‘Just business’: Brethren leaders admit meeting far-right – and Trump

The son of the Exclusive Brethren’s world leader has admitted meeting with far-right agitators and belonging to secret chats where neo-Nazi associates and Brethren elders plotted an “election influence” campaign of stunts targeting left-leaning MPs at the last election.

But, in a fiery three-hour hearing before a parliamentary inquiry on Friday, Gareth Hales claimed the meetings were “just business”, and not about campaigning.

In his own testimony before the joint standing committee examining the 2025 election, Exclusive Brethren leader Bruce Hales revealed that members of the secretive sect have met with American President Donald Trump in New York.

Senators questioning the Hales were frequently interrupted by Coalition MPs who slammed the inquiry as a “witch hunt” and religious discrimination – a line that is also being pushed by far-right lobby group Turning Point in America.

Gareth Hales confirmed that he had met then opposition leader Peter Dutton and his staffers in 2025, though he called the encounter “brief”. Both Gareth and Bruce Hales insisted their church, which is now known as the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church, did not directly order members to turn out in their thousands around the country and covertly campaign for the Coalition, as revealed by this masthead.

Committee chair, Labor’s Jerome Laxale, and independent Monique Ryan were among MPs who said they were not persuaded by the Hales’ evidence. “It had all the credibility of a Melbourne weather forecast,” said Ryan, after the hearing.

“I’m not buying what you’re selling,” independent and former Nationals MP Andrew Gee told Gareth Hales flatly before proceedings wrapped.

The father and son of the normally secretive church were called to give evidence, under threat of subpoena, by the parliamentary committee after leaked messages published by this masthead revealed that Gareth was among the church elders party to a secret stunt campaign where far-right agitators were paid to ambush MPs at campaign events and hotels.

The investigation found Brethren elders followed the prime minister’s car and plane and fed “private intel” on his location to neo-Nazi associates.

Gareth Hales’ company Sante Global was also implicated in the stunt operation. A meeting of Brethren elders and far-right figures at a Sydney golf club was booked in the company’s name in April last year.

Hales claimed that the meeting was about business, not the election. But he also confirmed that he had met with key far-right figures involved in the Brethren stunt operation Chris De Bruyne and Morgan C Jonas, including at his Sante offices.

De Bruyne and Jonas endorsed Brethren posters and ads that appeared during the election, including the mysterious “Make Australia smile again” signs which reflected a phrase used by Bruce Hales.

Asked about the phrase, Bruce Hales told the committee that “there was a certain amount of discontent, as I viewed it, with the present government” in 2025 ahead of the election, but he denied his catchcry of “Make Australia smile again” was a direction to his sons to campaign rather a general comment about the government.

Both Bruce Hales and his son failed to answer repeated questions about whether they would investigate or take any action about revelations of Brethren involvement in the election, including the influence operation with neo-Nazi associates.

Bruce Hales said he had not read the articles about the stunt campaign, but at times launched blistering attacks on one of this masthead’s reporters, Michael Bachelard.

Gareth Hales, meanwhile, stressed he was giving testimony to the committee as a “private citizen” and claimed to have no formal role in the church.

He said he was “not active” in group chats with the far-right and other Brethren elders co-ordinating the stunts, and that he campaigned “alongside many others” in 2025. Simply “campaigning alongside someone else does not mean adopting every opinion they have ever expressed”, he said.

Gareth also claimed that he never asked Brethren members to campaign, prompting interjections from chair Laxale when Gareth later conceded that he had encouraged them.

Leaked videos of Gareth and his brothers urging Brethren to “man polling booths” and “dominate the play” on the campaign trail were just about exercising their democratic rights, Gareth said.

He also claimed he would have called out poor behaviour such as intimidating MPs, and repeated the Brethren line used throughout the election that members campaigning, including himself, were simply “businessmen … concerned about the direction the country was heading”.

Gareth Hales was himself photographed among the Brethren who donned blue Liberal party T-shirts to campaign on the ground for a Coalition victory. Bruce Hales told the committee that he first realised Gareth’s involvement in the campaign when he saw that photo published by this masthead, and had no idea about the stunt operation with the far-right.

“I can understand how you might find it hard to believe,” he told MPs. But “I had no knowledge of those events before. I had no part in planning them, I think if they’d asked me about them, and asked permission, I would have denied it.”

“So do you think that your sons deliberately didn’t ask you about it?” Labor senator Corinne Mulholland pressed.

“Quite likely,” Hales replied.

He conceded his sermons were rarely misinterpreted by his flock – when quizzed about his recent preaching to Brethren members of the need to keep “our secrets” from “men in the world”.

He was also questioned about his history of statements defined by some Jewish groups as antisemitism, including calling Jews “wicked … infidel”, and said his church had often been praying for Israel since the outbreak of war in the Middle East.

Lester Sharples, a Brethren elder who confirmed his involvement in the far-right stunts to this masthead, was also called to give evidence but declined to attend, as did two other senior Brethren figures called. Both Gareth and Bruce claimed not to have spoken to Sharples recently.

Gee accused Liberal Ben Small of “running a protection racket” for the Brethren as Small and National Bridget McKenzie led Coalition interruptions supporting the church leaders throughout the hearing, but he later withdrew the remark.

“This is beginning to look like religious discrimination,” McKenzie shouted at one point. “This isn’t the Spanish Inquisition!”

Tensions flared again when Gee asked Bruce Hales whether his testimony was truthful.

“Who’s asking that?” Hales immediately demanded to know, and later told the committee he felt he was being “targeted”.

Former and current members of the Brethren, many of them watching the hearings online, have spoken out in horror since the relevations of the far-right plot by church elders emerged. Some say the Brethren is a controlling sect, not a religion.