Philanthropist Graeme Wood has form on media

Philanthropist Graeme Wood has previously ­offered significant funds to progressive advocacy group GetUp!

Green left-wing philanthropist Graeme Wood has previously ­offered significant funds to progressive advocacy group GetUp!, which prides itself on influencing elections and public debate.

GetUp!’s internal board papers and other documents, leaked to The Australian in 2014, show a $262,000 donation originally ­“secured” by GetUp! to fund its campaigns for the 2013 federal election was provided via green group Friends of the Earth, allowing the funds to be treated as a tax deduction. All parties involved, including Mr Wood, denied they had done anything inappropriate.

Other confidential GetUp! documents disclose that at the time of Mr Wood’s financial backing in 2013, GetUp! produced an advertisement attacking Rupert Murdoch and his Australian newspapers during the election campaign. The advertisement ­accused the newspapers of being biased against Labor. Most media outlets refused to run them.

GetUp!’s board papers state: “The Murdoch ad was always going to be controversial, but the banning of the ad by the Seven, Nine and Ten networks gave us a media hook to exploit.”

The board papers reveal how GetUp!’s staff initially “gave the ad ban yarn to Fairfax’s media writer”, but it stalled because Fairfax had also refused to run the ad ­online. The board papers state that GetUp! “took the exclusive back (from Fairfax) and gave it to Bernard Keane from Crikey and Jo Puccini from the ABC. We subsequently got coverage in the Crikey daily newsletter and on ABC Radio’s World Today”.

The board papers state: “We thought to sponsor a trip to Australia by UK MP Tom Watson to talk about the role of Australian media. Watson was a key player in the Leveson (phone-hacking) ­inquiry.

“Ultimately, it was decided GetUp! should keep some distance between Tom and our organisation, so Avaaz decided to sponsor the trip instead.”