Weekend Wrap for 4 July 2026

National: Liberal calls summons threat to Exclusive Brethren, Advance a 'political plaything' (25 June 2026)
The parliamentary committee examining the conduct of the 2025 federal election has resolved to compel the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church and the right-wing lobby group Advance to appear, issuing a summons if they keep declining. Chair Jerome Laxale (Labor) said both had refused invitations to hearings in November 2025 and March and May 2026, and that more than 75 submissions had named the church, citing its members' presence at polling booths across about 80 suburbs. The church denies orchestrating the mass turnout of its members for the Coalition, insisting they acted individually; spokesman Lloyd Grimshaw says he has repeatedly offered to attend. Brethren members declared $700,000 in donations to Advance, the election's highest-spending third-party campaigner at more than $13 million, which ran hard against Labor and the Greens. Deputy chair Richard Colbeck (Liberal) called the move a "punitive and political misuse" of the committee. The secular stakes are plain: a secretive church that also runs government-funded schools stands accused of marshalling its members into an election, and parliament is testing whether it can be made to explain itself.
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The Age

NSW: Adam Gibson escaped Redeemer with $20 in his pocket and $7 on his Opal card (28 June 2026)
The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age have deepened their investigation into Redeemer Baptist School and the fundamentalist Redeemer Baptist Church in North Parramatta, reporting that former student Adam Gibson was removed from his family and sent to live with principal and church elder Jonathan Cannon from the age of seven, sleeping on a sofa outside Cannon’s bedroom. He is one of an estimated fifty children moved into the homes of elders Cannon and headmaster Russell Bailey over 38 years — a practice spanning generations, with Gibson’s uncle enduring the same decades earlier. Gibson left at eighteen with a guitar, $20, $7 on his Opal card and a PDF of his birth certificate, the church having refused to hand over the original. The church-state stakes are sharp: the school has drawn tens of millions in government funding over the past decade while its teachers work unpaid on small stipends, some relying on Centrelink; the NSW Education Standards Authority is investigating and federal Education Minister Jason Clare has directed his department to examine it. Public money continues to flow to an institution that separated children from their parents and operated well outside ordinary scrutiny.
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The Age

WA: Premier Cook argues parliament a "special institution" as justification for imposing daily religious worship (28 June 2026)
Premier Roger Cook has defended the Western Australian Legislative Assembly's daily Lord's Prayer by arguing that parliament is "not a workplace" but a "special ceremonial institution". Responding to the proposal — advanced by Bassendean Labor MP Dave Kelly and now before the Assembly's Procedure and Privileges Committee — to replace the prayer with a moment of silent reflection, Cook told 7News Perth: "We say our Lord's Prayer, we acknowledge traditional owners." Kelly countered that parliament is the only government workplace in the state required to open each day with religious worship, and said he had canvassed colleagues and found "widespread support" for change. Opposition Leader Basil Zempilas said he was "absolutely fine" with the prayers continuing; as Perth Lord Mayor he had earlier declined to engage with the Rationalist Society's concerns about council prayers. The committee has now circulated a discussion paper inviting feedback on whether the prayers should be altered or retained. It is a clean illustration of the church-state question at issue: whether a secular parliament should continue to privilege one religion's worship as its official opening ritual. The ACL, for its part, has published a defence of the practice (see Worth Reading).
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Rationalist Society of Australia

TAS: Advocates Celebrate As Greens Unveil Draft Bill To Ban Conversion Practices In Tasmania (1 July 2026)
The Tasmanian Greens have released draft legislation they say would create Australia's strongest protections against LGBTQIA+ conversion practices, ahead of its planned introduction to parliament later this year. Unveiled by Greens leader Dr Rosalie Woodruff, the Conversion Practices Prohibition Bill 2026 follows years of advocacy and a 2022 recommendation from the Tasmanian Law Reform Institute. It establishes both criminal offences for the most serious conduct and a civil response scheme overseen by the Anti-Discrimination Commissioner, makes it an offence to take a person out of the state for conversion practices, prohibits advertising them, and classifies conversion practices against children as a form of abuse for civil-law purposes. The bill expressly protects legitimate healthcare, identity exploration, parental discussion and genuine religious expression that is not part of a conversion practice. Tasmania, Western Australia and the Northern Territory are the only jurisdictions yet to pass a dedicated ban. Equality Tasmania's Rodney Croome called conversion practices "cruel and futile quackery that inflict deep damage", noting the elevated rates of PTSD and suicide attempts among young people subjected to them. The secular interest is squarely in the religious carve-out: the bill's central drafting challenge, here as elsewhere, is banning the coercive practice while preserving ordinary religious belief and speech — the line the religious lobby will contest during consultation. Public consultation runs until 31 July.
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Star Observer
QNews

National: Moves to change the Sex Discrimination Act shut down (2 July 2026)
Three attempts to strip gender-identity protections from the Sex Discrimination Act were blocked in federal parliament this week, each defeated at an early procedural stage before debate could begin — a rare parliamentary outcome. On Monday, One Nation's Pauline Hanson sought to revive her Sex Discrimination Amendment (Acknowledging Biological Reality) Bill 2024; the motion was blocked by Labor and the Greens. On Wednesday, Liberal senator Michaelia Cash introduced a bill titled Restoring Common Sense and Recognising Biological Sex, which met the same fate. A third bill, introduced by Nationals member Alison Penfold to insert "sex-based rights", was briefly debated in the House. Greens senator Nick McKim accused One Nation of using parliamentary privilege to platform a "transphobic, hateful piece of legislation", while Cash declared the issue would be a focus of the Liberals' next election campaign, accusing the Prime Minister of "betraying Australian women and girls". The secular dimension is direct: these bills are the legislative vehicle for a religious-conservative campaign to write a single, contested definition of "sex" into Commonwealth anti-discrimination law — the same campaign that underwrites the religious-school exemptions and the "biological reality" framing advanced by faith-based lobbyists.
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OUTinPerth
QNews

NSW: Catholic Schools NSW CEO Dallas McInerney stands aside over illegal donation allegations (2 July 2026)
Dallas McInerney has stood aside as chief executive of Catholic Schools NSW after the state’s Independent Commission Against Corruption revealed it is investigating whether he signed off on illegal political donations from the organisation — the body overseeing the state’s publicly funded Catholic school system — to recruit Liberal Party members. The move came a day after ICAC announced, on 1 July, a public inquiry into fugitive property developer Jean Nassif’s links to Liberal powerbrokers, councils and Catholic schools; McInerney also stepped down from the board of the NSW Education Standards Authority. A long-time controller of the NSW Liberals’ right faction, McInerney was Opposition Leader Angus Taylor’s campaign treasurer and is close to Sydney Archbishop Anthony Fisher; former minister David Elliott says Taylor should resign over the ties, which Taylor’s office dismisses as "baseless". The secular interest is stark: a religious-education body that receives billions in public funding is alleged to have channelled unlawful donations into party recruitment, at the very point where church, party and taxpayer money meet. The allegations are untested; the eight-week public hearing begins on 27 July.
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The Age

National: Christian Brothers kept nine child abusers as members due to Gospel imperative to help ‘the needy’, court documents reveal (3 July 2026)
The NSW Supreme Court granted the Trustees of the Christian Brothers a moratorium on all abuse cases nationally, pausing every current and future civil claim — including some already settled but unpaid — and throwing dozens of pending trials into chaos, pending a creditors’ scheme to distribute the order’s remaining assets. The order says it is about to go broke and proposes selling property worth about $217 million to pay survivors. But court documents filed by Oceania head Brother Gerard Brady reveal the order has deliberately kept nine convicted child sex offenders — one currently imprisoned — among its roughly 176 members, citing a “Gospel imperative” to “care for the needy” and a canon-law duty to “all Brothers”. Brady also disclosed that he had approached the Holy See for support from January, six months before pleading insolvency, without success. Separately, the order has transferred vast property holdings to Edmund Rice Education Australia, which runs its former schools — including a $4.7 million Strathfield home handed over for $1 — with the transfers valued at between $540 million (the order’s estimate) and $891 million (EREA’s accounts). Survivors’ lawyers call it “a new form of institutional harm”: an institution that presided over child abuse using corporate restructuring to cap what it pays. A further hearing is set for 21 September.
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The Guardian
ABC News