Five of the Nationals’ 21 MPs and senators own shares in fossil-fuel companies.
Analysis of the parliamentary register of interest sheds more light on the deep ties between the Liberals’ junior Coalition partner and the mining sector, from shareholdings, to trips funded by fossil-fuel companies.
The register, which MPs and senators must update throughout their term, discloses their properties, investments, membership of organisations, and anything else that may create a conflict of interest. And it shows that while the Nationals continue to stand in the way of a net zero emissions by 2050 target, many in their partyroom have a financial interest in the continued strength of the resources sector.
Nationals’ Deputy Leader David Littleproud has the most resources-heavy share portfolio of anyone in the party. He owns shares in BHP, mining company South32, Blue Energy (oil and gas exploration) and Atlas, an iron ore company run by Gina Rinehart, whose Hancock Prospecting acquired it in 2018. He also has shares in Ausenco, an engineering company primarily servicing the resources industry. Littleproud’s dependent children are listed as having BHP and South32 shares.
Regional Health Minister David Gillespie, who was promoted to the frontbench after Barnaby Joyce returned to the party leadership, has shares in BHP, South32 and gold extractor Northern Star Resources. So does his wife.
Senators Perin Davey and Susan McDonald have shares in BHP. Ken O’Dowd, who is retiring as the member for Flynn in central Queensland, has shares in energy giant Woodside Petroleum. According to the section of his statement detailing “bonds, debentures and like investments”, O’Dowd has interests in BHP, Rio Tinto and Caltex.
The registers also lay out the close relationship between the Nationals and mining companies. Senator Matt Canavan, who is one of the mining industry’s most vocal advocates in federal Parliament, received a commemorative plaque from Bravus (née Adani) with the first coal extracted from its controversial Carmichael mine. Bravus also paid for him to sit in its corporate box for a basketball game in Rockhampton.
Resources Minister Keith Pitt has received a few perks from the sector. This year Santos paid for his travel from Canberra to Darwin, and the sector paid for him to attend a resources event at Roy Hill mine in Western Australia. It’s unclear who paid, but the mine is largely operated by Hancock Prospecting. Pitt and Davey have taken helicopter trips funded by the Port of Newcastle to look at mine sites.
Meanwhile, the Glasgow summit starts next week, and failure of Prime Minister Scott Morrison to show up with a net zero target, agreed to by most advanced economies and backed by big business and many Liberals, will cause Australia major embarrassment. The Nationals still refuse to agree to net zero, and want major taxpayer handouts to the regions as the price of their support, even though concessions like inland rail would actually increase Australia’s emissions.
The party is also a major beneficiary of donations from the resources sector, and was the only party other than the United Australia Party to get cash from leading donor Clive Palmer in the 2019-20 financial year.
The Nats remain firmly committed to fossil fooling Australia.
The mining (“resources”) businesses are among the largest in the Australian economy. It would be a very weird and arguably unbalanced investment portfolio that did not include some of them. I would be very surprised if every working Australian citizen was not a shareholder in them, through their superannuation funds, at least.
Stop trying to make excuses for them…they are all a pack of hypocrites. Talk about a conflict of interest…how much bigger do you want it?
The people who you say probably have shares in fossil fuel companies through their superannuation, are NOT making decisions about climate change which affect the lives of ALL Australians! But hopefully the voters will exercise what little power they do have and kick this mob out at the next election. Disgraceful behaviour by the Gnats…and the Coalition generally…on this issue.
You make a valid point, but the wise – and honest – politician (any left?) would remove such investments from their portfolio so as to avoid a conflict of interests. This used to be expected once upon a time, but we’re talking about the Nationals here, and it’s basically business as usual.
We’re all a bit conflicted these days though, aren’t we? It used to be that we retired and were funded by either govenment or company defined benefit schemes and could consider ourselves free of such interests, and it was reasonable to expect politicians to be so. But now we’re told that we have to invest (through Super) to fend for ourselves, however distant or bleak that prospect might be. And so all of our futures depend on the success of our investments. A large chunk of those will almost necessarily be in the mining sector, because this is Australia: that’s one of the primary things that we do, as a country. It’s that or property investment, (or banking, in support of property investment). None of the mines are in the cities though, which is probably why the Nationals feel they have an electoral edge with them.
I just thought that an article pointing out that National Party politicians own interests in mining companies, without also considering the similar interests of all the other politicans, and indeed everyone else in the country, was a bit naff. In fact, I think that the headline that claims that sixteen of them don’t have such interests is probably simply wrong.
Andrew you seem to be suggesting that this is just how it is and nothing can be done. That line of thinking is essentially providing cover for vested interests and climate deniers. Was that your intent?
Also I don’t agree with the assertion that all super funds have fossil fuel investments in their portfolio. If you spent 10 minutes with your preferred search engine will will find that is not true.
Furthermore, big investors (e.g. universities, Blackrock) are getting out of fossil fuel, for obvious reasons. And furthermore again, as you may have read in Crikey earlier this week, the RBA and others such as APRA are moving to have ADIs exit their fossil fuel investments as a matter of financial stability.
You may be conflicted. Not everyone is. You don’t have to be if you don’t want to.
Many of the companies named in the article are not fossil fuel companies: South32 for example. Some of the larger ones do both. In Australia “mining”
I’m not suggesting that nothing can be done: clearly the works and decisions of people can be changed, but here we are at the back-end of the neoliberal era and it is what it is: governments don’t own or control things any more, we all do, directly or indirectly.
Yes, of course we have to save the environment, and that involves turning off fossil fuels, but that isn’t going to just hurt the robber-barons and billionaires: we’re all invested, even if indirectly or partially. Just as the Norwegians are currently trying to figure out how their economy will work when they stop drilling North-Sea oil.
And of course it is just too damned expensive, this ‘save the environment‘ stuff of which you speak.
Not to mention terribly inconvenient.
Just listening to the open up boosters this week talking of freedom.
Freedom to do what?
Go drinking, clubbing, eating ludicrously contrived and obscenely expensive dishes (NB – food, not so much) at restaurants proven, at law, to have ripped off their staff – it’s all the fault of the complex rules yet, oddly, they never err in overpaying.
And get back into those glass & cheap chinese steel CBD carbuncles, shoving paper hin & zu, the rents aren’t going to pay themselves so the overleveraged, ‘developers’ (I think cancers ‘develop’…) can discharge their massive debts and build more of the ugly things which are not simply useless but positively deleterious to all who come within cooee.
Then more & more shopping, for imported tat & krap which no-one with functioning neurons needs.
Needs are relatively easily met – wants can never be satisfied.
Like a drunk, one drink is too many, a thousand insufficient.
HG &Roy wrote this culture’s epitaph 20yrs ago “when too much is barely enough!”.
A simpler life with less ‘stuff’ is entirely possible. It is also an economist’s and a marketing manager’s nightmare. Our whole system runs on producing and selling crap.
Planned obsolescence grew a few extra legs and now have people buying things they never use, so its obsolescence is instantaneous.
You argument is partially acceptable. I own shares as part of my retirement strategy. It is my understanding that we taxpayers fund significant retirement packages for politicians to make it unnecessary for them to invest in shares for their retirement.
You have a fair bit of control over where your super fund invests your money, or well my industry super fund does. You can stipulate that your money doesn’t go into the fossil fuel industry. There are no excuses.
Nat -Zero? Now that is one target we would all LOVE to see in 2022..
Most of us own shares in resource companies through our super. I would prefer to see the value of shares held by a pollie. Littleproud may have $1000 invested in the resource sector but that is peanuts given his $200K+ salary.
Most of us can decide whether or not our funds are invested in the fossil fuel industry. Check your super website. You can choose where your money is invested. There are no excuses.
It really is that simple & easy.
And yet your plain statement of fact copped a downvote – how is that a valid action?
Must be be a lump of coal Littleproud is caressing in the lead-in photograph – he looks as if he is conjuring up a deep out of body experience judging by the concentration evident in his face.