By Stephen Brook and Kishor Napier-Raman
Recent media coverage seems to have stung members of the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church. The church, once known as the Exclusive Brethren, has distributed a letter to 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”.
Bruce Hales (front left), the global leader or the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, preaching in the US.Credit:
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 we thought we should note this masthead’s previous reportage about Australian Taxation 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 self-righteously.
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 write.
“You know we have held for years separation should be moral, physical, and legal,” the letter says.
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 in the same letter to Simmons’ father 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.
Singing, and racing
Melbourne Cup host the Victoria Racing Club is undertaking the mother of all resets after having lost $70 million over four years.
Robbie Dolan celebrates his Melbourne Cup-winning ride on Knight’s Choice.Credit: Eddie Jim
Hence its Long Lunch at Flemington, 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).
Melebrities spotted on a warm and sunny Friday included VRC board member Ann Peacock, model Annalise Dalins, and social media personality Brooke Warne, while showman Mike Snell belted out the tunes for a small fraction of the VRC’s 34,000 members.
But the 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 handled the coveted Melbourne Cup trophy before the race, a practice regarded as extinguishing any chance of a win.
“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 luck, is it?”
Dolan, who shocked the industry by winning the Cup on outsider 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.
His singing isn’t the only part of the VRC’s diversification policy. VRC chairman Neil Wilson, who gets use of a free Lexus courtesy of a long-term sponsorship deal, last year poached AFL executive Kylie Rogers to run the VRC and promised a return to profitability by next year in a recent interview with The Age.
Wilson touched on ABBA Voyage, the spectacular holographic concert which has prompted endless column items about whether it will actually make it to Melbourne. It has been speculated that Flemington was a potential venue for the concert.
Wilson said talks were “confidential, and it’s not over”.
“Whether we’re in the mix or not, time will tell.”
Heading east
SPOTTED: At the Ashburton Community Festival 2025 on High Street on Sunday, Liberal elder Michael Kroger, further east than his South Yarra comfort zone.
The festival, run by the local traders’ association, delivered all manner of frivolities – rides, a beer garden, food stalls and an Ashburton’s Got Talent contest.
Even an animal farm and reptile encounters, which surely didn’t include market stalls for the political candidates for the federal seat of Chisholm, among them sitting Labor MP Carina Garland and Liberal challenger Katie Allen, hence the presence of the former Liberal Party president.
Also there: AFL legend Eddie Betts wrangling some kids.
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