remote areas of the state.
The taxpayer funds would be used to provide 4,500 food boxes to individuals and families, Deputy Premier John Barilaro said in the release sent to media on Thursday, April 23.
“The RRT Food Boxes are desperately needed in regional and rural NSW where services such as home delivery are not available,” Barilaro said.
“Every day RRT volunteers are caring for the community and have done so for many years, through their various food provision services.
“I’m delighted that the NSW Government has partnered with RRT to get food boxes to those in need, particularly in remote areas where we don’t have access to the same services as those in the cities.”
According to the government’s media release, the RRT is staffed by “volunteers from the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church (PBCC)”.
Before undergoing a rebranding a few years back, the church was more widely known by the far more sinister moniker, the Exclusive Brethren.
That’s right. The same cult that forbids its members from taking part in most aspects of society,
No dancing. No ‘fun’. No restaurants. No cinemas. No Netflix. No groovy tunes. No nightclubs. No bars. No pubs. No hanging out with people not in the cult. No voting in elections. Lot of drinking of alcohol though if previous reports are anything to go by. At least by the church leadership.
The same extremist Christian sect with about 50,000 members around the world led by an office furniture salesman in Sydney’s north-western suburbs believed to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars and once described by former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd as a religious cult.
The same cult that hid child sexual abuse for years and then tried to engage in the bribery of an investigative journalist who was trying to bring the story to light.
The same cult that has harangued ex-members and broken up their families, forbidding relatives who remain in the church to see family members who have left.
The same cult that has pressured gay members into changing their “sinful” lifestyle, even going as far as giving a hormonal suppressant to them usually reserved for sex offenders and prostate cancer patients in a bizarre attempt to convert them away from homosexuality.
The same cult whose worldwide leader, paunchy former Sydney office furniture salesman Bruce David Hales, regularly met and communicated with former Prime Minister John Howard, despite the church’s own teachings to supposedly stay out of politics.
NZ MAN DESCRIBES LEAVING CULT BEHIND
The same cult which was once again in the news for all the wrong reasons just three months ago when the son of Mr Hales, Gareth Hales, was filmed on video being involved in an ugly altercation just outside his father’s home. According to news reports at the time, police were investigating Hales junior over possible assault charges.
According to its own public relations spin, the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church established the RRT in 2013 to express the Church’s supposed “principles of care and compassion”. The charity is staffed by Church volunteers who provide catering services at a range of charitable events and emergencies.
But official Church documents dating back to 2006 give a good insight into the kind of “care and compassion” which Mr Hales and Co may be fond of.
According to a Sydney Morning Herald report, the officials documents show that, Bruce Hales preached to his Brethren believers about king-hitting people, saying “the way to deal with people” was to “give one first, and then take it back, back again, bang, out, down, done. KO … I’m not encouraging violence, but, you know, if you do have to do it, well, do it. Get one in and run … before he’s got his breath back.”
With all that in mind, one simply wonders why this “desperately needed” community work to help families battling the COVID-19 pandemic could not be conducted by some other charity or non-governmental organisation.
But instead, as is the way all so often in Sydney, taxpayer dollars are again being funneled to yet another secretive cult with a dubious and dark history and whose leaders have extensive links with the Liberal Party.
True Crime News Weekly did not receive a response from the NSW Government after we sent a series of questions seeking to know the rationale behind giving public funds to a group such as the Exclusive Brethren.
Scandalous.
These Church of Ireland Anglican Proxies were responsible for the Potato Famine
Very sad. A girl at high school who was kind and intelligent really wanted to go to university but because she and her family were Brethren her parents would not let her. She had to stay working on their property. She had been raised not to disagree with them and would have been ostracized if she had made her own decisions. I can’t help wondering what ever became of her.
I believe this cult also significantly affected the Tasmanian state election one year to stop the Greens getting votes and all with the blessing of at least some of the Liberals at the time.
Gladys Berejiklian is killing one of the last population of koalas in NSW so not surprising NSW Liberals doing deals with Christian cults as well.