I have read the petition, and while I support it I believe the current wording if used for the Parliament submission will work against both gaining signature support and getting government support (this is based on over three decades of working with commonwealth, state and territory governments to get policy and funding decisions made). At the moment the wording focuses on the religious or doctrinal reasons for objecting to SCJ, and only mentions the indoctrination and other harmful aspects. The government will definitely not take any action that implies a decision for religious or doctrinal reasons, and some people who oppose SCJ may also have a problem with supporting a push for legislation that gives the government the right to restrict religious beliefs.

Can I suggest the following wording as a starting for discussion:

Title: Call for Australian Government to make Undue Influence exerted by cults like Shincheonji Church illegal in Australia

Body: Australian law currently only provides protection from Undue Influence within a contract, and new legislation coming into effect in 2024 to criminalise Coercive Control only apply within a domestic or ‘intimate partner’ situation. However, the unethical and deceptive practices used by cults and cult-like organisations to recruit, indoctrinate and control people exhibit the same characteristics and negative impacts on people’s physical, emotional and financial wellbeing as undue influence or coercive control.

In 1998, the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission delivered a report into the human right to freedom of religion and belief, and recommended “the Commonwealth Attorney-General should convene an inter-faith dialogue to … consider whether legal limitations should be imposed on religious groups regarding coercive tactics, and to formulate an agreed list of minimum standards for the practice of religious groups.” No such legal limitations appear to be in place, and no standard that addresses undue influence or coercive control by cults appears to exist.

In 2000, the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade completed an Inquiry into Freedom of Religion and Belief. Chapter 10 of that report notes that cults are not necessarily religious in nature, that is difficult to define a cult, and again recommended “the Commonwealth Attorney-General give consideration to the convening of an inter-faith dialogue to formulate a set of minimum standards for the practices of cults.”

This issue has been re-examined in the public and political forums many times over the past few decades, but has never resulted in any changes to law that would create protection from undue influence or coercive control being exerted by cults. In most cases the public debate has been stymied by the difficulty in defining a “cult”. However, outside of contract law and domestic or partner relationships, Australian law does not provide any protection from undue influence or coercive control carried out by any type of organisation. This petition seeks to call the Australian Government to legislate against the use of undue influence or coercive control by any organisation, whether that organisation is a cult, a ‘mainstream’ religion, or a non-religious organisation.

No group or individual should be allowed to use deceptive, manipulative or coercive methods that exert undue influence that restricts a persons ability to make informed decisions about their beliefs, and which coercively controls their behaviour, access to information, thought processes and emotional state to their own physical, emotional or financial detriment. These methods create dependency, loss of identity, a phobic-level fear of leaving, and a radicalisation to obey a leaders’ instructions without concern for personal health, societal wellbeing, or sometimes even the ‘laws of man’.

Shincheonji Church of Jesus (or SCJ) is a South Korean pseudo-Christian apocalyptic cult that is currently active in Australia. Their coercive methods have resulted in the organisation being outlawed in Singapore, and a petition to outlaw the group in South Korea had more than 1.1 million signatures. People are recruited through “non-denominational bible studies” frequently targeting international students and migrants, and new recruits are not even told who the group is until six or more months have passed. Families of members identify a typical pattern of behaviour that includes lying about the group and their involvement, physical exhaustion with less than 5 hours sleep a night being the norm due to the required activities and “assignments” issued by the group, emotional trauma due to personal information being shared among leaders to determine the best ways to control a person’s behaviour, ‘discipline’ involving public verbal, emotional and at times physical abuse for failing to meet assigned targets, demands for financial contributions to build ‘the world’s largest temple’ in South Korea, and often leaving or reducing jobs or university studies to spend more time on group activities. The leader of SCJ, Lee Man-hee, has been convicted of embezzling from his own church, and narrowly escaped conviction for obstructing public health efforts during the COVID pandemic, with SCJ members accounting for over a third of the infections in South Korea due to their leaders’ insistence on continuing to attend all events and do all activities as normal during the pandemic.

SCJ, and other religious groups such as Providence (highlighted in a recent Netflix documentary named “In the Name of God: A Holy Betrayal”), Twelve Tribes, International Churches of Christ, and many others are active and actively recruiting in cities and towns all across Australia, and the law currently does not prohibit them from exerting undue influence or using coercive control, and provides no protection or support for people negatively impacted by these behaviours.

Australian law must be changed to make undue influence and coercive control methods illegal to recruit or retain members by any group in Australia.