The sneaky network bringing Trump's climate-wrecking playbook to Australia

Australians have been warned that a network of right wing think tanks and activist groups - backed by billionaires - is preparing an election onslaught of misinformation and climate denial.

A secretive network of right wing think tanks – motivated by its role in defeating the Voice to Parliament referendum - is turning its attention to Australia’s next federal election with ambitions of a Trump-style dismantling of Australian climate policy, unseating Greens and teal independents - and it’s doing it with the backing of a Liberal Party fundraising body.

The Trump Administration is currently wreaking havoc on United States climate and energy policy with the backing of a network of conservative groups. Their Australian counterparts are hoping to replicate the same level of upheaval in Canberra by supporting the election of Peter Dutton as prime minister.

As I’ve previously reported for RenewEconomy, the Atlas Network is a global collective of conservative think tanks and activist groups, which has promoted an embrace of fossil fuels and nuclear power, stoked opposition to offshore wind farms and climate denial, in addition to outright hostility to anything that they considers to be ‘too woke’. This includes any support for marginalised or vulnerable communities, and any efforts to recognise and call out the impacts of racism.

American members of the Atlas Network include The Heritage Foundation – the primary authors of the ‘Project 2025’ blueprint now being implemented, almost word for word, by the Trump administration - and the Heartland Institute, a main generator of global climate change denial.

Australian members of the Atlas Network include the Centre for Independent Studies, LibertyWorks and the Institute of Public Affairs. Supporters of these groups have sought to import American-style misinformation and astroturfing campaigns into Australia, to undermine action on climate change and support clean energy policies and to back right wing policies.

With an Australian federal election just months away, it has become imperative that voters understand the tactics and tricks that these groups are looking to deploy, especially Advance Australia – the conservative ‘response to GetUp!’ that was accused of spreading misinformation during the Voice referendum.

The misinformation tactic unfortunately worked during the referendum, and it worked during the US presidential election. With another election set to feature climate policy as a prominent differentiator between parties and Dutton promising to burden Australia with an impossible nuclear power plan, it will be necessary to recognise and call out attempts to mislead and scare voters with the misinformation that will likely be deployed by groups like Advance Australia.

Greens call out Advance in Parliament

Two Australian Greens senators brought attention to the efforts and motivations of Advance Australia and the influence of the Atlas Network during the past parliamentary sitting week, with New South Wales senator David Shoebridge and Tasmanian senator Peter Whish-Wilson both addressing the right wing activist groups in speeches.

Whish-Wilson warned of the potentially deceptive influence that Advance Australia is seeking to leverage over Australian voters – including by obfuscating its origins, funding, motivations and whose interests it seeks to promote.

“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,” Whish-Wilson told parliament on Tuesday.

“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.”

“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,” Whish-Wilson added.

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Advance Australia’s elite funding sources

The Greens are right to raise attention to Advance Australia and what the group will do during the forthcoming federal election. The group has already been hit with accusations that it spread deceptive advertising during the 2022 federal election that targeted independent candidates and that it was a source of misinformation during the Voice referendum.

Political donation disclosures recently published by the Australian Electoral Commission provide some insight into who is funding Advance Australia.

As flagged by Whish-Wilson, donors to Advance Australia have included the former Vales Point power station owner Trevor St Baker, Bakers Delight co-founders Lesley and Roger Gillespie, millionaire owner of Kennards Self Storage Sam Kennard, the former Blackmores CEO Marcus Blackmore, former fund manager Simon Fenwick, and former Shark Tank investor Steve Baxter.

Money is often channelled into Advance Australia through obscurely named holding companies, which help obfuscate where the funds originate. These include hefty donations from ‘Paslibdan Pty Ltd’ – an entity associated with the wealthy O’Hara family that owns numerous pubs and hotels, ‘Henroth Investments’ – a property development firm operated by the heirs to the ‘extensive property portfolio’ of the late Henry Roth and JMR Management Consultancy Services was created by transport investor and former director of the Melbourne Storm Brett Ralph.

Perhaps most indicative of the group’s plan for this year’s federal election is the massive, $500,000, donation the group received from the Liberal Party-aligned Cormack Foundation. The Cormack Foundation is a fundraising vehicle for the Liberal Party, collecting millions in donations from corporate supporters – including Rio Tinto and BHP – which are usually channelled into the Liberal Party.

But the Cormack Foundation’s substantial donation to Advance Australia points to the clear association between the Liberal Party and Advance Australia. The group was co-founded by former ABC chair Maurice Newman who has been a vocal opponent to wind farm developments and who once claimed, while serving as a business adviser to the Abbott government that climate change was a hoax. An ASIC Register search shows the director of Advance Australia includes former Canberra Liberal MLA Vicki Dunne.

Replicating the Trump-playbook in Australia

In his own address to the senate, Shoebridge warned of the sway the Atlas Network wields over Australian politics and, in particular, over a prospective Dutton-led government.

“Advance wants to bring Trumpian far-right politics here so that billionaires profit while communities and the planet suffer,” Shoebridge said.

“It's no coincidence that Advance and its Liberal Party backers are sounding distinctly Trumpian right now. In fact, the people who set up and funded Advance also set up and funded a bunch of other think tanks and astroturf groups around the world that are members of the US based Atlas Network.”

”In fact, Atlas has hundreds of these organisations active around the world, many here in Australia and including one you might have heard of recently: the Heritage Foundation, which literally wrote Project 2025 for Donald Trump.”

“It is the same playbook everywhere these billionaire funded junk tanks and their astroturf groups operate. Advance and these other groups want to pit people in our community against one another. They want to misinform and divide and conquer for their own interests, and we reject their division,” Shoebridge added.

A well-funded global network pushing the right wing agenda

Drawing the linkages between the Atlas Network, and the think tanks and right wing activist organisations that have spread around the world does give a sense of tracing out some sort of grand reverse-vampire conspiracy. But in many ways, that’s exactly what it is (albeit not that secret and no reverse-vampires, I think).

The Atlas Network openly advertises the fact that it provides training, funding and logistical support to hundreds of conservative and libertarian groups around the world – helping to coordinate and replicate campaign victories to the benefit of right-wing politicians and problematic industries like fossil fuels, tobacco and guns. All with the financial backing of billionaires.

A lot of credit goes to an Australian academic, Dr Jeremy Walker of the University of Technology Sydney, who has dedicated a considerable amount of effort in researching and documenting the work of the Atlas Network and its efforts to undermine progressive policy. Walker’s research details the history of the network, its links to the fossil fuel and tobacco industries, and the influence it is now seeking to exert over most Western democracies.