A church, some far-right agitators and a very big denial in Parliament

The Plymouth Brethren Christian Church has told a parliamentary inquiry it did not secretly pay far-right social media figures to stage stunts targeting Anthony Albanese and other politicians during the 2025 federal election.

Lloyd Grimshaw, a director of the church, appeared before a parliamentary committee on 21 August 2026. He told the committee that reporting by Nine newspapers about the church's alleged election activities was a "complete lie." Grimshaw said the church did not take part in the 2025 election campaign at all — no paying for political activity, no chartering planes, no moving people around The Guardian.

The committee Grimshaw fronted is called the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, or JSCEM for short. It's a group of politicians from both houses of parliament — the House of Representatives and the Senate — and from different parties. After every federal election, this committee looks at how the election was run and whether the rules need changing.

The denial goes against reporting by Nine newspapers, which said the Brethren paid influencers to disrupt Labor's campaign. One of the people named was Laurence McIntyre, who was filmed heckling the prime minister. McIntyre had previously been photographed with neo-Nazi figures Joel Davis and Blair Cottrell, and the ABC reported he helped organise a March for Australia anti-immigration rally in 2025 The Guardian; ABC.

The church also rejected claims it had organised hundreds of volunteers to support Liberal candidates, including at polling booths around the country. Grimshaw did admit that some church members volunteered during the election, but said the church itself didn't tell them what to do or coordinate their efforts. This is the key distinction the committee is probing: were these people acting on their own, or was the church running a coordinated effort?

The hearing was broadcast live from Parliament House. The Brethren appeared alongside Advance, a conservative campaigning group. The committee is reviewing every aspect of how the 2025 federal election was conducted, after being set up for that task on 3 September 2025 APH.

The committee has been working on this for most of a year. Back in November 2025, the official transcript of a hearing records someone raising that Brethren members handed out how-to-vote cards for conservative parties in large numbers. The Brethren also put in a written submission to the inquiry, which was mentioned in a dissenting report by Coalition members of the committee APH. A dissenting report is what happens when some committee members disagree with the main findings and write their own version. It's common for this committee, but it matters here because the Brethren allegations are politically sensitive.

The church hasn't just denied the claims — it's gone on the attack. It said it was facing "extraordinary attacks by the media and even by members of parliament" over the allegations The Guardian. That makes the church sound like it's under siege, which might go down well with its supporters. But it doesn't actually answer the specific factual questions the committee is asking.

The broader context here is that the stakes are real. If a religious organisation did systematically funnel volunteers and paid agitators into an election campaign, that raises questions about whether our electoral disclosure laws are strong enough, whether the rules covering groups that aren't political parties but still spend money on campaigns are adequate, and whether the Australian Electoral Commission — the body that runs federal elections — has the power to enforce the rules. If the church didn't do any of this, then it has been seriously and publicly smeared. The committee's job is to figure out which version is true.

What the hearing gave the committee was a blanket denial and a small concession. The denial covers the serious stuff: paying influencers, coordinating volunteers, chartering planes. The concession is much narrower. Some members did volunteer. Grimshaw says they made their own choices. Whether that explanation holds up against the amount of activity allegedly involved, the documents Nine says it has, and what other witnesses tell the committee — that's what the committee has to weigh up.

The Coalition's dissenting report makes the politics more complicated. If Coalition members have already split from the committee majority on findings connected to the Brethren's submission, the partisan temperature around this inquiry is running hot. That makes the final report, when it comes out, worth reading closely — for what it says about groups that aren't parties but campaign in elections, and for what it tells us about whether the parliament can agree on how to keep elections clean.

None of this is settled yet. Grimshaw gave the committee his version. Nine is standing by its reporting. The committee will report in due course. The gap between a flat denial and a firm conclusion is where the work is.