Wednesday 5th of February 2025
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aussie political dishwater....

Hard-right lobby group Advance Australia has amassed a $14m warchest to target Greens and Teals at the Federal Election. Michael West reports.

The latest political donations data released by the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) reveal that right-wing lobby group Advance Australia has tripled its receipts since 22/23, now holding over $15 million for the 23/24 period. 

 

Dark Money. Hard-right Advance targets Greens, Teals with $14m warchest

     by Michael West 

 

Advance Australia lobbies against renewable energy and for Israel. It has been outed for ‘astroturfing’, running fake grassroots campaigns.

Only $1.1 million of this amount has disclosed donor details, leaving a substantial $14 million in “dark money” — that is, funds from anonymous sources.

The largest disclosed donor is the Cormack Foundation Pty Ltd, the Liberal Party’s endowment fund, contributing $500,000. Additionally, Roger Gillespie, the founder of Baker’s Delight, and his wife Leslie, each donated $50,000. Gillespie has a history of donating to both Advance and the Liberal Party.

The recent gathering at Tony Abbott’s office, attended by notable figures like Maurice Newman, Warren Mundine, and Peter Dutton, highlights the close ties between the Liberal Party’s right wing and Advance Australia.

Abbott, Mundine, Adler

Many of these individuals play key roles within Advance: Maurice Newman as an early driver, Tony Abbott as an advisor, Warren Mundine as a spokesperson, and David Adler, of the Australian Jewish Association (AJA), as a founding board member and advisor.

 

Advance Australia is actively involved in the Victorian by-election for the seat of Prahran, campaigning to put the Greens last.

 

….

 

Lupton’s wife, Julie Szego, has written about anti-semitism, and her views have been promoted by the Israel lobby. This collaboration between Lupton and Advance could be the first instance of a senior Labor figure associating with the pro-Netanyahu lobby.

Advance targets Greens and Teals

Advance’s current activities are seen as preparation for the upcoming federal election, where their primary targets are the Greens and Teal independents.

In the event of a Dutton minority government, Advance aims to have One Nation, Libertarians, and compliant independents on the cross-bench, potentially giving them significant influence in the political landscape.

Overall, Advance Australia’s big rise in funding, coupled with its close ties to the Liberal Party’s right wing and its active involvement in elections, raises concerns about the influence of “dark money” and the organisation’s role in shaping Australian politics.

The lack of transparency surrounding a large portion of their funding and their strategic targeting of specific political parties and candidates highlight the potential impact of Advance Australia on the future of Australian democracy. And the question of foreign interference is likely to arise as per the “anti-Israel” platform revealed in the group chat above.

And Labor

Due to the opacity of the AEC data and the complex structures of donor orgs, it takes time to search for the identity of donors, for all parties. Therefore this story has focused on Advance.

On the Labor side, things are equally opaque. We did pick up however that Abelshore, a company owned by coal giant Glencore, donated another $6.8m to the Mining and Energy Union (formerly CFMEU).

https://michaelwest.com.au/advance-warchest-targets-greens-teals/

 

MEANWHILE:

The former Labor MP for the seat of Prahran is urging voters to “evict the Greens”, boosting the chances of a Liberal victory and frustrating his old party – which doesn’t want to gift new Opposition Leader Brad Battin a crucial win.

Some ALP members are also campaigning for independent Tony Lupton against the wishes of party headquarters, after the former Prahran MP (from 2002 to 2010) cut up his party membership and stood as an independent to protest Labor’s decision to sit out the race.

Lupton’s how-to-vote card for this coming Saturday’s Prahran byelection also includes a personal endorsement from former premier Steve Bracks, who led the state with Lupton in his party room.

“He has experience as the member for Prahran, the ability to work with the government to get results for Prahran and the independence to always put Prahran first,” Bracks wrote of Lupton. 

 

Bracks told The Age he supported Lupton as the former local Labor MP. He said he was not aware of Lupton’s preferences but would not be recommending voters put the Liberals high on their ballots.

Lupton hopes to win the seat for himself but said his secondary aim was a Greens loss, arguing the minor party had become an extremist group that fostered social division and antisemitism.

“It’s a referendum on the Greens,” Lupton said. He has also accused Labor of lacking leadership and moral clarity on antisemitism.

He’s gone as far as attending a campaign meeting with volunteers backed by right-wing lobby group Advance, which has narrowed its target on the Greens but has previously campaigned against federal Labor in the Dunkley byelection and helped defeat the Voice referendum.

“The Greens lit the political fuse on division and antisemitism in this country. Maybe The Age should go report on that,” a spokesman for Advance said. The spokesman said it did not organise the meeting but confirmed volunteers met with Lupton as part of the campaign to put the Greens last.

Lupton said he was only worried about Prahran, not Advance’s other work, and that anyone trying to defeat the Greens was in his view doing a community service.

He has swapped preferences with Liberal candidate Rachel Westaway, giving her a genuine chance of flipping the Greens seat that has fallen to preferences at every poll since the turn of the century.

Elements of his campaign, and the involvement of Labor members, have frustrated some within the party.

 

The byelection was triggered after the sitting Greens MP for the seat, Sam Hibbins, quit parliament following an affair with a staffer.

Labor hard heads would prefer to see the Greens hold the seat than a Liberal victory, said two sources not authorised to speak publicly, to avoid putting momentum behind Battin as statewide polls turn against Premier Jacinta Allan.

The sources said headquarters had asked the Prahran branch to respect the party’s decision to sit the byelection out and that the party told members not to co-ordinate or promote another campaign.

Others in the party were already incensed at Labor’s decision not to contest the byelection, leaving local supporters disenfranchised.

 

Lupton’s campaign manager, Madeleine Sanders, is from Labor’s Prahran branch and last month emailed members seeking volunteers and donations to “evict the Greens”. She attached a letter from Lupton to party members.

“While I’m now an independent, you will all know that I’m true to those traditional Labor values that are so important,” Lupton wrote in the letter, obtained by The Age. “I’m asking you to put your hand up too by assisting this campaign to take Prahran off the Greens.”

https://www.theage.com.au/politics/victoria/ex-labor-mp-targets-greens-in-prahran-boosting-liberal-hopeful-s-bid-20250128-p5l7og.html

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

 

HYPOCRISY ISN’T ONE OF THE SINS OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS.

HENCE ITS POPULARITY IN THE ABRAHAMIC TRADITIONS…

 

 

liberal hogwash.....

Another Labor figure said Lupton’s campaign could bring the Liberals one seat closer to state government and that it beggared belief that people within the party would try to mobilise members to back him.

As the frontrunner in Saturday’s by-election, Greens candidate Angelica Di Camillo is the main target of negative campaigning.

 

The Liberal Party leafleted homes in Prahran — which also includes St Kilda, St Kilda East, Windsor and parts of Southbank and South Melbourne — to claim she just wants any seat in parliament.

“4 elections, 4 different seats, in 2 years,” the leaflet says. “Focused on herself. Not focused on you.”

[THIS IS ROTTEN POLITICS BY THE LIBS... ]

Di Camillo in 2022 contested the state seat of Rowville, where she grew up, and then the byelection in the overlapping federal seat of Aston in 2023. She was preselected for Higgins at this year’s federal election before the Australian Electoral Commission abolished the seat and is now contesting the overlapping state seat of Prahran, where she lives in St Kilda East.

Di Camillo, a 26-year-old environmental engineer, said the leaflet was disappointing but that “negative politics” turned voters off.

 

Westaway has herself contested two elections for the Liberal Party, for the NSW upper house and Sydney City Council, though this goes back to the early 2000s.

The 55-year-old, who was until recently a senior member of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal and is widely regarded as a strong candidate, has since lived locally for two decades and is embedded in the community.

https://www.theage.com.au/politics/victoria/ex-labor-mp-targets-greens-in-prahran-boosting-liberal-hopeful-s-bid-20250128-p5l7og.html

 

READ FROM TOP.

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

 

HYPOCRISY ISN’T ONE OF THE SINS OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS.

HENCE ITS POPULARITY IN THE ABRAHAMIC TRADITIONS…

 

vote green or teal....

 

Where is the real choice when it comes to the election?    By Barb Dadd

 

In the upcoming federal election, there is no real choice. The Labor Party and the Liberal Party have become virtually indistinguishable, offering voters nothing, but well-rehearsed sound bites, nothing to believe in, nothing to fight for, and certainly nothing to get excited about.

Both parties tiptoe around hard truths. Both prioritise economic appeasement over bold action. Both treat voters like idiots – dangling election-time goodies like birthday party lolly bags, hoping to buy their way back into power. And both continue to tinker around the edges rather than telling the truth as it is or having the guts to rebuild the system from the ground up where necessary.

But the voters are waiting — desperate — for someone to break the cycle. They need a leader with the courage to speak the truth and the spine to act on it. They need a party that isn’t afraid to stand up and declare:

Yes, we are in a national and global emergency. Climate instability, economic inequality, and social division are spiralling out of control – and pretending otherwise is no longer an option.

Yes, we will do something real about it. And that begins with education — the foundation of every future solution — because let’s face it, we, the current adult generation, have thoroughly stuffed up.

If Australia and the world are to survive, we need the next generation. We need to tell them and show them how essential they are. We need to equip them to find solutions where our generation has failed. And that means we stop sabotaging them before they even get the chance.

The situation is too perilous to keep shutting fresh young minds out of the conversation. The aging political and corporate elite have failed spectacularly in delivering real solutions – yet we continue to downplay, underfund, and dumb down the education of the majority while expecting a tiny, privileged elite to somehow fix everything for us. This is madness.

The next great innovations, scientific breakthroughs, climate solutions, and social reforms will not come from a handful of privileged private school students. They will come from every corner of Australia, from diverse young people with fresh perspectives, creative ideas, and the courage to challenge broken systems.

We must find the funds – no excuses.

This is not about whether we can afford to give every child in Australia a world-class education. We cannot afford not to.

If we need to reallocate spending, we must. If it means cutting wasteful subsidies to corporations, then so be it. And if it means that we, the people of Australia, must go without some comforts to ensure our children are properly educated and prepared to tackle the crises ahead, then so be it – because the future of humanity and the planet is on the line.

Our political leaders must have the guts to be this truthful. No more pretending that half-measures and political games will save us. No more acting as if there’s an endless tomorrow to fix what should have been done yesterday.

I have been a Labor voter all my life, but this time the party has a vital choice to make: prove that it can be different — that it can lead rather than simply manage decline — or continue being just another shade of the same tired politics.

It must stand up and make this crystal clear:

Every Australian student, no matter their postcode, no matter their background, will receive a fully funded, world-class education.

Not lip service. Not another half-measure. A real, nation-transforming investment in the future of this country – because without it, Australia will keep sliding into decline.

This is not just a policy – it is a moral obligation. It is the first, non-negotiable step in proving that Leadership still exists. Courage still matters. And the future is still worth fighting for.

The real question is: Will Labor rise to the occasion? Or will it remain just another lifeless, uninspired version of the status quo, leaving voters with nothing but more disappointment, disillusionment, and despair?

https://johnmenadue.com/where-is-the-real-choice-when-it-comes-to-the-election/

 

READ FROM TOP.

 

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.