A Liberal-aligned thinktank running last-minute anti-Greens advertisements targeting young voters received more than $600,000 from the coal industry during last year’s Queensland election, disclosures show.
On Monday evening, the Australian Institute for Progress released a “Can you afford the Greens?” video advertisement pushing claims, based on its own commissioned research, that the Greens’ housing policies would lead to increased rents.
Emails to supporters from the AIP executive director, former Queensland Liberal vice-president Graham Young, seeking donations to push anti-Greens advertisements show the campaign is specifically aimed at helping elect Liberal National party candidates Trevor Evans and Maggie Forrest in the seats of Brisbane and Ryan.
“We believe that with a properly-funded and targeted campaign we can reduce [the Greens’] total numbers by 50%,” Young wrote to supporters.
“While other campaigns we have heard of are targeting older Greens voters … our campaign bores in on financial self-interest – one of the strongest drivers of behaviour – and younger, even first-time, Greens voters,” he said.
Queensland electoral disclosures show the vast majority of the Australian Institute for Progress’s declared donations during the past year have come from the coal industry group Coal Australia.
The lobby group gave $613,500 to the AIP in September and October last year, before the Queensland election campaign.
The AIP’s return shows it spent more than $680,000 on the state campaign, where it ran online anti-Labor advertising in close seats, including Capalaba and Redlands.
Asked who was funding the AIP’s anti-Greens advertisements in the week before the federal election, Young said the thinktank did not disclose its donors “except as required by law” but that it had not received any money from Coal Australia specifically for its federal campaigning, or since the state election.
The AIP is one of several third-party groups running well-funded campaigns designed to oust Greens from their three inner-Brisbane electorates and against independent “teal” MPs in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth.
One of those groups, Australians for Prosperity, has also declared $725,000 from Coal Australia. Another, Advance Australia, has been actively involved in anti-renewables campaigns.
Young said the AIP decision to focus on housing was because it was “a serious issue” for the group.
“If you look at our website you will find that housing, which is the focus of our current campaign, has been a concern of ours from our inception,” he said.
“When the Greens advocated taxation policies that would hurt renters, as well as create housing shortages, we decided to run a campaign against them. In our view the Greens advocate a range of policies that are not in the interest of Australia, or of the people who vote for them.”
Max Chandler-Mather, the Greens MP for the Brisbane seat of Griffith and the party’s housing spokesman, said “coal and gas billionaires” were campaigning against the party “because the Greens are the party prepared to stand up to them, make them pay their fair share of tax, and stop opening new coal and gas projects that are cooking the planet”.
“Coal billionaires desperately want Peter Dutton to be prime minister and they know that the Greens in Brisbane are the ones standing in the way,” he said.
“Having now failed to stop the Greens through scaremongering to conservative voters, now they’ve resorted to lying to young voters and renters. That won’t work either.”
In his emails to supporters, Young said contributions to the anti-Greens campaign below the federal threshold did not need to be disclosed.
“The rules that applied to the last state election do not apply to this Commonwealth election,” Young told supporters.
“It is only until you have donated $16,900 in total that you need to disclose your donation and there are no prohibited donors.”
