Even for a religion started by a science fiction writer, the allegations levelled against the Church of Scientology in Australia’s federal parliament last week sound stranger than fiction.

Blackmail, cover-ups of child abuse, labour camps, embezzlement and coerced abortions are spelled out among the 53 pages of allegations by seven former Scientologists – some of whom had climbed high in the church hierarchy – tabled in the Senate.

In what the church has decried as “an outrageous abuse of parliamentary privilege”, independent senator Nick Xenophon is demanding a Senate inquiry into what he described in parliament as a “criminal organisation that hides behind its religious beliefs”.

“In my view, this is a two-faced organisation,” he told the Senate on Tuesday night.

“There is the public face of the organisation founded in 1953 by the late science fiction writer L.Ron Hubbard, which claims to offer guidance and support to its followers, and there is the private face of the organisation, which abuses its followers, viciously targets its critics and seems largely driven by paranoia.”

Xenophon – who is Greek Orthodox – appears to have the cautious support of both sides of parliament, given that no one objected to his tabling of such explosive and controversial documents.

Kevin Rudd is weighing up the call for a Senate inquiry, telling reporters this week that “many people in Australia have real concerns about Scientology” and that “I share some of those concerns”.

NSW police are now looking into the shocking allegations, which include the use of labour camps known as the Rehabilitation Project Force, for church members who rated poorly on tests using a device known as the electropsychometer, or E-meter.

Ex-Scientologist Peta O’Brien told Xenophon, in a letter tabled inthe Senate, that she was forced to spend five hours a day breakingrocks with crow bars to help build a road and carparking area at the church’s Dundas base, in Sydney’s west.

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