(Image: Private Media)

Scott Morrison’s desperation to distance himself from Hillsong founder Brian Houston and the pastor’s moral transgressions shows how treacherous Morrison is prepared to be — and what dark new territory he will go to — to save his political skin.

Yet Australia’s political commentariat has all but ignored Morrison’s reaction and the ugly truths it has shown about the prime minister’s character.

How ugly? 

Morrison lied, of course, when he claimed last week that he hasn’t been part of Houston’s Hillsong for 15 years. As Bernard Keane showed, Morrison’s “Brian who?” strategy was a big, brazen lie — number 50 by Crikey‘s calculations — because there was photographic evidence of Morrison on stage with Houston, praying together, at the opening of Hillsong’s 2019 annual conference. Besides that, there is a long, unbroken trail of close personal encounters between the two.

But Morrison’s other major line of defence was even more cynical. Under the pressure of falling poll numbers, Morrison latched on to the pain of those hurt by Houston.  

“My first thoughts were with the victims, as they’ve been rightly described,” Morrison said, taking the tone of the morally outraged.

Concern for the victim? It wasn’t always this way. It is fresh in everyone’s memory that only 12 months ago Morrison took a pummelling when he was unable to comprehend the impact of rape on a young woman without the insights of his wife, Jenny.

Morrison has had eight years to put the welfare of Hillsong victims ahead of the church and Brian Houston but has failed to do so. 

In 2014 the McClellan royal commission into institutional responses to child sex abuse heard details of the case of Brett Sengstock who, as an eight-year-old boy, was sexually abused by Brian’s father, Frank.

The commission heard that as an adult Sengstock was paid off by Frank Houston with the princely sum of $12,000 in a grubby deal overseen by a still-serving member of the Hillsong hierarchy in a meeting at a McDonald’s restaurant. Brian Houston’s role in the deal was aired at the hearings.

There was also evidence tendered that one of Frank Houston’s victims from New Zealand directly approached Brian Houston for a form of recognition in the years after Frank had passed away.

In 2015 the commission referred information on Brian Houston to the NSW Police, recommending they investigate if there was a case to answer of concealment of information on child sex abuse. 

In 2019, as we reported, a Hillsong employee was found guilty of indecently assaulting a young woman, Anna Crenshaw, who had attended Hillsong College as a visiting student from America.

Despite these incidents, all on the public record, Morrison continued his public support for Houston. The prime minister’s effusive endorsement of Houston at a national conference of Pentecostal churches on the Gold Coast in April last year (“just pay you honour, mate”, Morrison said) enraged victim Sengstock and his supporters. At the time Houston was under investigation for allegedly concealing information from police. (Charges have since been laid and Houston has vowed to defend them vigorously.)

Yet with an election in sight, Morrison now professes that his compassion lies first with the victims.

A pattern of silenced victims

Instead of poll-driven public display of sorrow for a victim, the prime minister might do better to call out Hillsong’s long-established practice of paying off victims in exchange for their silence. 

The pattern began with the off-the-books pay off to Sengstock two decades ago.

In 2013 a woman resigned in distress after Brian Houston had sent her inappropriate texts. She was given two months’ salary, paid by Houston rather than the church, another off-the-books arrangement.

It was the same in 2019. A woman who was distressed by Houston’s behaviour in her hotel room was given a refund of her Hillsong conference fee and a donation she had made to Hillsong, paid by Houston. 

And as we revealed last week, the Hillsong culture is such that a New York pastor forced a young female staff member to sign a non-disparagement agreement while he was having an extramarital affair with her.

Yet Morrison has not used his authority to call out Hillsong’s cover-up culture.

Instead he has taken his hollowed-out persona into a dark new place — surely a major story with an election around the corner, yet largely ignored by other media.