By Stephen Brook and Kishor Napier-Raman
Recent media coverage seems to have stung members of the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church. The church, regular readers will recall it was once known as the Exclusive Brethren, has distributed a letter to all its congregations worldwide announcing “refreshed public engagement activity” as a response to “misinformation in the media”.
Oh dear, surely not us?
A recent service of the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, with women at the back of the room, men at the front.
“There are a small number of media outlets who have written about our church in the past and got the facts wrong,” a spokesman told CBD.
“Papers like The Age are not Independent Always as promised, with one journalist there even recently admitting in print that he has run an 18-year campaign against us.”
J’Accuse! In fact, our esteemed colleague Michael Bachelard did not admit to a “campaign against them”; he merely pointed out he’d been writing about the church for 18 years.
The Brethren’s new website purports to tell “the truth about our church, contribution, values and way of life”.
Intrigued, we read how the Brethren’s public-facing charity, Rapid Relief Team, was made up of Brethren members who helped people in emergencies. But thought we should note this newspaper’s previous reportage about Australian Tax Office raids on businesses in Goulburn whose owners help to run the Rapid Relief Team.
What really struck us, though, was the website’s defence of the “doctrine of separation” after allegations that the church encourages families to cut off excommunicated members. “The Church would never stand in the way of families communicating with each other,” says the website.
This masthead has reported before how a New Zealand man, Braden Simmons, was kicked out of the church. Now a letter to his father, also excommunicated, has come to light. Two Brethren heavies explain that one reason he’d been kicked out a few years after his son was his “refusal to disassociate” from Braden. He’d been “poisoned by darkness”, they wrote.
“You know we have held for years separation should be moral, physical, and legal,” the pair wrote.
When CBD asked about this contradiction, the church said it was very rare to ask people to leave and it would never stand in the way of families communicating with each other.
“We can confirm there was a case in New Zealand where there were various significant reasons that we asked contact to be ceased with a former member,” the church spokesman said.
But our jaws really dropped when we read from the same letter to Simmons that the two Auckland “priests” defended the church’s “Man of God” Bruce Hales and particularly the size of his mega-mansion, one of the biggest and most opulent in Sydney’s Eastwood.
“He lives in a comfortable fairly ordinary house (his lounge is no bigger than ours),” say the New Zealand enforcers. If only.
Political animals at the zoo
The Liberals haven’t had much to celebrate north of the bridge for a while, where the party became a threatened species thanks to the 2022 teal wave.
On Friday night, local political animals gathered at Taronga Zoo to toast past glories and build up the coffers for the upcoming campaign at the 80th anniversary celebrations for the Mosman branch. Ain’t no party like the Liberal Party.
Peter Dutton, man of the hour in blue circles, was guest of honour alongside shadow treasurer Angus Taylor. In the crowd were federal senators Andrew Bragg and Maria Kovacic as well as a gaggle of state MPs including James Griffin (the last man standing on the northern beaches) Felicity Wilson and Tim James. No sign of Tony Abbott, still in London at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship saving Western civilisation along with Jordan Peterson, Nigel Farage and Liz Truss we presume.
There was both an auction and a raffle for items that might animate only the truest of believers. Auction items included bottles of wine signed by the likes of Abbott and Dutton, and so much Robert Menzies-related paraphernalia.
First prize in the raffle was a bottle of vintage wine donated by John Howard, while also on offer were coffee mugs with cartoons by The Australian’s nepo baby scribbler Johannes Leak. Cartoons of Menzies of course. Also a book of quotes by Menzies. They’re a party of the future after all.
Cup runneth
With Racing NSW chief executive Peter V’landys focused on the NRL season opener in Las Vegas, his Melbourne Cup host rivals the Victoria Racing Club is on the mother of all resets after losing $70 million over four years.
Hence its Long Lunch at Flemington racecourse, where it showcased its premium food and beverage alliance with the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival during the autumn carnival (very Australian Open, you might think).
Star of the show proved to be last year’s Cup-winning jockey Robbie Dolan, once a contestant on TV talent show The Voice. He confessed he had broken one of racing’s great taboos: he had handled the coveted Melbourne Cup trophy before winning, a practice that is regarded as extinguishing any chance of that happening.
Robbie Dolan celebrates his Melbourne Cup win on Knight’s Choice.Credit: Eddie Jim
“I held it, got a photo with it, and everyone was like, ‘ah, it’s bad luck to hold it’, and then I won it like two months later,” the Irishman said. “So, it’s obviously not that bad of luck, is it?”
Dolan, who shocked Flemington by winning the Cup on Knight’s Choice last year, is in hot demand, booked for a gig at Wednesday’s Launceston Cup. That’s a singing gig. As of the weekend, he didn’t have a ride.