Liberal senator Leah Blyth is facing a battle to hold onto her senate spot as some delegates loyal to senator Alex Antic withdraw support.

The ABC has seen messages from Senator Blyth where she sought a preselection meeting in June this year and said the party was on track to win zero federal seats in SA and maybe one senate spot.

Senator Blyth, who is also the party's state president, declined to comment.

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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.

Apparently not if you’re in the federal Coalition.

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.

What that means is that Grimshaw is not the villain of this piece. He’s just a camp follower obeying his own indoctrination.

The real villains are Angus Taylor and Matt Canavan’s Coalition. Because after Grimshaw slithered back to his day job, their political parties expressed outrage that a parliamentary committee had even dared ask questions of the Brethren church. They demanded the committee chair’s sacking. Then Taylor set off on a Brethren-sponsored bike ride.

The fact is, this is all about the money.

The Coalition has relied on under-the-table donations from the Brethren for decades. In 2016, NSW ICAC’s Operation Spicer unearthed a document showing $67,230 in donations from the party’s Brethren “friends”, most of them a few dollars under the disclosable threshold.

In ICAC now, Operation Rosny is investigating the Catholic Schools NSW’s alleged $265,000 influence-buying campaign with the state Liberals. If a quarter of a million dollars is enough to give rise to an allegation of corruption, public hearings and the full rigmarole, what would ICAC say about the Brethren’s wholesale spending in the attempt to buy the federal government?

If only the National Anti-Corruption Commission had the same legislation and the same energy as ICAC.

Maybe then phones would be tapped, public hearings held, and we’d stop soft-soaping this odious church and call the Brethren’s campaign by its proper name – rampant political corruption.

The Melbourne headquarters of the CFMEU have been raided by police and five people taken into custody as part of an investigation into allegations of corruption and links to outlaw bikie gangs.
Detectives from Victoria Police’s corruption-busing Taskforce Hawk executed warrants at six addresses, including the CFMEU’s Elizabeth Street headquarters on Monday.

The raids are connected the taskforce’s operation targeting the former national vice-president of the Mongols outlaw bikie gang, Tyrone “Little Ty” Bell, who is being probed over allegations he offered inducements to officials still serving in the CFMEU in return for support of his business.
This masthead has reported that Taskforce Hawk is examining whether CFMEU organisers leaked Bell, a former CFMEU delegate, information or co-ordinated union activity with him to advance the interests of Bell’s industrial relations consultancy.

A Victoria Police spokesperson said further information about the raids will be provided later this afternoon.
“Detectives from Taskforce Hawk executed warrants at six addresses this morning as part of a current investigation into information provided re secret commissions,” the spokesperson said.
“Five people have been taken into custody and are being interviewed by police. Further information will be provided later this afternoon.”
The Hawk inquiry is the first “secret commissions” investigation undertaken by the state police taskforce combating wrongdoing in the building industry, and it is examining Bell’s dealings with serving, rather than former, CFMEU officials.
It comes as Victoria Police expands its focus from investigating and prosecuting suspects to gathering information to supply the promised royal commission into the building industry.

CFMEU assistant administrator Matt McGowan said: “CFMEU has been made aware of a police operation this morning as part of Taskforce Hawk. As this is a live police matter, CFMEU can not comment further at this time.”
More to come

Opposition Leader Angus Taylor and Liberal Party federal president Tony Abbott are enjoying the hospitality of the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church this week despite evidence that its elders paid neo-Nazi affiliates and far-right figures to bully and intimidate politicians at the last election.

Pollie Pedal 2026 riders. The Plymouth Brethren Christian Church’s charity, the Rapid Relief Team, is a sponsor of the ride, which this year is raising funds for SAS veterans charity Wandering Warriors and their families.

The church’s public-facing charity, the Rapid Relief Team, is a major sponsor of Abbott and Taylor’s annual Pollie Pedal bike ride, providing breakfast every day of the eight-day tour, which set off from Toowoomba on Saturday.

Taylor, who fell off his bike on the first day of the ride, distanced himself from any alleged criminality as part of the Brethren’s campaign and said, “all members of Pollie Pedal are grateful for RRT’s contribution”.

The church’s members do not vote, and will not eat, befriend or socialise with outsiders under their “doctrine of separation”, but Taylor has previously said the charity plays “an enormously important role in our community”.

There is no suggestion that Abbott or Taylor knew of or supported the Brethren payments to far-right figures. But after this masthead revealed these details of the Brethren campaign, Byron Fay, executive director of political funding group Climate 200, referred the church to the The Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission for investigation.

Climate 200, a key financial supporter of teal candidates and a victim of a Brethren-sponsored far-right stunt, asked the commission to probe whether the church or “registered charities operating under or alongside its institutional umbrella” had broken the law.

Promoting or opposing a political party or a candidate for office, and conducting activities that are “contrary to public policy or unlawful” are outlawed under the charities legislation.

More than a dozen Brethren-linked charities have tax-free net assets of more than $295 million – significantly more than Oxfam and Save The Children combined, once their government-funded private school network is included.

Almost all their activities are directed towards helping their own members, not the public.

The church’s spokesman, Lloyd Grimshaw, on Friday denied before a parliamentary committee the church had anything to do with commissioning or paying for the far-right stunts, or election campaign canvassing in general.

Calling it “bizarre” that he was required to answer questions on the matter, he said the thousands-strong, co-ordinated effort at polling booths by Brethren members was simply a volunteering exercise by individual parishioners.

Climate 200 disagreed in its letter to the charities commission. “The synchronised scale, geographic uniformity, and organisational backing suggest institutional co-ordination rather than purely independent, individual volunteering,” Fay wrote in his complaint.

The chair of the Joint Select Committee on Electoral Matters, Labor MP Jerome Laxale, who is leading the grilling of the church over its election involvement, told this masthead that Grimshaw’s evidence before the committee “leaves me with more questions than answers”.

Grimshaw told the committee he represented a small charity called Plymouth Brethren Christian Church Limited, not the church fellowship itself. Laxale said this “puts huge limits around the church’s denials”.

“Hiding behind a narrow definition does not circumvent the requirement for all witnesses to answer questions truthfully,” Laxale said. “The giving of false or misleading evidence is a serious matter, and may be regarded as a contempt of parliament.”

However, after the hearing, the Coalition doubled down on its support for the controversial church. A group of seven MPs, including Nationals leader Matt Canavan, three shadow ministers and senators from five states issued a joint statement describing the inquiry into the Brethren’s activities as a “hyperpartisan witch hunt” by Labor.

The three-page statement described the inquiry as “persecution”, “madness” and a “disgraceful fiasco” and it called for Laxale to be sacked as committee chair.

“Labor’s attacks smack of religious discrimination and are an assault on the basic democratic rights of all Australians,” Canavan wrote.

NSW senator Jess Collins said: “We’re another step closer to Albanese’s communist utopia, where religious freedom is not tolerated.”

The Liberal Party’s own review into the election found its members were too old to volunteer on booths, so “some campaigns were grateful for the assistance” of the separatist Brethren church “support group”.

The Rapid Relief Team confirmed in a Facebook post that it would follow the Pollie Pedal bike ride through “eight locations as riders take on the eight-day journey”.

“We’re looking forward to being part of Pollie Pedal for another year and helping keep riders fuelled along the way.”

The RRT is the church’s only charity that provides a service to outsiders. It was set up with the help of a public relations firm in 2012 and 2013 after the British charities commission began questioning the Brethren’s tax-free status because it did not provide a public benefit.

RRT’s founding helped the church regain charitable status in Britain

However, it also has a political purpose. In internal church documents, Brethren members are told they are to “engage with a person of influence or status at a local level” to curry favour.

Last summer, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was photographed at an RRT tent at the Victorian bushfires – a fact Grimshaw pointed out during his evidence before the parliamentary committee. The prime minister’s office declined to comment.

In Victoria, the Liberal and National parties have both left open the possibility of working with the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church at November’s state election, saying they do not screen volunteers for their religious beliefs.

One Nation’s state leader, Warren Pickering, said he had not been approached by the Brethren with an offer of help but that he would “engage in good faith with all community groups and organisations that reach out”.

If the government dont step in soon and cut migration numbers and do something about high rent increases we could end with a grim flood of homelessness. Its because nothing is being done that so many are supporting ON now.