I’ve been around politics long enough to know a campaign when I see it – and the Greens are clearly running a campaign against the Exclusive Brethren.

The Greens campaign appears to be coordinated by Senator Christine Milne. Is it appropriate to have a campaign against a religious organisation run out of a politician’s office – presumably using public funds.

Serious allegations have been made against the Brethren – but other bodies exist that can investigate these, ranging from electoral commissions through to the police.

The Brethren sound like nutters. But so do the Greens. The Brethren might believe in The Rapture – a time when all of those who are Christian and alive at a particular time will be swept up into the next life, and left behind will be those who are not pure – but the Greens and their fellow travellers do a nice line in apocalypses, too. How else can you take Tim Flannery’s forecast on the 7:30 Report of 23 June, 2004 that Perth will become a “ghost metropolis” thanks to climate change?

This looks like a war between two fundamentalist sects to me – two groups that most Australians regard as raving ratbags.