With the Key administration in power in New Zealand, there is now talk of repealing the Electoral Finance Act. However, there are other policy issues that shouldn’t be neglected, either, such as industrial relations and educational policy.

I held back summarising all of Michael Bachelard’s excellent Behind the Exclusive Brethren (2008) until I had a clearer idea about the course of the election and its results.  For example, I wonder if ACT would be quite so eager to support the Exclusive Brethren’s anti-EFA campaign if it knew that the Exclusive Brethren are deeply committed to siphoning off available welfare entitlements in its central headquarters in Australia, which may explain why it didn’t campaign as vigorously for ACT as for National back in 2005, before Brethrengate.

The Exclusive Brethren aren’t exactly dependent on social welfare benefits. Their power base is augmented by a network of small businesses that assist their political aspirations and seperatist religious worldview. In Australia, these businesses are known as One Fund, Onefuel, Onefleet, Logistics One and National Office Assist. Sect micromanagement extends to the amount of time spent in economically productive pursuits, and they channel tithed profits back into their schools and internal social services for sect members, as well as private training insitutions, which are training the next generation of inhouse Exclusive Brethren accountants.

National Office Assist provides administrative services to other Exclusive Brethren businesses, as well as leasing computers as a monopoly provider within the sect. One Fund channels the money to Exclusive Brethren schools and private training insitutions, while subsidiary OneFuel uses Caltex’s StarCard payment system to further fund Brethren schools. Logistics One uses international freight forwarding company TNT Express. Exclusive Brethren businesses are all tax-free back in Australia, as ‘charitable purpose’ laws allow Australian charities to run subsidary businesses, and obviously, that legislation doesn’t define charities stringently enough.

The Exclusive Brethren network of small businesses isn’t a ‘free’ market, open to competition, nor is it amenable to consumer sovereignty, as sect members are forbidden to use outsourcing to access competitors to EB businesses. They are forced to use OneFund, OneFuel and National Office Assist to supply their business enterprises. If there are tax and charities law loopholes that can be exploited to secure more revenue, then they will be investigated and exploited, unless plugged.\

Anti-unionism is one of the benchmarks of the Exclusive Brethren philosophy. In Australia, the sect has been strongly complicit with the defunct anti-union legislation of the vanquished Howard administration and former rightist Coalition state and territory governments over the last decade. They argued for, and obtained, exemptions to compulsory union membership laws on religious freedom grounds. In 2001, they won another concession- small businesses could prevent union organisers from visiting those with less than twenty employees. In 2004, under the Howard administration’s anti-union “WorkChoices” legislation, they were allowed to ban union organisers from their businesses altogether. In New Zealand, one EB medical supplies company imposed language restrictions on overseas employees, and then prevented union entry to deal with complaints.

As for education policy, Exclusive Brethren schools don’t teach evolution, sex education or follow LGBT-inclusive policies. Indeed, such inclusive policies were one reason why the Exclusive Brethren lobbied Australian federal and state governments for distance education service access in 1992, leading to increasing harrassment directed against distance education teaching staff who questioned sect dogma in Victoria and New South Wales.  As well, they exploited Howard administration removal of fundraising caps for private schools as well as obtaining federal funds.  It would be fair to say that Howard’s New Right education policies considerably enriched Exclusive Brethren schools, although science and sex education are neglected.

Questions occur to me about this scenario. Family First has a similar constellation of supportive small businesses clustered around it, so did they get the idea from the Exclusive Brethren? Should we pressure TNT Express and Caltex to abandon their commercial relationships with the Exclusive Brethren through organised boycotts? Shouldn’t we pay far more attention to industrial relations and educational policy developments that would increase the scale of the Exclusive Brethren powerbase here?

Strongly Recommended:

Michael Bachelard: Behind the Exclusive Brethren: Scribe: Melbourne: 2008.

Former Exclusive Brethren website: http://www.peebs.net