Coal’s hidden campaign: The shocking spend on astroturfing in the 2025 Australian election

Evidence of a new threat to climate information integrity has emerged in the latest batch of federal political donation disclosures. Fossil fuel interests spent more than $7 million to back groups that spread misinformation and attempted to dissuade voters from supporting pro-climate action candidates at the 2025 federal election.

This week, the Australian Electoral Commission published the details of political donations made during the 2024-25 financial year, the period that mostly covers the lead-up to the 2025 federal election. The disclosures provide insight into how the campaigns of political parties and major campaign groups were funded.

Millions in coal industry funding was provided to newly sprouted astroturfing groups – falsely presenting as grassroots organisations in support of fossil fuel projects – including groups with strong ties to the Liberal Party.

All up, fossil fuel interests gifted almost $4 million to Australia’s major parties.

There are the usual fossil fuel suspects throughout the data:

– Adani Mining donated $621,500 to the LNP in Queensland (as well as $121,000 to the Australian Labor Party and $100,000 to Katter’s Australian Party). 

– The Minerals Council of Australia donated $565,000 to the Liberal Party (a further $125,000 was gifted by the Minerals Council to the Jacqui Lambie Network). 

– Gina Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting made a $204,000 donation to the Liberal Party.

– Pro-gas lobby group Australian Energy Producers made a combined $210,000 in donations, which was spread between Labor and the Coalition. 

Source: The Australian Electoral Commission

For the most part, these donations are used to buy access to politicians. While some funds are provided to political parties as straight cash gifts, companies seeking to influence policymakers will purchase tickets with inflated prices to attend exclusive dinners and become members of groups like the Federal Labor Business Forum. 

Such tickets cost upwards of $5,000 per person and it is generally understood that the inflated price is a de facto financial contribution to the respective political party. In return, a fossil fuel executive can get the ear of a prospective climate, energy or resources minister.

A more detailed breakdown of all fossil fuel donations has been published by Climate Integrity. While the sums donated to the major parties remain significant, they are dwarfed by the scale of funding flowing from the coal industry into astroturfing campaigns. 

In fact, coal industry funding of astroturfing campaigns that specifically targeted the 2025 federal election was almost double that of all fossil fuel donations to the major political parties.

The revival of astroturfing in Australia

Astroturfing is not a new concept. It refers to efforts to manufacture the appearance of ‘grassroots’ or community support for a cause, industry or policy, when, in reality, no such broad-scale support exists.

The term has been around since the 1980s and has referred to the campaign tactics used by pharmaceutical, tobacco and fossil fuel industries that sought to pressure governments and policymakers with the illusion of being backed by a large number of their constituents.

Advance Australia is a classic example of modern astroturfing in Australia. The group claims to have over 330,000 supporters, while it is primarily funded by a small number of very wealthy individuals.

Advance Australia has sought to import Trump-style campaign tactics into Australia, and has run major campaigns against progressive politicians and opposed the Voice to Parliament. Previous analysis has detailed where Advance has sourced its funding, which overwhelmingly comes from a select group of wealthy business owners and investors.

The latest batch of donation disclosures published by the AEC adds Gina Rinehart to the list of Advance’s wealthy backers, which is perhaps unsurprising given how much Rinehart appears to idolise Donald Trump.

Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting gave $895,000 to Advance ahead of the federal election. This helped to fund Advance’s campaign efforts, including a huge spend on social media advertising that spread negative messaging and misinformation about Labor, The Greens and ‘Teal’ independent candidates. Advance Australia’s social media spend during the 2025 election exceeded $1 million.

But the latest donations data revealed a potentially larger and more concerted effort by Australia’s coal industry to influence voters before the election.

Coal Australia is an organisation established and funded by the coal industry. Its members include some of Australia’s largest coal companies. Company records show it was registered in early 2023 and has four directors, each of whom is a senior executive within either Whitehaven Coal, Peabody Energy, New Hope or Yancoal – all coal companies listed as members of Coal Australia. Coal Australia’s company secretary is also the CFO of Bowen Coking Coal.

The donation disclosures show that Coal Australia contributed $7.12 million to groups with the veneer of being grassroots organisations – with names like Australians for Prosperity, Energy for Australians and Jobs for Mining Communities.

Australians for Prosperity is the most active of the three groups, and the most overtly politically aligned. Australians for Prosperity was headed by former Liberal MP Jason Falinski, and its ‘advisory board’ includes Liberal Party officials, a former president of the Young LNP and several former Liberal Party advisors.

Australians for Prosperity received almost $3.7 million from Coal Australia and in the lead-up to the 2025 election spent $234,000 running paid Facebook ads targeting the Australian Greens, ‘Teal’ Independent candidates and the Albanese government, according to analysis prepared by the University of Technology Sydney.

According to transparency data published by Facebook, Australians for Prosperity created and ran more than 500 different advertisements, each attacking different progressive candidates and shown to people in different parts of Australia. Some of the ads were shown to more than 1 million people across Facebook and Instagram.

Just a small snapshot of Australians for Prosperity’s spending on ads targeting The Greens and Teal independents prior to the 2025 federal election. (Source: Meta)

On Monday, seemingly pre-empting the scrutiny it would receive following the release of the donations data, Australians for Prosperity released a statement that said:

“Unlike many advocacy organisations, Australians for Prosperity is not funded by unions, industry super funds, taxpayer-funded charities or inherited endowments.”

The statement omits to address the fact that nearly 95 per cent of the funding received by Australians for Prosperity in 2024-25 was provided by Coal Australia. That statement was issued by Caroline Di Russo, who is both spokesperson for Australians for Prosperity and the current president of the Liberal Party’s Western Australian chapter.

The other two groups – Jobs for Mining Communities and Energy for Australians – have been less active online, but received $2.36 million and $1.08 million from Coal Australia, respectively. Their remits also appear focused on advocating on behalf of mining interests, with Jobs for Mining Communities spending a further $164,000 on Facebook advertising during the election.

Energy for Australians spent $136,000 on Facebook ads, focused on blaming Labor for higher electricity prices.

A sample of the ads run by Energy for Australians on Facebook (Source: Meta)

The revival of astroturfing campaigns appears to be well underway. With millions flowing into these groups from the coal industry, it is likely that further campaigns and the use of social media to spread misinformation will continue.

Whether they will be successful is yet to be fully measured. There seems to be plenty of funding available to these groups to promote fossil fuel interests and campaign against pro-climate action candidates.

But in the case of the 2025 federal election, the efforts of groups like Advance Australia and Australians for Prosperity appeared to have failed spectacularly. Not only did the Albanese government get re-elected with an increased majority, but most ‘Teal’ independents held onto their seats while the Greens gained a balance-of-power position in the Senate. 

It is only through stronger donation disclosure policies and effective campaign transparency laws that we will know the full influence the fossil fuel industry continues to exert over Australian democracy. 

Michael is the head of corporate accountability at Climate Integrity