Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Right now, many good Australians who care about our planet, tackling climate change, healthy democracies and solving economic inequality are feeling increasingly anxious, fearful and cynical about politics. Confused, they have watched shocking recent developments with the election of the Trump administration. Their fears are increasingly mirrored here in our own divided polity. So many people I talk to tell me they are feeling increasingly helpless, caught up and swept away by it all. It is akin to swimming in a political riptide. It's overwhelming. Yale University's Professor Snyder has called the first weeks of the Trump administration a coup, and we should understand it as precisely that. It is a far-right-wing, fossil fascist coup against the democratic and constitutional order of the United States. It has very closely followed a preplanned strategy published and announced by shady, long-established and well-funded third-party interests and organisations. Many people are wondering why democracy seems so broken today. Why do we now have a government for elites, billionaires, oligarchs and big corporations? How did it get to this, and what happens now?

Tonight I wish to shine a light on and warn the Australian people of the international Atlas Network, a little-known but powerful global network of political actors operating in Australia, the United States, New Zealand and, indeed, 100 other countries. It is producing disinformation on a vast scale through its 580 partner organisations and working to infiltrate and take key roles in public institutions to achieve discipline and control over government policy, legislation, the media, the courts and the public service. It is a many-headed hydra, constantly changing its shape. Its tentacles firmly clutch Australia.

The forces at work creating this torrent of divisive, dishonest and dangerous politics are indeed deep, dangerous and murky, and you won't see them by looking at the surface. Staying afloat against such a toxic tide firstly requires a much better understanding of the forces shaping these dangerous undercurrents and where they want to lead us. We need to see with clear eyes what we are truly up against. The election and brazen madness of this Trump administration and the ascension of Mr Dutton in the polls didn't happen overnight. This happened over many, many decades. Let me explain. As was once declared on the website of the US based Atlas Network, the Australian Atlas partners include the Institute of Public Affairs in Melbourne, the Centre for Independent Studies, the Australian Taxpayers' Alliance in Sydney, the Australian Institute for Progress in Brisbane—which, in the last Queensland election, was funded directly by coal mining—and the Mannkal Economic Education Foundation in Perth, which trains interns for so-called scholarships working on political campaigns all around the world. We all remember the cynical and dishonest recent campaign against the Voice to Parliament in Australia. Professor Marcia Langton recently described this campaign as 'vicious disinformation'. Evidence is emerging of the role played by third-party think tanks in this travesty, all affiliated with the Atlas Network, such as the Institute of Public Affairs, the Centre for Independent Studies, fossil fuel interests and, of course, the astroturfing group Advance.

Astroturfing is the intentional creation and fostering of ostensibly grassroots political action groups by strategic communications experts. The far right uses this tactic to build superficial authenticity in what are in fact highly elaborate, professional, socially and environmentally damaging PR and disinformation campaigns. Advance launders far-right ideology through fake grassroots organisations and Facebook pages, and Advance has no problems using its resources and millionaires' money to sow division and doubt. We saw this firsthand during the Voice; we are seeing it manifesting itself in many other ways now. Many Australians don't know it, but this Voice campaign wasn't led by Peter Dutton; the Voice campaign was led by two individuals who had their entire political careers generated from the Australian arm of the global Atlas Network of so-called free market think tanks and their spin-off campaign units.

Little information or media attention was ever provided to the Australian people or voters on the organisation Advance—who they were, who they represented and who was paying for it. To better understand Advance, we need to understand where Advance comes from. We need to understand who is behind Advance's mission to destroy climate action, stop progressive social policy and line the pockets of billionaires and multinational fossil fuel corporations at the expense of working Australians. Advance was spun out of two existing Atlas think tanks in Australia: the Centre for Independent Studies and the Institute of Public Affairs. Its donors include Sam Kennard, a multimillionaire on the board of the Centre for Independent Studies, Simon Fenwick, another multimillionaire on the board of the Institute of Public Affairs, Brian Macfie, a life member of the institute of Public Affairs, and a coal baron made rich by the privatisation of New South Wales coal assets, Trevor St Baker.

Advance campaigns pretending that it represents ordinary Australians rather than a small handful of multimillionaires and coal barons funding its work through Atlas think tanks in Australia. Advance claims to be financed and powered by grassroots donations, but AEC donation data shows this is far from the case. Some of the wealthiest Australians are recorded as Advance backers, having funnelled hundreds of thousands of dollars through shady holding companies to fund Advance's campaigns to destroy climate action, defeat progressive social policy and stop First Nations justice. The ultimate goal of the Advance campaign was sabotaging the Voice referendum, as Warren Mundine candidly told us all on the website for the Centre of Independent Studies. It was to prevent traditional owners from speaking against the seemingly unstoppable rash of new coal and gas project approvals. Projects they'd approve would destroy country at the site of extraction and through ever-escalating, catastrophic climate change. Advance has let it be known that its purpose in sabotaging the Voice referendum was to roll out an all-out assault on the accelerating clean energy rollout.

Flush with half-a-million dollars from the Liberal Party's Cormack Foundation and another 14 million bucks from unknown sources, propaganda vehicle Advance is now spending huge sums critically attacking the Greens, attacking Labor, attacking climate, attacking integrity and independence and attacking moderates inside the Liberal Party and National parties—anyone with the courage, integrity and loyalty to this country to defend our common interests against global fossil fuel multinationals. Advance and a proliferation of other dodgy groups have campaigned against offshore wind farms, supposedly saying they kill whales, an entirely false claim that has been at the centre of exactly the same campaign against clean energy mounted by—guess who?—Atlas units in the United States like the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which is funded by fossil fuel interests and climate denial specialists the Heartland Institute, which is, once again, funded by big oil.

This is particularly acute and relevant to us now, and I ask people who are interested in this subject to go onto the Senate Environment and Communications References Committee's public page for its inquiry into offshore wind, where there is some very telling evidence from Dr Jeremy Walker about how this all works and the extraordinary efforts and resources that have been committed in the United States and here in Australia to undermine the offshore rollout of wind and other renewable energies. The entire pro-nuclear campaign that is now dominating the headlines is also linked to Advance and to the Atlas Network.

I want to talk a little bit more about the news today. It was reported that Advance is now under investigation by the Victorian Electoral Commission for potential violations of campaign finance law after receiving half a million dollars from the Cormack Foundation, the same funding entity that donated a million dollars to the Victorian Liberal Party in 2023-24. The elite billionaire rich-listers backing Advance play as dirty as the coal they so desperately want to keep digging out of the ground. These people have no interest in progressing policy that would materially benefit working Australians, bring down the cost of living or make people's lives easier. Advance is not a mainstream voice for Australians; it is a Liberal Party aligned campaign group funded by coal barons and multimillionaire investment managers. It is using the divisive language and campaign strategies perfected by conservative American think tanks to do the Liberal Party's dirty work. Have no doubt: Advance wants to turn Australia into America. Is that what we want?

Advance are terrified because analysts are predicting a shared-power parliamentary arrangement after the next election, where the Greens will push to put dental and mental health into Medicare, build more affordable homes and stop new coal and gas projects paid for by Advance's billionaire donors. This election, the Greens are within reach of winning seats across the country, and Advance are desperately trying to stop that. We wear that as a badge of honour. But we know that, when the Atlas Network and Advance's mask is ripped off, people will see right through them and their wealthy elites and the way the LNP couples themselves to them and their donors.