Labor MPs Accuse Exclusive Brethren of Funding Far-Right Election Plot

The Exclusive Brethren’s world leader faces a parliamentary grilling about the secretive church’s actions during the 2025 federal election, including its payment of far-right figures to tail and harass Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and other politicians.

Labor MP Jerome Laxale, who chairs the electoral matters parliamentary committee and was himself targeted in one of at least a dozen scripted ambushes by far-right agitators on the campaign trail, said Brethren world leader Bruce Hales and his son Gareth had to answer for what happened in 2025 “and why they’ve worked so hard to hide it”.

In one of two speeches to parliament on Monday, Laxale said the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, as the Exclusive Brethren are now known, were “up to their eyeballs” in a multimillion-dollar effort to see a Coalition government elected.

“Later this week I’ll be seeking the support of the committee to invite and compel, if required, both Bruce and Gareth Hales,” Laxale said. “The jig is up. There is a pattern of evidence here and it stinks.”

Laxale led a chorus of Labor MPs in the chamber calling on the opposition to come clean about its entanglement with the shadowy operation run by the wealthy sect, after reporting from this masthead proved church elders were working behind the scenes with neo-Nazi associates to disrupt campaign events.

On Monday, this masthead published messages leaked from inside the secret operation that showed the “election influence” plot led all the way to the top of the church, with Gareth Hales among the senior elders in co-ordinating chats with far-right figures, and his company Sante Global, identified in the paper trail of payments and meetings.

The church and elders approached about the revelations, which this masthead first reported last month, have repeatedly denied any involvement in the stunts. Questioned last month by the parliamentary inquiry chaired by Laxale, church spokesman Lloyd Grimshaw insisted the Brethren had nothing to do with the election at all.

Laxale told parliament on Monday he found Grimshaw’s evidence “shallow, inconsistent, and, at points, laughable” and warned it could undermine the parliamentary committee’s work determining what forces were at play during the campaign.

A senior Brethren figure behind the secret stunts operation, Lester Sharples, has now confirmed to this masthead that “it was organised by a number of people, of which I was one”.

While senior Liberals have dismissed concern about the revelations as a witch hunt and religious discrimination, Laxale said Monday this masthead’s “reporting leaves no doubt about [the Brethren’s] involvement”. “It documents payments to people associated with Nazis,” he said. “And it blows up all denials by the Brethren that they weren’t involved ... The Brethren undertook a co-ordinated, well-funded and secretive disruption of our free and fair elections, using known agitators and aggressors.”

He and a host of MPs have called the stunts an attack on democracy.

The investigation by this masthead traced more than a dozen staged ambushes of MPs at the last election back to the covert campaign. Thousands of dollars changed hands as agitators outside the church were brought in to “tail ... video, heckle” politicians in campaign stunts designed to embarrass opponents of the Coalition, the communications show.

Brethren elders tracked MPs and fed “private intel” on their locations to agitators with a history of white supremacy association. At times, Brethren cars followed the prime minister’s protective detail, driving far-right figures to Anthony Albanese’s hotel for ambushes, and then paying them in bundles of cash. Some elders even fed them scripted lines to shout at Albanese.

Once, a car carrying Brethren elder Sharples and far-right figures attracted the attention of the PM’s police protection detail and the planned stunt had to be aborted, four sources said.

Sharples told this masthead they had “wanted to ask [Albanese] genuine questions” that day, adding “at one stage I was in a car that was headed in the same direction as a politician”. But he claimed he was not aware of money changing hands during the covert operation or of the neo-Nazi connections of the agitators involved. The operation was run by “a group of mates and colleagues”, he said, and he didn’t expect things to ever turn violent.

He confirmed he was at a secret meeting between the Brethren and their far-right helpers at a golf course in Sydney in the first days of the election, as the church’s plot to import aggressive, MAGA-style politics into Australia hit its stride.

It was just one arm of the Brethren’s multimillion-dollar, undisclosed effort to elect a Peter Dutton government. Key far-right intermediaries were also paid tens of thousands of dollars to serve as middlemen in the church’s shadowy advertising campaign, endorsing Brethren posters and buying ad space.

But, most of the sect’s rank-and-file members had no idea about the dirty tricks campaign.

Laxale said many of those on polling booths were also pressured to campaign undercover for the Liberals. Some said they were horrified to see their church using neo-Nazi associates as guns-for-hire to disrupt an election.

Last month, after Grimshaw’s testimony to the inquiry, a dissenting group of seven Coalition MPs issued a statement defending the Brethren and its campaign. Opposition Leader Angus Taylor and federal Liberal Party leader Tony Abbott took part in an annual charity bike ride sponsored by the church the day after news of the Brethren’s far-right plot broke.

“It’s been remarkable to watch the Liberal Party defend their weird mates to the bitter end,” Labor MP Rob Mitchell told the chamber on Monday.

Libby Coker, the Labor member for Corangamite, said people had a right to feel safe and not be intimidated on the campaign trail. “We still don’t know what the Liberal Party agreed to in order to get these Brethren volunteers on those booths,” she said in parliament.

MP Alice Jordan-Baird said she had seen an astonishing campaign from the Brethren, who she called “a fringe group”, in her own seat of Gorton, even though census data shows no members of the sect live in her Victorian electorate.

Marion Scrymgour, a Labor MP from the Northern Territory, accused Brethren members of being flown to remote Indigenous communities to intimidate Aboriginal voters, including in her electorate of Lingiari.

“Who sent them? Who paid for their flights and accommodation?” Scrymgour asked.

Meanwhile, Labor MP Shayne Neumann said he estimated a thousand Brethren campaigned in his Queensland electorate. He accused the Coalition of colluding with the church, quoting the Liberal Party’s election review which described the Brethren as a “support group”, and called on the opposition to give evidence to the parliamentary inquiry.

“What are you so scared of over there?” Mitchell asked MPs across the aisle. “Are you worried the Brethren will quietly stop funding you and go and join your mates over at One Nation?”

This masthead is not suggesting any illegality in the stunt operation, but teal independent Monique Ryan, who was targeted by at least one stunt, said: “Orchestrated, threatening interruptions by malevolent influencers and third parties will have a chilling effect on people running in politics.”

Gareth Hales and Angus Taylor were approached for comment.

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