Greens defend taking ‘security cash’ despite push for ban

The Greens, pushing for a ban on ‘dirty donations’, are under fire after accepting a donation of more than $200,000.

Greens leader Adam Bandt. Picture: AAP

The Greens, who are pushing for a ban on “dirty donations”, accepted more than $200,000 in financial support from a South Australian couple linked to an intelligence-gathering and data-scraping company­ that provides services to defence and police agencies in the US, Britain and Australia.

A week after the Greens introduced their Banning Dirty ­Dona­tions Bill, The Australian can reveal that Daniel and Gisela McMich­ael have made multiple donations to the party’s SA and federal branches since 2015-16.

Dr (Daniel) McMichael’s company, Sintelix, which was named a “top 10 homeland security solution provider” in 2018, lists the US Department of Defence, British Ministry of Defence, Australian Defence Department, Queensland Police Service, BAE Systems and the NSW Police Force among its customers.

Greens Senate leader Larissa Waters said last week the Banning Dirty Donations Bill sought to “stop all political donations from industries with a track record of seeking to influence decisions”, including­ the defence, banking, gambling, alcohol, pharmaceutical, tobacco and property development sectors.

The Queensland senator said the “major parties should join with the Greens and help clean up polit­ics” and that “big money should not run politics”.

Greens leader Adam Bandt said Dr McMichael’s donations were made in a personal capacity and the SA Greens had complied with electoral laws. “Donations are a matter for the party,’’ Mr Bandt told The Australian. “I understand this donation was made in a personal capacity and according to the rules of the party and the electoral funding laws.’’

Ms McMichael said the couple would continue supporting the Greens, despite the party’s approach­ to political donations and attitude towards defence and ­policing. “My husband and I have made several donations to the Greens over the last few years,’’ she said. “We are sympathetic to their approach to caring for our country and its people. We will continue to support causes consistent with kindness and caring stewardship of our world.”

The Australian is not suggesting that the donations made by the McMichaels were inappropriate.

The Greens voted this month against a Senate motion, co-sponsored­ by Coalition MPs, condemning calls to defund essential police forces in Australia. The ­motion specifically condemned “those calling for the defunding of our essential police forces”, including NSW Greens upper-house MP David Shoebridge.

Greens senator Nick McKim said “the call to defund the police is actually a call for increased funding into social supports — things like housing, things like education, things like childcare … that are genuine public goods”.

In a blog published by Sintelix, which launched in 2017 as a vehicl­e for software created by Dr McMichael’s Semantic Sciences, the company outlines advancements in intelligence soft­ware and hardware “creating new possibilities for solving crimes, preventing crime and predictive policing”.

“With access to large amounts of data from police databases, social­ and web data, tools like Sintelix­ can deliver the intellig­ence required to predict locations where future crimes are likely to be planned and take place,’’ the blog post said. “Police can then use the latest hidden cameras and technologies like video glasses to monitor those locations.

“Using big data and analytics tools like Sintelix to identify ­locations where crime has occurred­ in the past has proven to be a successful strategy for reducing crime.” Dr McMichael — a world leader in his field who studied­ at Oxford and worked at the CSIRO and the British Defence Research Agency — feat­ured in a government CIO Outlook publication, which listed his company as a top 10 homeland-security solution provider.

The article said “Sintelix takes unstructured and semi-structured data and turns it into structured data. It is the most capable and accurat­e system of its kind on the market. It provides visualisations and integrated maps, understands over 1500 file formats and can work in multiple languages”.

The company says its mission is to “do business rightly — in peace and service”.

“We seek to create wealth and apply it to increasing happiness and wellbeing,” Sintelix says.

Australian Electoral Commission disclosures show that Dr McMichael has given $125,000 in financial support assisting the SA Greens. Ms McMichael has made ­multiple donations­ to the SA and federal Greens over the past three years, usually donating amounts of $10,000 and $20,000.