A new inquiry into environmental groups’ eligibility to receive tax-deductible donations appears to be the latest salvo in a sustained campaign to crush the green movement and starve it of funds.
The assessment from Bob Brown, former Greens leader and luminary of Australian environmentalism, is bleak and to the point: “There is a serious effort to bulldoze the environment movement and bury it.”
In the past couple of years, climate change infrastructure has been demolished, emissions trading put on ice. Scientists have been defunded and their ministry axed. Environmental Defenders Offices have also been defunded, the renewable energy sector thrown into chaos, the renewable energy target slashed and the astonishing notion mooted that we should burn trees to meet it.
The most recent move in this war on the environment is a parliamentary inquiry into the eligibility of environment groups to receive tax-deductible donations. It sounds like a minor issue but it could mean many of Australia’s most prominent and successful environment groups crumble.
Like Brown, veteran campaigner Cam Walker believes the government is bent on dismantling the green movement: “We’re under the hammer and, in my long time at Friends of the Earth, I’ve never seen anything like it. We haven’t seen the end of their agenda yet but we’re getting to the pointy end. And, yes, there is an attack on the green movement and it’s ideologically driven.”
Bob Brown says the current anti-green political climate is part of a long-term project “by movers and shakers in the corporate world, who have taken their cue from the United States [and Canada], where efforts to use the law to dampen down environmentalism are well advanced.
“Loggers and miners and exploiters have much greater access to ministerial suites in Canberra than do environmentalists – much greater – and they use that access to put forward legislation. They’re doing that now at a state and federal level to great effect.”
Read the full article, The Saturday Paper here
• Ted Mead in Comments: … Have you ever heard of Tas GBE’s (the greatest charities in the universe) renowned businesses perpetually propped up mendicants who can’t run a profit, or return virtually anything back to the community. These GBE’s are constantly milked by copious amounts of bloated snouts in the trough, whilst their debts are forever underwritten by the taxpayers. In comparison, the environmental organisations receive a pittance in government funding, which is under the guise of at least trying to improve the well-being of the broader community. Removing funding is not about fiscal rationale, it’s about the forces of darkness quashing any dissent!
