Gerard Holland, CEO of the Page Research Centre, wrote an article in The Daily Telegraph featuring our submission for the Senate Inquiry into Information Integrity on Climate Change and Energy.
Forget Russian meddling – we’ve uncovered Australia’s homegrown foreign interference nightmare.
Money from abroad is flooding our shores, arming ecowarriors to sabotage our resources sector and dismantle our energy grid. Over the past decade, a tightly co-ordinated activist network has embedded itself deep in our democracy. Backed by over $100 million in foreign funding, it has reshaped our energy policy, flooded the public with propaganda and waged war on cheap energy.
At the Page Research Centre, we’ve submitted evidence to the Senate’s Inquiry into Information Integrity on Climate Change and Energy showing just how deep this goes. At least $108 million – likely far more – has flowed into Australia from foreign donors to underwrite a network of third-party advocacy groups dedicated to shutting down the use of fossil fuels.
These groups masquerade as grassroots campaigns. They’re not. They’re well-drilled, well-funded, and well-co-ordinated. Their goal? Eliminate coal and gas from Australia’s energy system and block any potential transition towards nuclear power.
With a war chest of over $170 million dollars in the 2023/24 financial year alone, the organisations that we investigated have raised more in one year than both major parties spent combined at the last election.
Their success in demonising fossil fuels has handed a bonanza to renewable giants, who are now reaping billions in taxpayer-funded subsidies through the government’s Capacity Investment Scheme.
The model is slick. International donors cut million-dollar cheques to a few well-connected advocacy hubs with anonymity where the money is laundered through tax-deductible “charitable” structures.
From there, the funds are chopped up and sent downstream to legal centres, activist groups and environmental lobbies, all of them singing from the same hymn sheet: No coal, no gas, no nuclear.
It’s dark money. It bypasses disclosure laws. And it avoids public scrutiny and accountability. Their structure creates the illusion of a spontaneous, grassroots movement against traditional energy. In reality it is a foreign-funded, centrally directed campaign that has astroturfed the national debate and entrenched a fifth column within our democracy.
At the heart of this operation is a group called The Sunrise Project, which received tens of millions from foreign mega-foundations like the Ballmer Group, the Oak Foundation, and the Sequoia Climate Foundation.
Sunrise operates as the financial hub, funnelling cash into groups like Greenpeace, the Environmental Defenders Office, the Climate Action Network Australia and the Australia Institute.
This is not speculation. We’ve seen the documents that name the key players. In 2011, a strategy memo was circulated – funded by the Rockefeller Family Fund – explicitly laying out a plan to disrupt, delay, and ultimately destroy Australia’s coal sector.
They wanted to shift investor confidence, erode public support and make coal projects so politically toxic and expensive that no government or company would dare go near them.
They’re now attempting the same game with gas.
A key pillar of this strategy has been to tie up productive projects in the courts with green lawfare.
The Environmental Defenders Office, the largest green law firm in the southern hemisphere, has made a business out of holding Australia’s primary industries hostage.
They’ve spent years holding up projects like Barossa, Carmichael, Bylong and New Acland in endless court battles. This has led to billions in investment delayed. Thousands of jobs on ice. And some projects abandoned altogether, even after hundreds of millions in investment was sunk.
This is not a conspiracy theory. It is a matter of public record. And it raises serious questions about our sovereignty as a nation. How did we allow foreign entities, with no accountability to the Australian people, to bankroll such a vast network of activist groups focused on delaying and disrupting our critical infrastructure?
In any other area, be it defence, foreign affairs, or even agriculture, this would spark a national outcry. But because it’s dressed up in the language of climate virtue, (and perhaps even serves the interests of the current federal government), too many have looked the other way.
Make no mistake: this is the biggest foreign influence operation in modern Australian history.
The amounts of money involved are staggering. The consequences: Higher bills, weaker industry and lower reliability, are being felt every day by Australian households and businesses.
As a nation, we must do better. Our politics has been captured by interests that do not answer to the Australian people.
