Silencing the Voice:
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Editors Note: This article outlines recent research into the impact of foreign funding on the Voice referendum. The peer-review research is outlined in an open access article below
Australian soon votes in a referendum to recognise the deep-time history of First Nations people in its 1901 Constitution and establish an Indigenous Voice to Parliament. In April, polling suggested the referendum proposal of the 2017 National Constitutional Convention and Uluru Statement from the Heart enjoyed 60% support. Since lead anti-Voice campaign organisation Advance Australia began its media offensive, the Yes vote has declined to 40%.
Recently, prime minister Anthony Albanese observed the No campaign relies on spreading fear and disinformation. “What we’ve had is a whole lot of disinformation out there” We have all underestimated how long-established, well-organised and highly-coordinated is the political influence infrastructure now running the No campaign. In a recent peer-reviewed article, I recall the history of the Australian ‘free market’ think-tanks, institutes and single issue campaign units which have cultivated the public careers of the two Indigenous Australians fronting the Vote No campaign, who are provided daily platforms in the national media: Warren Nyunggai Mundine, and Senator Jacinta Nampajinpa Price. Upon these voices the No campaign’s optics and social media offensive almost entirely depends.
Looking beyond the false impression of widespread First Nations opposition to the Voice created by constant attention to Price and Mundine, we may ask for whom do they speak? What are the motives of the No campaign? Which business interests might be silent investors in - and potential financial beneficiaries of - a No result? How is the No campaign aligned with parallel influence campaigns conducted by the shadowy network of ‘thinktanks’ operating in Australia and other nations, such as counter-science disinformation opposing clean energy and climate policy?
Registered as a third-party election campaigner with the AEC, Advance no longer names its responsible officers on its public website. In 2019, the Advance advisory council included Maurice Newman and Sam Kennard - a board member of the Centre for Independent Studies, which names Mundine as director of an ‘Indigenous Forum’ and Price as an associate (CIS 2023b).
Led by Advance, the No campaign is supported across Australia’s Centre for Independent Studies, the Institute of Public Affairs, and the Australian conference of the international far-right Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC- until recently, hosted by LibertyWorks), organisations that Price and Mundine have been associated with for years. All have long opposed climate policy. CIS, IPA and LibertyWorks are all affiliated with the little known global Atlas Network.
Founded in 1981 by the English businessman Antony Fisher ‘to litter the world with free market thinktanks’, headquartered in Virginia by the US capitol, Atlas is not itself a thinktank: it discreetly fundraises, networks and expands its vast public opinion, public policy and election influence machinery of 515 ‘partner organisations’ in 100 nations. Better known US thinktanks include the Heritage Foundation, the Cato, Heartland and Competitve Enterprise institutes. All oppose climate policy, and all have have documented histories of oil-derived funding, eg. from oil billionaires Charles Koch and Richard Scaife along with ExxonMobil and other multinational corporations.[1]
Limited disclosure laws prevent Australians from knowing who funds the Australian Atlas units, but we do know where the founding grants came from.
In 1976, John Bonython, founder of gas giant Santos, invited Fisher to privately gather support amongst big business for the CIS, an early Atlas institute modelled on Fisher’s prototype neoliberal thinktank founded in 1955: the London-based Institute of Economic Affairs. By the mid-1970s, IEA’s donors included Shell, BP, RioTinto, Exxon and many others,[2] whose identities were carefully concealed from the general public targeted through the mass-media by ‘free market’ opinion demanding privatisation, deregulation and regressive tax cuts.
Foundation CIS grants came from Santos, Shell, BHP, Rio Tinto, Western Mining Corp (WMC) and News Ltds’s Adelaide Advertiser. With WMC’s international mining powerbroker Hugh Morgan, a member of the Atlas Network’s corporate board from 1984, Newman and the late Neville Kennard (of Kennard’s Hire) were closely involved in founding the CIS (Kelly 1992, p. 47). The founding board of the IPA (est 1943) included Keith Murdoch and representatives of BHP, WMC and ConZinc (now RioTinto).[3]
It is no accident the No campaign is being run through the same personnel, organisations and methods of the longstanding fossil-funded Atlas campaign to misinform the public about climate science, defeat climate policy, block clean energy transition, and defeat an effective, binding UN climate treaty –all too familiar to Australians. The No campaign can be safely assumed as being conducted by proxy on behalf of fossil-fuel corporations and their allies, whose efforts to mislead the public on life-and-death matters reach back over half a century.
Around the country, traditional owners are mounting legal battles to stop Santos, Woodside, and other transnational oil and gas majors from opening up vast new fossil methane basins: in the Pilliga, Tiwi Islands, and Murujuga/Burrup, the world’s largest art gallery, with some works over 20,000 years old.
Opposition to constitutional justice for Indigenous Australians can be traced to fears the Voice might enhance the capacity of Australian parliamentary democracy to rein in the polluting industries driving us toward climate and ecological collapse.
[1] E.g. search DeSmog.com for individual organisation profiles (including financial data compiled from publicly available Form 990s) of the US institutes listed on the Atlas (2020) ‘global partner directory’.
[2] IEA, 1980, Register of the Friedrich A. von Hayek papers. Hoover Institution Library and Archives, Stanford University, Box 19 Folder 19: IEA corporate donor lists.
[3] Hay, J.R., 1982. The institute of public affairs and social policy in World War II. Australian Historical Studies, 20(79), pp.198-216.
Recently, prime minister Anthony Albanese observed the No campaign relies on spreading fear and disinformation. “What we’ve had is a whole lot of disinformation out there” We have all underestimated how long-established, well-organised and highly-coordinated is the political influence infrastructure now running the No campaign. In a recent peer-reviewed article, I recall the history of the Australian ‘free market’ think-tanks, institutes and single issue campaign units which have cultivated the public careers of the two Indigenous Australians fronting the Vote No campaign, who are provided daily platforms in the national media: Warren Nyunggai Mundine, and Senator Jacinta Nampajinpa Price. Upon these voices the No campaign’s optics and social media offensive almost entirely depends.
Looking beyond the false impression of widespread First Nations opposition to the Voice created by constant attention to Price and Mundine, we may ask for whom do they speak? What are the motives of the No campaign? Which business interests might be silent investors in - and potential financial beneficiaries of - a No result? How is the No campaign aligned with parallel influence campaigns conducted by the shadowy network of ‘thinktanks’ operating in Australia and other nations, such as counter-science disinformation opposing clean energy and climate policy?
Registered as a third-party election campaigner with the AEC, Advance no longer names its responsible officers on its public website. In 2019, the Advance advisory council included Maurice Newman and Sam Kennard - a board member of the Centre for Independent Studies, which names Mundine as director of an ‘Indigenous Forum’ and Price as an associate (CIS 2023b).
Led by Advance, the No campaign is supported across Australia’s Centre for Independent Studies, the Institute of Public Affairs, and the Australian conference of the international far-right Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC- until recently, hosted by LibertyWorks), organisations that Price and Mundine have been associated with for years. All have long opposed climate policy. CIS, IPA and LibertyWorks are all affiliated with the little known global Atlas Network.
Founded in 1981 by the English businessman Antony Fisher ‘to litter the world with free market thinktanks’, headquartered in Virginia by the US capitol, Atlas is not itself a thinktank: it discreetly fundraises, networks and expands its vast public opinion, public policy and election influence machinery of 515 ‘partner organisations’ in 100 nations. Better known US thinktanks include the Heritage Foundation, the Cato, Heartland and Competitve Enterprise institutes. All oppose climate policy, and all have have documented histories of oil-derived funding, eg. from oil billionaires Charles Koch and Richard Scaife along with ExxonMobil and other multinational corporations.[1]
Limited disclosure laws prevent Australians from knowing who funds the Australian Atlas units, but we do know where the founding grants came from.
In 1976, John Bonython, founder of gas giant Santos, invited Fisher to privately gather support amongst big business for the CIS, an early Atlas institute modelled on Fisher’s prototype neoliberal thinktank founded in 1955: the London-based Institute of Economic Affairs. By the mid-1970s, IEA’s donors included Shell, BP, RioTinto, Exxon and many others,[2] whose identities were carefully concealed from the general public targeted through the mass-media by ‘free market’ opinion demanding privatisation, deregulation and regressive tax cuts.
Foundation CIS grants came from Santos, Shell, BHP, Rio Tinto, Western Mining Corp (WMC) and News Ltds’s Adelaide Advertiser. With WMC’s international mining powerbroker Hugh Morgan, a member of the Atlas Network’s corporate board from 1984, Newman and the late Neville Kennard (of Kennard’s Hire) were closely involved in founding the CIS (Kelly 1992, p. 47). The founding board of the IPA (est 1943) included Keith Murdoch and representatives of BHP, WMC and ConZinc (now RioTinto).[3]
It is no accident the No campaign is being run through the same personnel, organisations and methods of the longstanding fossil-funded Atlas campaign to misinform the public about climate science, defeat climate policy, block clean energy transition, and defeat an effective, binding UN climate treaty –all too familiar to Australians. The No campaign can be safely assumed as being conducted by proxy on behalf of fossil-fuel corporations and their allies, whose efforts to mislead the public on life-and-death matters reach back over half a century.
Around the country, traditional owners are mounting legal battles to stop Santos, Woodside, and other transnational oil and gas majors from opening up vast new fossil methane basins: in the Pilliga, Tiwi Islands, and Murujuga/Burrup, the world’s largest art gallery, with some works over 20,000 years old.
Opposition to constitutional justice for Indigenous Australians can be traced to fears the Voice might enhance the capacity of Australian parliamentary democracy to rein in the polluting industries driving us toward climate and ecological collapse.
[1] E.g. search DeSmog.com for individual organisation profiles (including financial data compiled from publicly available Form 990s) of the US institutes listed on the Atlas (2020) ‘global partner directory’.
[2] IEA, 1980, Register of the Friedrich A. von Hayek papers. Hoover Institution Library and Archives, Stanford University, Box 19 Folder 19: IEA corporate donor lists.
[3] Hay, J.R., 1982. The institute of public affairs and social policy in World War II. Australian Historical Studies, 20(79), pp.198-216.
Acknowledgement: An earlier version of this piece was published on Independent Australia on 10 October 2023
Further Resources
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This is the accepted manuscript version: Silencing the Voice: the fossil-fuelled Atlas Network’s campaign against constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australia
Abstract Australians will soon vote in a referendum to recognise Indigenous Australia in its 1901 Constitution and establish a First Nations Voice to Parliament. Earlier this year, polling suggested the referendum proposal of the 2017 National Constitutional Convention and its Uluru Statement from the Heart enjoyed 60% support. Since lead anti-Voice campaign organisation Advance Australia began its media offensive, the Yes vote has declined to 40%. This article argues the No campaign is being conducted on behalf of fossil-fuel corporations and their allies, whose efforts to mislead the public on life-and-death matters reach back over half a century. Coordinated across the Australian branches of the little-known Atlas Network, a global infrastructure of 500+ ‘think-tanks’ including the Centre for Independent Studies, the Institute of Public Affairs and LibertyWorks, I demonstrate that the No campaign shares the aims and methods of the longstanding Atlas disinformation campaign against climate policy. Opposition to long-overdue constitutional recognition for Indigenous Australians can be traced to fears the Voice might strengthen the capacity of Indigenous communities and Australia’s parliamentary democracy to rein in the polluting industries driving us toward climate and ecological collapse. |
Other Materials
- Amy Westervelt and Geoff Dembicki, Meet the Shadowy Global Network Vilifying Climate Protesters (2023) New Republic, 12 September 2023
- James Robinson, Falsehoods in focus as legal storm brews over Voice debate (2023) The New Daily, 13 September 2023
- RN Drive (ABC Radio National), Interview (7mins) with Dr Walker on Atlas the ‘the mother of all thinktanks’ (2023) (HERE)
- Drilled: a True Crime Podcast About Climate Change, Interview with Dr Walker (2023) (HERE)