The normally publicity-shy Exclusive Brethren sect has asserted in a rare interview that Labor best represents its conscience, despite repeated stories of it cosying up to and funding the Liberals.
The secretive Christian fellowship has even laughed off Labor leader Kevin Rudd's description of it as an "extremist cult" that breaks up families, an accusation the Christian prime minister made during last year's election campaign.
"I don't blame him for saying that," said senior elder Daniel Hales in an interview with AAP.
"Good luck to him, more power to him," said Mr Hales after the Brethren decided to go public to correct what it called years of misleading, negative and untrue stories about it.
"It was a populist thing to say in the heat of battle, weeks before the election, and he knows we don't vote anyway," laughed Mr Hales, whose group's 15,000 Australian members do not believe in voting.
"I have got respect for him.
"Labor has done well representing the conscience of Brethren members, in fact better than the conservatives."
He cited the freedom for Brethren members not to join trade unions, and Labor's decision not to support what he called Greens leader Bob Brown's "witch hunt" in the form of a failed Senate move for an investigation into the Brethren.
"That showed his (Mr Rudd's) true and honest principles."
And what of reports that Brethren members contributed $370,000 to help re-elect John Howard in 2004, and even more to support two other conservative politicians - half a million for US President George W Bush and $1 million for former New Zealand National leader Don Brash?
"There's not a skerrick to substantiate it (political funding)," said Mr Hales, whose younger brother, Sydney accountant Bruce Hales, is world leader of a group that counts 43,000 members in 19 countries, mainly Australia, NZ, the US and Britain.
"I know nothing about that.
"I have never given anything to politicians, and the church gives nothing to politicians.
"If Brethren members donate privately, that is individually up to them."
He said there were no grounds for any action after the Australian Electoral Commission referred reports about electoral funding to federal police.
"Nothing has happened that is illegal, or wrong, or even smelly," he said.
"If anyone had broken the law that would end their membership in the church because we are law abiding citizens."
The Brethren's opposition to voting stems from a belief it interferes with God's right to ordain the government of the day, though critics have accused them of giving God a helping hand.
Brethren do believe, however, in taking their concerns to government, which led to meetings with former Howard government ministers from the PM down, including Peter Costello and Tony Abbott.
When it's hypothetically put to Mr Hales that if every Australian was a Brethren no government could be elected, he lets out a hearty guffaw and asks: "Do I really have to consider such a glorious possibility? Or should I say impossibility?"
Impossibility because Brethren don't vote or run for office.
They don't have TVs in their homes or radios in their cars, either.
They don't go to cinemas or own pleasure boats or holiday homes.
They use computers but the internet is strictly filtered.
They eat, drink and socialise only with other Brethren, referring to outsiders as "worldlies", and only marry within the fellowship.
They don't own shares in companies other than their own, and they don't belong to trade unions, sporting clubs or other community groups.
It's all part of their policy of separation from the sinful world.
"We are in the world but not of the world," explains Mr Hales.
"Our lives are very home-centred, so we would tend to entertain in the home rather than at restaurants.
"We believe trade unions and companies have a right to exist but we don't link into anything that joins us legally with others.
"We don't believe we are any better than any other Christians.
"There are millions of magnificent Christians out there in the world who are all going to get the same blessing as me.
"I don't take any higher ground at all. We see separation as a light, as a calling.
"We don't pretend to live totally isolated lives - we pay our taxes and care for our neighbours and have friendly relations with others.
"It's more accurate to say we don't form strong links with others; we hold them at arm's length but we respect them.
"We are not damning or critical of the world.
"Our businesses employ non-Brethren labour and our schools employ only non-Brethren teachers."
There's a good reason for that - Brethren no longer believe in attending universities, so there will be no more Brethren doctors, lawyers or teachers.
They do believe in tertiary education at TAFEs, for example, but say that in the 1960s and 70s universities changed from bastions of conservatism into hotbeds of atheism and "vanguards for re-engineering society".
They believe university life would tend to challenge their children's faith and draw them away from that faith and their families.
But they dispute any suggestion that those who do leave the Brethren are barred from contact with family members remaining in the sect, or vice versa, and say there have been only "four of five" Brethren excommunicated in Sydney in the past decade.
"We don't live in communes," said Mr Hales, whose sect separated from the established church in the early 1800s when Irish clergyman John Nelson Darby left to practise the teachings of scripture in their "original purity".
"I've got three married boys and twin girls of 21. If one of them was to decide on another lifestyle I would make sure they were in a good flat, I would care for them, I would protect them, I would hover around them, I certainly wouldn't cut them off. We don't do that."
But he admits their paths would inevitably diverge, and he would ask if they really knew what they were doing.
"I admit our children don't have much idea of the extent of the sad side of the world," he said, "of how many of God's lovely creatures are sleeping in Hyde Park tonight".
Mr Hales said the Exclusive Brethren did not seek to convert people, and would prefer just to be left alone.
"We don't mind being ridiculed, we don't mind people thinking we are odd, we dont mind people not understanding our view of the Bible," he said at his Sydney home.
"I think if you walked down the street here and talked to people they might say, 'They've got some funny ideas and they won't have a meal with me, but they're nice people, they chat with me, and if I had trouble with my car they would help me'."
