How Great Northern cracked open Australia’s national parks battle

An unwitting brewer has tapped into the increasingly bitter row between outdoor enthusiasts and national parks. The man at the centre of the storm reveals how the company blew a chance to avoid it.

Outdoorsman Simon Christie led the campagin against Great Northern after the beer brewer waded into the national parks debate.

Australian outdoor adventure devotee Simon Christie was filming in Malaysia late last month when he looked at his social media feed and noticed Aussies grumbling about Great Northern beer. That seemed strange. The top-­selling brand is all about the great outdoors and sinking a beer around the campfire after a fishing or four-wheel-drive adventure – everything that Christie’s online audience loves too.

Then he saw the beer brand’s snappy new “Outdoors for a Cause” campaign to raise money for new national parks, a seemingly innocuous endeavour because most people love national parks, right?

The initial feedback should have provided early warning that the feel-good initiative was about to go down like a flat beer in a front bar.

Christie voiced his own disapproval under the brand’s post then he sent Great Northern a direct message. “I said ‘I can give you insight into where you’ve gone wrong and I can give you the opportunity to fix this straight away, before it gets out of hand’.’’

In the growing storm Great Northern removed its post, and with it the negative comments, prompting Christie, a Victoria-based television and video producer, to post on his own 4WD TV Facebook page, which has 1.8 million followers: “In an absolutely disgraceful move, Great Northern Brewing Co has gone woke with a campaign to help get us locked out of forests,’’ he said.

“Bud Light ring any bells for you?’’ he added, in reference to the damaging 2023 backlash against Bud Light beer in the US for its ­collaboration with a transgender influencer.

By now it wasn’t just a few random Great Northern drinkers with their beers in a froth. Calls to boycott the brand united various wings of the hunting, camping, four-wheel driving, dog-loving, horseriding and adventure communities, along with those who are generally irritated by green issues and angered at the growing trend of corporates pursuing “woke” ­issues.

Protest videos depicted drinkers pouring their Great Northern down the sink, shooting cans of beer or crushing them under their four-wheel drives. There was a witty ditty on YouTube: “Don’t drink that beer don’t give them a dime, they’re taking our wild, our sacred time … Hunters and campers they’re coming for you, closing the forests, the rivers, the view.”

By January 30, Great Northern had to act. Zac Gelman, the head of marketing, announced the Outdoors for a Cause campaign had been reassessed following “feedback from our passionate drinkers”. The company’s pledge to match any donation up to $200,000 to the Foundation for National Parks and Wildlife would not be used to buy private land to add to national parks after all; it would be diverted for the preservation of ­endangered species instead.

A spokesman told Inquirer: “We’ve listened to our Great Northern drinkers, we acknowledge that we made a mistake and take responsibility. We support the outdoor lifestyle of Great Northern drinkers, whether it’s hiking, fishing, four-wheel driving or just relaxing.”

Christie wasn’t much impressed with the response. “It came way too late. What shocked me was how long they let this run. It was a huge oversight.”

This week, opponents claimed a scalp after the brand’s owner, Japanese giant Asahi Beverages, announced its Carlton & United Breweries chief executive Danny Celoni was quitting the company. The move was part of a restructure and had been in the wings for months, the company insisted, but Christie said the timing made it look like a capitulation and media headlines tied his departure to the backlash over its national parks campaign.

Great Northern never did respond to Christie’s offer of help in those early days of damage control. If someone had done so, they would have understood that they had unwittingly walked their brand into a longstanding and heated political debate over state forests, national parks and traditional outdoor pursuits.

Outdoors enthusiast Simon Christie launched the campaign that helped bring down Great Northern beer's partnership with national parks. Picture: Supplied

Even worse, the simple little fundraising campaign with its catchy message had been interpreted by some of its very own customers as an attack on the Aussie way of life.

Matt Ruchel, the head of the Victorian National Parks Association, sighs down the phone. “National parks are hardly a woke idea, right? They’ve been around for over 100 years.’’

Victoria is the epicentre of the debate, with various groups with active online followings pushing back against plans to convert state forests to national parks, which have tighter rules or exclusions around camping, pet access, hunting and some other activities.

A petition to stop the creation of any new national parks in the state was bolstered by the Great Northern beer boycott and has now gathered more than 33,000 signatures. The petition says the proposed formation of three new central-west national parks disregarded the interests of bush users who participate in traditional ­hobbies and it echoed concerns of other interest groups around bushfire risk and poor management of national parks.

Ruchel says there is often debate over access and use of national parks but the situation had escalated in recent times and had acquired a political edge since the Victorian government shut commercial native forest logging.

Knowing all this, if Great Northern had run its fundraising idea past him, would he have cautioned against it? “I would probably have said it’s safe enough but just be aware that there are these groups that are not big but they are noisy and a lot of the information that’s put around is not right,’’ he says.

A camper runs over a carton of Great Northern in protest.

Ruchel says national parks are primarily about conservation which creates areas that attract ­visitors and international tourists. They’re not shut down and people aren’t locked out: in Victoria, he says, some traditional uses such as fishing (in terrestrial parks) are allowed. “Four-wheel driving rules are the same in national parks as they are in state forest and a lot of parks allow for other activities such as fossicking and prospecting.’’

Ultimately, the numbers tell the story, he says, pointing to polling by the Redbridge Group of 1518 Victorians late last year that showed 80 per cent of residents support the creation of new national parks while only 8 per cent oppose them.

Leonie Blackwell, a spokeswoman for Victorians Against the Great Forest National Park, said her group was not opposed to existing national parks. “We don’t think they’re terrible, we don’t want to see them dismantled. We appreciate the value of what national parks provide, but a lot of people who use them are different to people who use state forests. State forests allow so many people to enjoy other pursuits and must be protected,” she says.

Great Northern must be wondering how it got caught up in a debate over state forests and national parks when its campaign was specifically to transform private land into national parks.

Blackwell says the beer brand’s campaign offered an opportunity to put the national parks issue on the table for people who didn’t understand what was at stake.

Christie says awareness was part of his angle as well. “The average Great Northern user is someone who likes to free camp. They like to go to the bush and do activities with their dog, or horse riding, or they like to go shooting. These activities are not allowed in national parks so this campaign was against their own customers’ interests in the first place,’’ he says

“And we’re facing this massive fight in Victoria to stop nearly a million acres of state forest being converted to national park. So I leveraged our cause against Great Northern to promote the fight that we’re having. This was a way of saying more national parks is not the way to go.’’