Australian Stimulus package gives $130.4 Million to "Extremist Cult"

What the Australian Stimulus package supports:

THE Rudd Government is giving out  more than $70 million of future taxpayers money to education centers run by the Exclusive Brethren, a religious sect Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd himself described as an "extremist cult" that breaks up families.

The sect's "schools" have secured more than $8.4m under the Government's school building stimulus package and they will share in $62m in recurrent taxpayer funding. his new round of funding is on top of a $10million funding package given out in 2008 and a further $50 million in subsidies being paid to the Sect school for the 2009 - 2013 financial year.

This is a $130.4 MILLION divided between 2,400 students who will never further their education beyond a lower level high school education. This is $54,000 of Taxpayers money per student, given out to a sect, which does not pay a cent of tax under church registration tax laws. The Brethren also appear to use a loophole in visa rules and employs Brethren teachers from within the sect from overseas and brings them in on a skilled visa, claiming full government assistance for their wages. There are just 40,000 members world wide.

Documents show a Brethren-run school at Swan Hill in northern Victoria Australia was granted $1.2m for a library and $800,000 for a hall when its most recent annual report shows it had just 16 pupils and already had a library.

Grants data released by the commonwealth shows that Brethren schools in every state received funding under the $12.4 billion schools stimulus package.

The Australian reports.

Despite the Brethren's past disdain for computers and its stand that there is no place for computers in the school classroom, figures show its schools have received more than 300 new laptops and computers under the commonwealth computers-in-school initiative, for what they will be used for is still unknown.

Brethren education centers have also secured grants under the Schools Pride program. All up, there are just 2,400 children in Brethren education centers and each will receive the equivalent of $26,127 per head in recurrent education funding and $11,200 in stimulus funding, more than businesses received to rebuild after they were wiped out after Cyclone larry in 2006.

Australian Education Union federal president Angelo Gavrielatos said these sums were outrageous and the funding system had to be urgently replaced.

"How can the Government justify handing tens of millions of dollars to an organization it believes is a cult while public schools which educate the vast majority of our children are struggling for funds?" Mr Gavrielatos said.

The Evangelistic Brethren Christian secular schools did not  permit any students to progress to university, this is strictly taboo. The schools do not have any students younger than 10 or older than 17, and has been accused of brainwashing students into alternative lifestyles which have lead to the breakup of the family unit.  The university ban is one aspect of the Brethren lifestyle that outsiders who the sect calls "worldlies" do not understand. You won't find Brethren children watching TV programs, going to the movies, using google search on the Internet, and there are no Harry Potter books in their "$2,000,000 library" (for 16 students), which has strict controls on books Brethren children can read. It's all part of their belief in separation from the sinful world around them, and Brethren elders admit that it can mean their children can grow up ignorant of the extent of that wickedness.

This comes after Rudd just spent in excess of $1.7 million on his trip to Copenhagen for the climate change conference.

It is so good to know the Rudd Government is in strict control of Australian taxpayers funds and is not sending our kids broke before they leave school to pay for the Rudd Government's easy come easy go attitude....Not!

It seems Governments have forgotten just how much a Million dollars is, and how hard it is for a group of taxpayers to earn that amount working 36 hours a week.

Gary Duffy with Exerts from The Courier Mail