Fred Nile’s Christian Democratic Party Faces Extinction

Fred Nile’s Christian Democratic Party has long been an opponent of increased LGBTQI freedoms. The Sydney Morning Herald recently reported that the treasurer of the party, Charles Knox, has taken legal action against Mr Nile as well as his wife Silvana, Annie Wright, Mark Moody-Basedow and the Christian Democratic Party itself. Mr Knox is, according to the Sydney Morning Herald, accusing these individuals of using over $100,000 in party funds for their own benefit.

This comes at the same time as the Christian DemocraticParty faces extinction due to decreasing membership numbers. A notice was issued to the party by the NSW Electoral Commission on September 17, alerting the party to the potential for deregistration due to it having fewer than 500 members.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported that Mr Knox had said that more than $35,000 of Christian Democratic Party money had been claimed by Mr Nile’s private company, Family World News Pty Ltd. Family World News was created in 1994, and produces a monthly publication of the same name.

In the September 2019 edition of Family World News, Greg Bondar, NSW State Director of FamilyVoice Australia wrote about Fred Nile’s Legacy, calling him “A Man After God’s Own Heart.” Bondar calls Fred “the ever-moral crusader, pastor and politician” who has spoken on “society’s three most controversial subjects: religion, sex and politics.” Bondar states that these controversial subjects are still prevalent in society in different forms such as “religious freedom, abortion, same sex marriage and of course the politically sensitive issue of church and state.”

 Nile has been an opponent of LGBTQI rights for many years. He has tried to prevent same-sex couples from adopting children, referred to homosexuality as a “life choice” on an episode of Q&A in 2013 and prays for rain to wash out the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade.

Concerns have previously been raised that parliamentary staff, being paid with taxpayer-funded wages, are working on Family World News, and its concurrent newsletter Focus On Parliament. Mr Nile has stated that staff worked on this publication in their own time but according to the Sydney Morning Herald, Mr Nile did not respond as to how he enforced this. In 2014-15 and 2016-17 Mr Nile also withheld information about his shares in Telstra, and did not report the positions he held at Family World News, Australian Christian Nation Association and CDP between 2014-15 and 2016-17.

As New South Wales celebrates its LGBTQI population with Sydney being named the host city of WorldPride 2023, Nile’s political party seems to be on the brink of collapse with the threat of deregistration and the filing of a Supreme Court summons by party treasurer Charles Knox.