This paper offers a critical analysis of the ongoing Inquiry on "cults" launched by the Parliament of Victoria, Australia. Drawing on journalistic and scholarly assessments—including my own prior analyses—and situating the Inquiry within broader international debates on minority religions, the study argues that the initiative represents a significant conceptual and legal shift with potentially far‑reaching consequences. While framed as an effort to address "coercive control," a term originally developed to describe patterns of domestic and intimate‑partner abuse, the Inquiry extends this framework to religious and spiritual movements. The paper contends that this extension functions as a rhetorical and legal strategy to reintroduce, under a new label, the discredited notion of "brainwashing," long rejected by academic experts and by courts internationally. Through an examination of the Inquiry's terms of reference, public submissions, and reactions from scholars of new religious movements, the analysis shows how the concept of "coercive control" is being repurposed to legitimize state intervention into the internal life of minority religions. The paper concludes that such an approach risks undermining religious freedom, conflating unconventional beliefs with abuse, and normalizing a new vocabulary for old anti‑cult narratives.