Angus Taylor organised taxpayer grants for Brethren charity backing Pollie Pedal

Opposition Leader Angus Taylor arranged $33,000 in federal government grants for the religious charity providing food for his Pollie Pedal bike ride, with the money coming from the heavily criticised Morrison-era “stronger communities” program.

Taylor has defended the Rapid Relief Team charity, which is part of the controversial Plymouth Brethren Christian Church. The church ran an undisclosed multimillion-dollar pro-Peter Dutton campaign at the last election, which included paying neo-Nazis and other far-right figures to disrupt campaign events.

The Brethren charity is a major sponsor of the charity bike ride and is supplying breakfast each morning.

Taylor, who is on the ride with Liberal Party federal president Tony Abbott, brushed aside questions on Monday about the church, instead praising the charity’s work.

“We’re being supported by the Rapid Relief Team, and they are an extraordinary group of people,” Taylor said. “Rapid Relief supports state emergency services, state rural fire service organisations across this country, and they do an extraordinary job. And I’m very proud to have been served by them, and I saw them starting up in my own electorate after the Yass fires back in 2013.

“They have been there every time when there has been a flood, when there has been a fire. We saw Lily Hooper, the very tragic death of a girl in my electorate in the Nattai National Park [south-west of Sydney] just last week, they were out there.

“RRT was out there, supporting our emergency service organisations. That is an extraordinary organisation, and I am very sure many Labor members have been supported by that same organisation because of the great work they [the RRT] do.”

Records kept by the federal government show the Rapid Relief Team won dozens of government grants across the country, worth $680,000 between 2020 and 2023 under a program in which the local MP selected the recipients and invited them to apply.

In Taylor’s seat of Hume, the Brethren charity won its first grant, for $22,000 – the maximum available – to buy a coolroom trailer in 2021 to “facilitate the safe distribution of food to the community”. Two years later, the charity in Hume received another $11,000 for a coffee trailer to “support emergency services and the community”.

In its latest financial statement, the Rapid Relief Team reported a surplus of $263,105, and a retained surplus of $4.6 million.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese demanded Taylor explain Liberal links to the far-right activists who campaigned against and heckled Labor and Greens candidates during the 2025 election.

Speaking in Perth, Albanese said he had been calling for some time for people to turn down the temperature in politics, and recounted how those activists had disrupted press conferences, appeared at his hotel unannounced, acted aggressively at polling booths and appeared at events in the seats of Dickson in Brisbane and Bennelong in Sydney.

“The Liberal Party needs to explain why it is that these people were connected with the campaign in favour of Liberal candidates, wearing Liberal Party T-shirts, being paid to disrupt our democratic traditions. Democracy is a precious thing and election campaigns are important,” he said.

“It’s time the Liberal Party fronted up and answered how all this occurred, because it didn’t just appear. People don’t know where candidates are, just turning up, and the involvement in these outside forces, many of whom have been involved in activity that is anathema to most Australians.”

There is no suggestion that 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 Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission for investigation.

During a parliamentary hearing on Friday into electoral matters, Liberal MPs and Nationals leader Matt Canavan sympathised with the Brethren’s view that the questions they were being asked about the group’s role in the election were examples of religious discrimination.

Later, Coalition MPs published a dissenting response, accusing the Labor-helmed committee of running a “witch-hunt against people of faith and people who just happen to have the temerity to oppose Labor’s agenda”.

A number of Labor MPs also picked out charities in their electorates under the program before the Albanese government killed it off in 2023, but an investigation by this masthead in 2021 of more than 19,000 Morrison-era grants, across a number of programs, found Liberal electorates received three times more taxpayer money than Labor-held seats under a series of Morrison-era grants programs.

The Brethren’s broader multimillion-dollar campaign efforts for the Coalition included members turning out to campaign undercover at polling booths in blue Liberal T-shirts despite their usual edict to shun the outside world.

Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.