‘Sad’: Mike Cannon-Brookes’ verdict on federal election

Billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes says one major party should be given credit for a key policy, but won’t reveal if he’s making election donations.

Mike Cannon-Brookes, right, has slammed the climate policies of Scott Morrison’s (left) Coalition government.

Billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes says Labor should be given credit for its climate policy modelling, but neither of the major parties was “covering themselves in glory” when it came to their climate and economic policies.

“It’s quite clear the current government has a very, very poor track record, both domestically and internationally, for its complete lack of achievement over the last how many years,” the co-founder of software company Atlassian told news.com.au.

In contrast, Mr Cannon-Brookes said he would give Labor credit for modelling and fully costing its policies with relatively sensible assumptions.

“At least they’ve done some really substantive modelling to think about the whole of economy effects of what they’re trying to propose – and they should get credit for that.

“A lot of this comes down to how bulls**t your model is – or having a model or plan at all.”

He criticised slogans such as “technology, not taxes” or statements that “prices are going go up by $50, down by $50”, as “pointless sound bites” that do not make any sense.

He said climate and decarbonisation weren’t environmental issues – they were whole of government issues.

“They affect education, they affect industry, they affect international trade,” he said.

“We’ve seen in the Solar Alliance, they affect global strategic positioning.”

Mr Cannon-Brookes and fellow billionaire Andrew Forrest recently invested $152 million into a 4200km undersea cable link to deliver solar electricity from the Northern Territory, to Singapore.

“I don’t think either major party is embracing that entirety of the transition,” he said.

“One would argue that one party’s policies are better than the other party’s policies. None of them are really covering themselves in glory.”

He sees independents and other groups as more progressive on their policies around climate, decarbonisation, vehicle standards and household building standards. He singled out Warringah MP Zali Steggall for her net zero policy and others for their stance on vehicle emissions.

“It’s sad that some of the better policies are coming from the independents but maybe that’s how democracy works,” he said.

During the last election in 2019, Mr Cannon-Brookes donated $50,000 to Climate200 to support the campaigns of independents like Ms Steggall, but when asked whether he was again donating to the organisation, he remained coy.

Mike Cannon-Brookes is an Australian billionaire, the co-founder and co-CEO of the software company Atlassian.

He said the organisation has raised $10 million from 10,000 donors from every single electorate in the country and “they’ve done all that without me”, adding that Australians would have to “wait until September” to know whether he had made any contributions to Climate200 or any of the major parties.

Despite this, he said he supported real-time reporting of donations.

He said it didn’t make any sense this system was not available, saying: “I’ll build it for you – it’s a very easy system to build.”

Mr Cannon-Brookes said he was “highly supportive” of issues independents associated with Climate200 were backing, including climate, integrity and gender issues.

“I’m a huge fan of what Climate200 is trying to do,” he said, adding it was “mind-boggling what they’ve achieved already”.

However, he said the pool of money it had raised paled into insignificance compared to the money others were spending on the election.

“They’re not a single group but I’m highly supportive of the issues they are pushing,” he said.

“As a proud Australian, I do not feel like we are doing well on any of those three issues.”

Originally published as ‘Sad’: Mike Cannon-Brookes’ verdict on federal election