Rapid Relief Team

Small asks, "Is it your view that any volunteer should be expected to explain why they're participating in Australian election processes?" And he steers this discussion from the church members being organized to conduct the involvement in the election to them being volunteers.

He uses this opportunity to bring up the PBC charity and give them a shout-out, the Rapid Relief Team, which is also managed by Bruce Hales and sons, to try to prove it's a volunteer effort, steering again to give positive publicity.

It functions here as a kind of shield by emphasizing altruistic activities.

He's trying to emphasize and reinforce that it's a mainstream normal church, whilst the Rapid Relief Team leaders spent forty thousand dollars on a meal, which is apparently charitable money.

Then there are outright lies.

He downplays the hierarchy in the PBCC.

I think the committee needs to look beyond whether somebody can identify a direct written instruction from the PBCC telling a particular member to perform a particular task.

The system can be much subtler than that.

Do you understand how small you look sitting there playing the victim when you and your fellowship built the exact situation you are now standing in? After years and years of this, you finally get called out and your answer is to cry that you're the victim? No, the only victimhood you get to claim is the same one the rest of us have, and that's being brainwashed and indoctrinated in a cult.

The third thing I want to talk about is the name Exclusive Brethren, the RRT and the Secretariat.

And I'm putting all three together because it's the same trick every time.

All the way through that hearing, he does a little dance around the name.

And then later, when he wants the committee to hear all about the church's lovely relationship with the prime minister at that bushfire, he calls it our charitable arm.

Nobody made him say that, and nobody even asked him.

He reached for the RRT himself, because in that moment, it was the flattering thing to reach for.

So let's look at what the RRT Australia actually is on paper, because I have their constitution right here, and every one of you can go and read it for yourselves.

You had the National leader Matt Canavan again also defending the church.

Taylor even spent the weekend at a charity bike ride for another of the Brethren's charity arms called the Rapid Relief Team, which the church created maybe about 15 years ago with the help of a PR firm because the UK at the time was questioning taking away its tax-exempt charity status.

Um, and it uses that charity regularly to engage with people of influence, including the Liberal Party.

So the chair of the, um...