"the house can censure that member for their actions. "

They CAN but in practice they don't.

"Wilkie tabled a mountain of documentary evidence at the time."

Which he is so confident about </sarc> that he won't talk about them outside the parliament.

Josephus,

"Most Churches I know are involved in overseas aid for health - hospitals and education - schools, so, Hillsong would not be any different."

Or ... you could set up a "church" and use the tax free proceeds to fund your greedy and luxurious lifestyle.

"Mr Wilkie said in 2021, four members of the Houston family spent three days at a luxury retreat in Cancun Mexico using $150,000 of Church money."

"For example, $6500 Cartier watch for Bobbie Houston, $2500 for Louis Vuitton luggage, a $2500 watch for Phil Dooley, two watches worth $15,000 for Joel and Julia A’Bell, shopping sprees for designer clothes at Saks Fifth Avenue and even $16,000 for custom skateboards."

What a joke! - (not to mention that Pentecostal dogma is the antithesis of anything Christ preached)

http://thenewdaily.com.au/news/2023/03/09/andrew-wilkie-hillsong/

God sure is showering the blessings on the church leaders.
Who gives a stuff about the poor and needy right?

I can only come up with one thing.

- Accountability -

Maybe they should have to prove they spent the money on the poor and needy, and they are only given tax free status on that money alone.

But the bigger problem is this

- If regular people are chucking cash on the plate or in a bag that's being passed around, what is to stop the leaders taking a 50% chunk of that cash straight off the top without anyone even knowing?

- May as well be a loop-hole to steal without oversight.

I think they should ban any kind of cash contributions, or something that would foolproof the system.
- To ensure there is no possibility of them grifting money given with purely good intentions, with the purpose of helping those in a greater need.

Hi Poirot,

This is the most outrageous misuse of donated money in a millennia, not since Nero spent Catholic dosh to feed Christians to the lions in the year dot has something as bad as this transpired, yet a couple of apologist in mhaze and Josephus, want to claim foul. Imagine if the Greens, or worse still, those upperty black fella had bough themselves a lollipop without the knowledge of that pair, they'd be all over it with the appropriate indigent outrage.

Jose', time for one of those little gems of yours, an anecdotal story about black fellas doing the wrong thing. Come on Jose' surely the bloke in the next pew to you on this bright and breezy Sunday morning has a "juicy" one you can relate.

NO.... I got one just for you; The misses was pegging the washing out, when the old duck from next door stuck her beak over the fence to say; "The black fellas down the street had a noisy barbecue last night, and you wont believe it, they used 100 dollar bills of government money to fire the bloody thing up! You can pass that one on. If not Indy's always got a negative to tell us about those pesky black fellas.

Anyway, back to the God fearing Hillsongers.

Indy's always got a negative to tell us about those pesky black fellas.
Paul1405,
Quoting actual incidents is not an "always negative" to tell, it's to tell what you et al conveniently as per your agenda "always" fail to mention !
You don't burr up when positive incidents get mentioned ! or is it a case of "Never let the facts get in the way of soliciting tears and money?"

Hey mhaze,
"Wilkie made his claims under parliamentary privilege ie he knows that the evidence just isn't there. If he was convinced of the accuracy of the accusations he'd walk outside parliament and make his claims.

Still, he didn't make the claims because he thought they were proven. He made them as fodder for his flying monkeys."

I don't give a stuff about accusations of one instance of wrongdoing.
All it does is emphasise a need for the system to be fool-proofed.
- I care about a badly designed system that will allow endless wrongdoing.

Stuff Hillsong.
Foolproof the system against wrongdoing.
Ban cash donations with huge penalties for accepting cash donations, and rewards for whistleblowers, and have a cash deposit machine that records deposits on an unhackable blockchain, that only non-church affiliated people like Armaguard can access (and only after the data has been uploaded and recorded on that blockchain) after which the funds are then deposited by Armaguard into the church or charities accounts.
- And make them account for every dollar they spent, audited by a non church affiliated government assigned accountant, of which they only get a tax exemption on monies proven to be spent for the purpose it was given.
Any money unaccounted for is taxed, and repeated instances of unaccounted money incurs fines.

- Don't follow the rules, then you don't get to have a church or charity.
Build a fool-proof system or expect further wrongdoing, simple.