Oliver Yates’s served on board of company that sold coal tenements to Adani

The renewable-energy advocate challenging Josh Frydenberg served on the board of a company that previously sold coal tenements.

Oliver Yates.

The renewable-energy advocate challenging Josh Frydenberg in the Liberal stronghold of Koo­yong will campaign on government inaction on climate change, des­pite serving on the board of a company that previously sold coal tenements to Indian mining giant Adani.

Former Liberal Party member Oliver Yates was acting chairman of Linc Energy from October 2010 to November 2011 when it acquired substantial fossil fuel ­assets, including 14 oilfields in Texas and Louisiana through a subsidiary and a controlling interest in three Alaskan oilfield leases.

In April last year, the company was found guilty of causing ­serious environmental harm at its underground coal gasification plant in the Darling Downs, one of Queensland’s agricultural heartlands, for mismanaging the underground burning of coal seams. The company, which had been placed into liquidation, was fined $4.5 million.

Mr Yates — a former chief executive of the Clean Energy Fin­ance Corporation and senior executive at Macquarie Bank — said last night he was not respons­ible for “activities that occurred after I had left the company and had a limited association with”.

“I was director for less than a year, attending only two board meetings, beginning in 2010 and ending in 2011,” Mr Yates said. “I refuse to comment on matters befor­e or after my involvement. This includes the sale to Adani, which I played no role in. I strongly oppose the Adani mine.”

Mr Yates re-stated this morning on ABC radio that he was a “simple board member” of the company who attended two board meetings. “I was with that company for a grand total of less than a year in about 2011 and I joined that company particularly in relation to look at hydrogen and CO2 storage in underground gasification facilities,” he said.

Two months prior to Mr Yates’s appointment to the board, Linc Energy announced it was selling coal tenements in the Galilee Basin to Adani for $500m in cash and a $2 a tonne royalty for the first 20 years of production.

The deal paved the way for the Carmichael coal project, opposed by climate activists and promin­ent left-wing group GetUp, to proceed.

GetUp’s former media director Adrian Dodd is working with Mr Yates ahead of his announce­ment today that he will contest Kooyong.

Mr Dodd — who has also worked as a communications advise­r at the ACTU — declined to comment yesterday on whether he would be working on Mr Yates’s campaign to win the seat.

This morning, Mr Yates said Mr Frydenberg had failed to take action on climate change. Mr Yates said the Treasurer should not be given credit for trying to get an emissions policy through the Coalition partyroom when he was environment minister.

“If he has tried to do it he has succinctly failed,” Mr Yates told ABC radio. “If he is going to continue to sit in that seat and fail then our environment and our future will fail. So I don’t want to take that risk. I don’t think people in the electorate of Kooyong want to take that risk.

“He has more opportunity than anybody to make a difference here in relation to Australia’s future and our environment and he failed.”

Mr Yates, who opposed the national energy guarantee, said it was important citizens stood against governments that did not take climate change seriously. He said Labor’s climate change policies were a “good start” but a longer term plan was needed.

“We saw from the Victorian election and we saw what needs to happen globally is that citizens need to stand up to environment ministers who are not taking climate change seriously,” Mr Yates said.

“Climate change is one issue in this seat but actually it is integrity that is being lost with the politicians and the Liberals are not even following their core principles.

“The core principle which I find extraordinary that this government is failing on is the obligation to ensure that future generations do not carry the liability of current generations.

“We are handing on one horrific intergenerational liability to young people and they should be really upset.”

When asked by Sky News if he was receiving support from GetUp, Mr Yates said: “I get support from everybody”

In 2016, then Queensland environm­ent minister Steven Miles said residents near Linc Energ­y’s UCG plant in Hopeland near Chinchilla suffered serious side-effects and accused the company of being responsible for “the biggest pollution event, probably, in Queensland’s history”.

The Treasurer holds Melbourne’s Kooyong by 12.8 per cent and is one of several Liberal MPs facing challenges from Greens, independents and former party members after the government lost the seat of Wentworth in the October by-election.

Liberal Party strategists told The Australian yesterday the loss of Wentworth to independent Kerryn Phelps showed that the party needed to “call it out” when independents operated as “fronts for Labor and the Greens”.

Tony Abbott is under threat in his Manly-based seat of Warringah from champion skier and barrist­er Zali Steggall, whose co-campaign manager Louise Hislop has praised former GetUp campaigns director boss Sally Rugg.

Ms Steggall has distanced herself from GetUp but identified clim­ate change as a priority issue and has consulted with Tim Flannery on policy responses.

Anthony Reid, who helped Dr Phelps, will run Ms Steggall’s campaign in Warringah.

The Australian revealed in Decemb­er that Labor and unions were weighing up campaigns in the seats of Kooyong and Higgins, which is being vacated by Kelly O’Dwyer, after the Libera­l Party’s poor showing at the Victorian election in November.

There is also speculation that Liberal defector Julia Banks could run as an independent against Health Minister Greg Hunt in the Victorian seat of Flinders, while the installation of former ALP nat­ional president Warren Mundin­e as Liberal candidate in the NSW seat of Gilmore has ignited an internal party feud.

Mr Yates said yesterday he was running because the government lacked integrity and had “no policy to address climate change”.

Liberal sources yesterday played down the threat posed by Mr Yates. “I don’t think he’s a Kerryn Phelps,” one source said.