ALBANESE GOVERNMENT MUST ACT ON LATEST EDO OUTRAGE

• New Federal Court documents show taxpayer-funded environment group fabricated cultural heritage.
• Academics offered to move home of a sea serpent in ‘independent’ report to stop gas project.
• Coalition calls on Labor to audit and cease $8.5 million in funding to disgraced Environmental Defenders Office.
• Calls on Labor Government to force EDO to release details of foreign donations.

The Albanese Government must urgently cease payments to the taxpayer-funded Environmental Defenders Office (EDO) following the release of Federal Court documents that showed it tried to fabricate Indigenous heritage in an attempt to stop an essential gas project in the Timor Sea.

Shadow Minister for Resources, Senator Susan McDonald, also called on the government to urgently audit the EDO to ascertain what foreign funding and influence had been involved.

The Senator, who successfully applied for court documents that reveal an email and paper trail exposing collusion between academics and the EDO, said a string of sinister cultural and environmental fabrications by the EDO were aimed at destroying Australia’s wealth-generating resources sector.

“Australia has built a brand as being a reliable trading partner and a dependable defence ally. Under Labor, our brand is being destroyed,” she said.

“Labor is further funding the destruction of our brand by pumping $8.25 million into the radical EDO through to 2025/26.”

The Senator said the EDO’s fabrications had delayed all subsequent gas approvals and undermined confidence in Australia’s approval processes.

“This has denied Australians their jobs, and denied investment in Australia. And while the EDO may not care about that, we wait to see if the Labor Government does,” she said.

Senator McDonald said the email trail had exposed academics submitting their draft report for editing and approval to the EDO before they were presented to government guised as independent expert assessments.

“In one of the more extraordinary revelations contained in the email trail, one academic had essentially even offered the EDO to move the whereabouts of a sea serpent,” the Senator said.

At this year’s Federal Council of The Nationals, Senator McDonald successfully passed an urgency motion calling on the next Coalition government to amend electoral laws to require all political actors in Commonwealth Elections, not yet covered under the Electoral Act, to be bound by the same foreign donation bans as all other political parties and organisations.

The motion also called on ASIO to be tasked with examining donations in excess of $13,000 over the past 10 years to political actors, such as the EDO, and to report to the Attorney-General any concerns of attempted or actual foreign interference.

“The Labor Government must embrace this policy and bring it forward,” she said.

ENDS