‘Never mind the Nazis’, Coalition says to the Brethren. ‘Just show us the money’

You’d have thought that even in federal parliament, revelations that a group of Christians paid neo-Nazis to try to sway an election would prompt some introspection.

When Plymouth Brethren Christian Church spokesman Lloyd Grimshaw beamed into a hearing of the electoral matters committee on Friday to answer some hard questions, three senior Coalition figures were on hand to dole out Dorothy Dixers and indulge the fantasy that the church was the real victim here.

Now the Liberal Party’s top two figures, Tony Abbott and Angus Taylor, have gone on a nice long bike ride sponsored by one of the church’s charities, the Rapid Relief Team.

Grimshaw’s oleaginous evidence on Friday was that he knew nothing of Nazis and that the revelations in this, masthead – backed by documentary evidence and multiple sources – rose no higher than “gossip”.

Grimshaw declined an invitation to go on oath to give his evidence – something the Brethren claim is based on scripture. Even with the benefit of that theological escape clause, though, Oily Lloyd couldn’t say with certainty on whose behalf he was speaking.

Was it the tiny company/charity that he’s a director of, the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church Ltd? Or was it the church itself, a global, unincorporated fellowship of 50,000 people?

This convenient confusion meant that when Grimshaw denied “the church” was responsible for thousands of his co-religionists flooding polling booths at the last federal election, he was probably just talking about his company.

So let’s get it straight. The church – a strictly hierarchical global fellowship – from its leader Bruce Hales and his multimillionaire sons on down was highly organised and hell-bent on seeing Peter Dutton elected.

To hide its involvement , it ordered its members to disguise their clothing and lie about their affiliation, then it flew them all over the country so nobody would recognise them on home turf.

The Brethren campaign probably cost millions, perhaps tens of millions of dollars, all of which was undisclosed. We now know some of this they paid to far-right figures.

Any proposed quid pro quo from all this has never been clear. Did the Brethren want an easy ride from a Dutton government when the Australian Tax Office finally releases the results of its long-running investigation ? Did they simply want more sweet government contracts for their NDIS, office fitout and other businesses?

The job of Grimshaw and his little company, PBCC Limited, is to give implausible deniability to all this. It’s what he was doing before the committee on Friday. He’s been doing it for years.

In 2016, for example, Grimshaw co-signed a “confidentiality deed”. His little company, PBCC Ltd, agreed to pay $920,000 to an overly talkative former church spokesman, who would in return destroy evidence in a defamation case and refuse to testify. The case was over the church’s attempt to cover up the repeated sexual abuse by an elder of a seven-year-old girl.

All these things are on the public record because I’ve put them there .