Questions over ‘foreign donations’ to activist group GetUp

GetUp ­received a large foreign donation to promote ‘climate change education’ just days before a January 1 cut-off.

Senator Abetz said GetUp held itself out as an independent Australian grassroots campaign organisation, yet it had a history of “aggressively” campaigning for Labor and the Greens.

The GetUp activist group ­received a large foreign donation “to promote climate change education” that was declared just days before a January 1 cut-off date under new federal laws banning foreign political donations to “political actors”.

GetUp said the $95,000 from the European Climate Foundation, received in December, was earmarked for “research” and denies it would be used for any campaigning activities in the lead-up to this year’s federal election, expected in May.

But Tasmanian Liberal senator Eric Abetz said the donation raised “red flags” about GetUp’s real agenda accepting foreign donations so close to the election. Calling the group a “political shape shifter”, Senator Abetz said GetUp held itself out as an independent Australian grassroots campaign organisation, yet it had a history of “aggressively” campaigning for Labor and the Greens.

‘‘What expertise does GetUp have in researching climate change?’’ Senator Abetz said last night. “They really do take the Australian people for mugs.”

GetUp national director Paul Oosting was adamant the EFC donation was not at odds with GetUp’s repeated objection to offshore political donations.

The money, Mr Oosting said, would be used to “improve Australians’ understanding of climate change, its impacts and how it can be solved”.

“There is no evidence that international donations to not-for-profits have ever or will ever corrupt our society, compared with the known track record of large corporations and lobby groups campaigning for damaging policies and exerting undue influence over governments,” Mr Oosting said.

“Australia’s foreign donor laws are ineffectual in the extreme. They aim to stop everyday people from spending $5 to save the Great Barrier Reef, a world heritage-listed wonder, but allow coal company Adani to donate $1 million to the Liberal and National parties.”

GetUp would not be drawn on questions about where the EFC money was sourced, or why it appeared to be in breach of the EFC’s own funding principles not to fund “activities outside the scope of EU climate strategy”.

It also declined to respond when asked if there were any links between international EFC donors and the Australian-based Sunrise Project. which last month donated $495,000 to GetUp to fund campaigning in the lead-up to the federal election, expected in May.

“This is the standard GetUp modus operandi, doing whatever it takes yet demanding a different standard of everybody else,” Senator Abetz said.

“They have conned far too many Australians for too long but now it’s all starting to come crashing down.”

GetUp last week launched a website inviting its supporters to choose from a lineup of “hard-right” MPs they wanted ousted from parliament at this year’s election. The “rogues” gallery include Prime Minister Scott Morrison as well as Peter Dutton, Tony Abbott, Kevin Andrews, Christian Porter, Nicolle Flint, Greg Hunt, Josh Frydenberg, Barnaby Joyce and Alan Tudge.

GetUp says the website is in response to a members’ survey that found 92 per cent wanted GetUp to target politicians standing in the way of progress on issues such as climate change, asylum-seekers, coal-fired power and gay conversion therapy.