How does Liberal plotting and branch-stacking fit into God’s plan?

July 31, 2026 — 11:45am

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When young Liberal “Reformers” and Catholic Schools NSW employees were spending 60 per cent of their work time scheming on projects such as “David Elliott shit sheet.docx”, what was God doing?

It won’t be an explicit part of ICAC’s Operation Rosny inquiry, which will adduce evidence of allegedly illegal Liberal donations from property developers and hoteliers filtered through Catholic Schools NSW, but many of us would still like to know. Where did all of this self-described “standard factional warfare” fit into God’s plan? And where did it fit into Catholic Schools NSW’s job descriptions?

Religious politicians and parties expose themselves routinely to charges of hypocrisy. It’s the cross they choose to bear. God-fearing Scott Morrison was an architect of robo-debt. The devout just-buried US Republican senator Lindsey Graham was a man who, in his eulogist Donald Trump’s words, “never saw a war he didn’t like”. The history of political atrocities committed in the name of religion is lengthy, and the activities of the NSW Reformers are somewhat humdrum and suburban in scale compared with, say, the Spanish Inquisition.

But still. The Reformers were set up specifically to pursue a morals-based policy agenda in the state parliament: opposing, for example, the legalising of abortion, voluntary assisted dying and same-sex marriage. According to its original website, “NSW Reformers is a movement that seeks to promote Christian values in society. For years, we have seen the slow erosion of these values which has in turn effected [sic] the rights of everyday Australians in areas such as faith, life and speech. As such, we seek to reform this great state by adding a Christian voice to it.”

In 2018 and 2019, the Reformers held a function at Pennant Hills Bowling Club titled “Family Values in Politics”; at Cherrybrook it gathered to discuss “The Left’s March........

© The Sydney Morning Herald