Detailed instructions and pep-up videos issued to Plymouth Brethren Christian Church booth workers during last year’s federal election have emerged, undermining the separatist religion’s claim that its members were acting independently of the church when campaigning for Peter Dutton.
The extraordinary new evidence leaked to this masthead, including videos and a key document, reveal a highly co-ordinated, centralised campaign baked in secrecy, loyalty and evasiveness.
The evidence has been sent to the federal parliament’s Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, to inform its ongoing investigation into the last election, which is closely scrutinising the Brethren’s activities.
As a charity, the church is prevented from engaging in party political activity. It risks losing its valuable tax-free status if its involvement in co-ordinating the pro-Coalition push could be demonstrated.
The church formerly known as the Exclusive Brethren was labelled a “cult” by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese during the campaign. It exercises a high level of control over every aspect of its followers’ lives, including recently ordering them to purge their households of pets.
However, it publicly denies any role in organising the thousands of its members who campaigned for Dutton. The church’s submission to the parliamentary inquiry agreed that “many of our parishioners” were active but claimed: “Our church did not participate in the election nor co-ordinate the political involvement of those who did.”
The new material obtained by this masthead shows that, in fact, the effort was run by people at the highest levels of the church hierarchy, confidants of the church’s world leader, Bruce Hales.
They directed booth workers to echo Hales’s words as an election slogan, and election documentation issued to booth workers and distributed nationally insists “LOYALTY is paramount” and “CONFIDENTIALITY is mandatory”.
Also undermining the church’s attempt to distance its members from the church is guidance from Sydney-based Hales, the church’s “Elect Vessel” himself. In words considered holy writ by his followers, he preaches that nothing they do in their lives can be separated from their roles as members of the Brethren “assembly”.
“Assembly-minded persons would carry the feature of the house of God everywhere we go. So wherever we are, in any circumstance, in every detail of our lives, we’d be related to the house of God,” he preached to his followers in Trinidad in 2014.
Former members of the church, speaking anonymously out of concerns for retribution, have told this masthead that a senior Brethren figure had agreed to appear before the committee but, after the hearing date was confirmed, had pulled out of the grilling.
A key “guidelines” document issued to Brethren campaigners spells out the centralised and secretive approach to the work. This masthead has confirmed with multiple sources across the country that it was distributed by senior Brethren to electorate workers nationally.
The document demands loyalty, confidentiality and evasiveness.
“Loose lips sink ships. Project discussions in [Brethren] social settings is unacceptable … Remember to protect your family from information. Need to know principle applies,” the document says. It warns that its members should not create a digital footprint, saying, “No need for official records or documents”.
“Protect what you care deeply about” – likely a reference to the church itself. “Stay out of trouble, stay out of sight.”
It then schools church members in the messages they need to push on the polling booth, including being evasive about their membership of the Brethren.
“You are a concerned business owner/team member and Christian worried about the future of Australia; You are supporting and volunteering for your local candidate ‘insert name’.”
The “insert name” line is a demonstration of central organisation – a claim confirmed by multiple Brethren sources.
In a series of videos, also leaked to this masthead, members of the church elite closely linked to Hales instruct people in how to campaign.
Businessman Gavin Grace, who lives in Victoria and was co-ordinating the Brethren campaign in the marginal Sydney seat of Bennelong, was recorded delivering instructions about how to avoid discussion of being Brethren.
Grace occupies an elite position in the Brethren hierarchy. He grew rich under COVID when his company, Westlab, made more than $500 million, including from federal government contracts.
Westlab’s “independent auditor” in that period was church leader Bruce Hales. Hales’s family likewise benefited from COVID. Another company owned by Grace later hired Coalition health minister Greg Hunt as a special board adviser after Hunt quit parliament in 2022.
In 2023, the Melbourne-based Grace paid $14 million for a mansion in NSW that ex-Brethren members, who spoke to this masthead on condition of anonymity, believe was purchased on behalf of Hales. The church denied this at the time.
In his video address to booth workers, Grace issues instructions about how to respond to questions about the church.
“Firstly, they might ask, ‘Are you Plymouth Brethren or Exclusive Brethren?’. The response would be, ‘I don’t think it’s appropriate for you to ask my religion. I’m volunteering for Scott Jung, and it’s my right to volunteer’.
“Another question could be, ‘Has your church asked you to volunteer for the Liberal Party?‘. The response would be ‘No. I’m volunteering for Scott Jung today. I just love our country and want to help get Australia back on track. My religion has nothing to do with me volunteering’.
“Another question they may ask is, ‘Are you voting?’. The response would be, ‘Yes. Everyone in Australia over 18 votes, are you voting?’.”
Brethren typically do not vote, though that rule appeared to change, at least temporarily, during the election campaign.
In the video, Grace appears to be reading from a script. Asked who wrote it, he told this masthead, “I would’ve written myself some notes so I knew what to say and didn’t start rambling.“
But virtually identical answers to similar questions were given across the country, including in the Perth electorate of Curtin, where a Brethren member was recorded on video answering, “everyone over 18 votes in this country”.
Grace said in answer to questions that he had been a volunteer for the Liberal Party for more than 10 years, including in NSW, despite his Victorian address. “My church has nothing to do with my choices to volunteer for the Liberal Party,” he said.
Another video obtained by this masthead shows wealthy NSW Brethren businessman Paul Humber geeing up volunteers in the marginal NSW seat of Robertson, using wartime metaphors to tell them how to “win” on the “battlefield”.
“And don’t forget, Make Australia Smile Again,” he says, using a slogan coined by Hales when he kick-started his flock’s election activism last year in a message sent via the church’s “Global Media Stream”.
Humber instructs volunteers to stake out a position as close to the polling booth as the electoral law permits, then “hold those positions”.
“So, you’re strung out along the line … don’t be intimidated, don’t hold back … Be strong, speak loud, speak assertive,” he says, his voice rising. “‘Put Labor last!’ Just tell them what to do on the way down … get out there and have a good go, support one another, don’t give in, speak loud.”
Most of the volunteers from Labor and the Greens were “low-lifes”, Humber says.
The parliamentary committee is investigating multiple allegations of intimidation at polling booths, including by Brethren volunteers. One young mother – a survivor of domestic violence – gave evidence last year of running a “gauntlet” of Brethren men on a booth in Queensland as she shielded her small child from them.
The Brethren men hit her on the head with Liberal Party pamphlets as she passed.
“I felt really intimidated and unsafe – I just wanted to cry,” she told the committee.
Asked about his instructions to volunteers, Humber told this masthead it was “standard for volunteers to use various tactics like those you mention, and they wouldn’t differ much between polling booths or political parties”.
Humber said his own experiences on booths were “overall positive and pleasant”.
Brethren spokesman Lloyd Grimshaw has consistently denied any church involvement in organising the campaign, and the church’s submission to the parliamentary inquiry late last year says: “To be completely clear – the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church does not campaign for, nor support, any political parties and did not organise or coordinate any volunteer efforts.
“There were senior members of our church who said that they would be volunteering at the election … What followed here was a strong showing of volunteers from members of our church. But to say that was organised by the church would be wrong.”
The chairman of the parliament’s joint electoral matters committee, Labor MP Jerome Laxale, told this masthead the committee had received “significant amounts of evidence that the Brethren were involved at scale at the 2025 election, despite not registering as a significant third party”.
Independent teal MP Monique Ryan, a member of the committee, said her constituents, among others, “would love to hear from the Brethren about their rationale for campaigning in electorates like Kooyong, and the extent and nature of that activity”.
Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.
