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Senator SHOEBRIDGE (New South Wales) (19:05): I see the Liberal Party's pushback about some of the moves that have been taken by the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters to actually look behind what happened with the Exclusive Brethren in the last federal election. I see the resistance and I see the pushback suggesting that somehow this is about a religion.

Well, it's actually about protecting politics. No-one should be dragged into politics because of their religion, but no-one can use their religion or politically organise through their religion to avoid scrutiny—to avoid coming and saying what their role was in the last federal election or in other electoral engagements. To be clear, I recall going to the Parramatta polling booth on polling day in the last federal election.

I turned up at the main booth in the centre of Parramatta, and there were maybe 50—or maybe more—Liberal Party volunteers all dressed in the same brand-new shirts and brand-new shorts. All bar a handful were men in brand-new construction boots they'd just bought and all were aged about 30. They were all being very aggressive on the polling booth.

I've never seen anything quite like it. There were a group of Labor volunteers, and they were their usual mix, and there was a group of Greens volunteers and some Independents, but there was this cohort all dressed in the same, basically brand-new outfits and all basically of the same age. They were overwhelmingly male and being incredibly aggressive.

I wondered what the hell was going on. We found out later, when it became clear that they were sent in there by the Exclusive Brethren to push for one political candidate, for the Liberal Party. And it turned out it was happening across the board.

I know that the Liberal Party don't want this investigated, and maybe they don't want investigated the funds that go from organisations like that to the Liberal Party. And do you want to know what I think the Liberal Party also don't want investigated? They are desperately unhappy, no doubt, that the New South Wales Independent Commission Against Corruption has just begun a fresh investigation into funds that were sent to the New South Wales Liberal Party from Catholic schools in breach of disclosure obligations and in breach of electoral laws in New South Wales.

There's a pattern developing here, and running cover on the basis that this is about religion totally misses the point. This is about ensuring our democracies are not undermined by activities that are not out in the open, by funding that's not lawful and by this kind of undermining and attacks and third-party attacks. Another reason, no doubt, that the Exclusive Brethren don't want to turn up to JSCEM, and why the Liberal Party is running cover for them, is the $700,000 they gave to Advance in the last election campaign to run the Liberal Party's dirty business for them.

No wonder the Liberal Party wants to protect that flow of money. No wonder they don't want the scrutiny. No doubt they're going to desperately do what they can to hide from the New South Wales ICAC inquiry.

I want to be clear: no-one should be dragged into politics because of their religion, but anyone who uses their religion to push their political barrow to feed money to a political party needs to come under scrutiny—and no-one should hide from it.