MCA demands more oversight for environment groups

The Minerals Council of Australia blasts lack of regulation around more than 600 registered environmental organisations.

Brendan Pearson is the chief Executive of the Minerals Council of Australia.

The Minerals Council of Australia has blasted the lack of regulation around more than 600 registered environmental organisations as it pushes a tough new compliance regime for tax deductible donations which cost the government about $1.3bn a year.

Responding to a Treasury discussion paper, the MCA notes the Department of Environment and Energy allocates 2.5 staff per year to regulate registered environmental organisations of which 75 per cent are also registered as charities.

Current laws state that registered environmental groups must have a principal purpose of improving the environment while charities must work towards a public benefit and are forbidden from engaging in politically partisan activities.

But the MCA warns these boundaries have been consistently ignored by a range of groups like Greenpeace and 350.org which it argues have repeatedly broken laws in the pursuit of political objectives.

In May, Greenpeace representatives boarded a coal terminal at the Port of Newcastle and streamed the action on the charity’s facebook page to protest coal financing by the Commonwealth Bank, with NSW police arresting 16 activists.

The hard-nosed changes proposed by the MCA would prevent environmental organisations from becoming deductible gift recipients — known as DGRs — if they engage in unlawful, unsafe or politically partisan activity.

“Charities and environmental groups that engage in genuine conservation have nothing to fear from better oversight,” said MCA chief executive Brendan Pearson. “The only ones who should be concerned are those that routinely and brazenly break the law, those who act as a conduit for funds of other non-eligible groups or those that engage in politically partisan activity.”

“The Government should act to implement reforms as soon as possible.”

The MCA pushes for the government to embrace a suite of reforms that would impose greater transparency on the sector, including a requirement that environmental groups be forced to disclose any foreign funding sources.

The Australian revealed last year a lead environmental group campaigning to stop coalmining in Australia, the Sunrise ­Project, was funded from the multimillion-dollar US Sandler Foundation and was trying to hide its funding sources from the Australian parliament.

The MCA backs in a proposal floated in the discussion paper that would require green groups to spend 50 per cent of their annual expenditure on activities that improve the environment in addition to a new “sunset clause” which would oblige organisations to reapply for tax deductible status every five years.

It also argues for the use of tax deductible donations for the payment of criminal or civil fines to be made off-limits as well as regular formal reviews of DGR entities by the Australian Taxation Office or the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission.