Exclusive Brethren hearing LIVE updates: Church leader Bruce Hales to appear over allegations church campaigned in 2025 election, paid neo-Nazi associates to harass PM

The parliamentary inquiry examining the 2025 federal election has called Exclusive Brethren world leader Bruce Hales and his son Gareth to give evidence today. You can watch the hearing live here:

Hales is now being asked about his authority over the church. These are important questions, though the Coalition members of the committee don’t like them and have already interjected to try to get them stopped.

Asked if his sermons are ever misinterpreted, Hales agrees that “It’s clear in the main what I say. I leave that up to individual persons to interpret what they see and feel that I mean, but very very rarely do I have to go back and explain what I meant.”

“Do members of the church believe that you are a direct messenger from God?” asked teal MP Monique Ryan.

“Well, I would think that they would say that what I get, I get from the Lord.”

She also asked about how he became the leader of the church – which Hales said arose “spontaneously” from his flock globally.

National Senator Bridget McKenzie has interjected to say churches of many faiths routinely discuss politics in their sermons, and objected to the line of questioning.

But she’s quickly been shut down by the other committee members as talk continues about the church’s covert, undisclosed campaign for the Coalition at the federal last year. Liberal MP Ben Small has also interrupted, claiming the questions are outside the inquiry’s terms of reference.

Talk has now turned to the Brethren’s role in the election - including the mysterious “Make Australia smile again” signs that appeared on the federal election trail, often endorsed by far-right figures and reflecting a phrase coined by Bruce Hales.

Hales said “there was a certain amount of discontent, as I viewed it, with the present government” in 2025 ahead of the election, but he couldn’t recall exactly where the phrase “Make Australia smile again” had come from.

This was a slogan that became the starter’s gun for the Brethren campaign, quickly translated onto advertising billboards, corflutes and in talking points by Brethren members campaigning at polling booths. Hales says it was simply a general comment about the government of Australia.

Given there is only an hour for Hales’ evidence, each member on the committee gets six minutes only, chair Jerome Laxale has announced.

The first question is from Senator Richard Colbeck, the senior Coalition member on the committee. The Coalition was the biggest beneficiary of the Brethren members’ campaign, and they have taken the Brethren’s side in this hearing – they’ve said, in fact, that the hearing, including the calling of Hales, is a “witch hunt”.

Colbeck has asked about his approach to Jews, after reporting in this masthead regarding a long history of statements that were defined by some Jewish groups as antisemitism, including calling Jews “wicked … infidel”.

Hales claims the church has been praying for Israel since the outbreak of war in the Middle East and that he himself has Jewish heritage in his family. But he adds “there’s quite a bit of history ... to the Jewish matter or the Jewish question”, saying that “the Jews aren’t exactly referred to favourably because they were the ones that finally clamoured publicly for Christ to be crucified”.

Bruce Hales has begun his testimony by again denying his personal involvement in the church’s covert campaign during the election, including a secret operation by Brethren elders to pay neo-Nazi associates for stunts disrupting campaign events and targeting opponents of the Coalition.

“I am recognised by members as the most senior elder of the church globally,” Hales said of his role. “The church has no formal hierarchy, no clergy and no appointed ministers. No one appointed me, and no one voted for me. There is no office to hold or resign. My role is spiritual.”

As expected, he’s also insisting the church has nothing to do with the actions of individual members during the election, who are “entitled to make their own decisions”.

He claims the Brethren, who generally do not vote and live apart from the outside world, can vote for whomever they choose. “It is not a matter for me, and it is not a matter of the church,” he said.

And we’re off. The world leader of the Exclusive Brethren, Bruce Hales, is appearing via videolink before the parliamentary inquiry examining the secretive sect’s role in the 2025 federal election.

Watching around the world are dozens of current and former Brethren members. Hales is sitting in front of a bookshelf with the Britannica Atlas on it, and some flowers.

He’s also wearing a tie – Plymouth Brethren Christian Church members typically don’t. You can tell just by that that he’s got his armour on to appear in front of the “world”.

This is a historic day – it’s like the Olympics for current and former members of the 56,000-strong fellowship of the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, also known as the Exclusive Brethren – a group the prime minister has called a “cult”.

The church’s supreme leader, Man of God Bruce D. Hales, has been called, for the first time, to answer to the “worldly” authorities for what happened at the 2025 federal election.

The Brethren were behind a huge, two-pronged campaign for Peter Dutton. They disguised their normal dress and manned polling booths in the thousands. Former Liberal senator Linda Reynolds has confirmed they were pushed on local campaigns from Liberal head office, even if local campaigns didn’t want them.

Even more secretly, senior elders coordinated and paid for a parallel campaign of far-right figures and neo-Nazi associates who harassed left-leaning politicians at public events.

Hales is giving evidence today, even though, after providing a submission in response to questions, he said: “I assume my attendance is no longer required”. His assumption was wrong. So what can we expect?

The revelations that elders of the secretive Brethren church mobilised far-right figures around the country to tail and harass MPs on the campaign trail, including the prime minister, have caused uproar in parliament in recent weeks.

Labor has slammed the “intimidation” campaign against Labor and other Coalition opponents as an attack on democracy, while extremism experts have called for an investigation and teal donor Climate 200 has referred the church to the charity regulator for investigation.

But the Coalition and some faith groups, along with American far-right lobby group Turning Point, have lashed the parliamentary inquiry’s focus on the Brethren as an attack on the church’s religious freedom and defended its covert campaign.

Meanwhile, former and current members of the Brethren have spoken out in horror at revelations of the far-right plot by church elders. Some say the Brethren is a controlling sect, not a religion.

The world leader of the secretive Exclusive Brethren sect faces a grilling by federal MPs about his church’s multimillion-dollar, undisclosed campaign for the Coalition at the last election, when he makes his first public appearance in decades before a parliamentary inquiry today.

Bruce Hales and his son Gareth were called to give evidence, under threat of subpoena, by the joint standing committee examining the 2025 federal election – the first time the Brethren’s “Man of God”, “elect vessel” has faced such scrutiny.

We’re covering the hearing live and bringing you all the highlights here. Bruce is up first at 11.30am, followed by Gareth at 1pm.

The parliamentary showdown today comes after this masthead revealed that elders of the sect, which normally shuns the outside world, directed thousands of Brethren members to campaign for the Liberals in 2025. They also ran a second, more shadowy operation in which neo-Nazi associates were paid to tail and heckle MPs and disrupt Labor, Greens and teal events.