‘Bizarre’, ‘extraordinary’: Exclusive Brethren spokesman objects to being asked questions

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke has described revelations that a secretive Christian sect had paid far-right agitators to disrupt the 2025 election campaign as “a fundamental change to our democracy”.

But the sect behind the campaign, the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church , stonewalled queries about the intervention when questioned before a parliamentary committee investigating the election.

Church spokesman Lloyd Grimshaw said it was “bizarre” that they had been called to give evidence, and criticised the story in this masthead that exposed the revelations, which detail a secret “influence operation” to disrupt Labor, Greens and teal candidates at the last election .

“We’re put in an extraordinary position, and no church would do that in this country, and we’ve been forced to do it because of all this media reporting,” he said.

Burke, who has the Australian Federal Police in his ministerial portfolio, said the report in this masthead “deals with the concept of people being paid to engage in physical intimidation”, adding, “Australia hasn’t had that before, and we shouldn’t.”

Asked if he wanted to see a police investigation, the minister said he first wanted “to watch what comes out in this parliamentary inquiry” now being conducted by the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters.

When pressed by MPs on the committee about Brethren members turning up en masse to campaign for the Liberals during the election, Grimshaw insisted that his church had no involvement in any aspect of the campaign. Any such activities were simply the “private affairs of its members”, not the church, he said.

Church spokesman Lloyd Grimshaw said it was “bizarre” that they had been called to give evidence, and criticised the story in this masthead that exposed the revelations, which detail detailing a secret “influence operation” to disrupt Labor, Greens and teal candidates at the last election .

He denied being personally part of chat groups between Brethren elders and right-wing figures to organise up to a dozen stunts where agitators, including affiliates of neo-Nazis, ambushed politicians, including the prime minister, at campaign events.

The church had not issued any sanctions to its members over these things, he said, because “the church wasn’t involved in it”. He attacked the reporting, saying, “it references no church member specifically at all” and did not publish in full the evidence referenced.

The investigation, published on Friday , cited a trove of leaked communications showing how Brethren elders had organised the stunts with far-right figures, at times tracking candidates, and the prime minister’s plane, around the country.