Deputy prime minister tells Minerals Council that environmental groups need to be taken ‘head on’

Barnaby Joyce has criticised the charitable status of environmental groups, questioning why they should receive tax deductible donations for “destroy[ing] the economic base of Australia”.

In a speech to the Minerals Council on Wednesday, the deputy prime minister said that Australia had to “push back” against highly organised groups lobbying against mining and take them “head on”.

A Treasury inquiry is considering changes to the rules governing tax deductibility of gifts, which conservation groups fear is the latest stage in a long-running campaign by the Coalition government and miners to limit their advocacy.

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On Friday the Minerals Council made a submission to the Treasury inquiry suggesting environmental charities should be banned from using more than 10% of their expenditure on advocacy.

Joyce said coal and iron ore miners, and farmers, were fighting “fatuous economics” that ignored “the overwhelming wealth of this nation historically and to this day” comes from primary producers.

“Now we are still fighting. Still fighting to this day. And they fight it in the most ardent forms, right in your face,” he said. “In fact many of the groups that fight you have tax deductibility. They’re charities, apparently. A charity whose job it is to completely destroy the economic base of Australia.”

Joyce said that conservation groups fought projects with “green tape” (a reference to environmental litigation), “red tape” and “black tape” – the latter expression being one he said Aboriginal groups had given to him.

“Because apparently, they [Aboriginal people] got their own land back but they can’t do anything with it,” he said.

One of the most controversial developments in the country, Adani’s proposed Carmichael coalmine in Queensland, recently lost majority support from traditional owners.

Tony McAvoy, one of Australia’s leading native title lawyers and a traditional owner fighting to stop the Adani mine, has rejected the suggestion Indigenous groups were being manipulated to oppose the mine.

Joyce said Australia was “having a bit of a reality check” and the “penny is starting to drop” that environmental groups were using the law as “a mechanism which works against the interests of our nation”.

Joyce also said that the government was “redesigning the Northern Australia Infrastructure Fund, so it can be better used to get access and start delivering some of these infrastructure projects essential to the delivery of mining outcomes”.

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The Naif is currently considering whether to give a $900m concessional loan to pay for a rail line to the Carmichael mine and the Galilee Basin. The $5bn fund is also one possible source for funds for a new coal-fired power plant, which Malcolm Turnbull has said the government has no plans to build but has not ruled out.

With respect to the Galilee Basin, Joyce said Australia was “in the fight of our lives trying to open up a mechanism to provide wealth for this nation”.

“We will just have to take people head on,” he said. “Those people collecting the tax deductibility to fight us, take them head on, and start selling back to the Australian people the economic message ‘this is how you are actually going to survive, this is how you are going to win as a nation’.”

Joyce said that primary producers – of cattle, coal, grain or iron ore – were “in the same game” and the same battle.

“They are very coordinated, they’ve got a lot of spare time, a lot of spare time to work out how they deal with you and we’ve got to make sure that we get that push back.”

Joyce complained the environmental campaigners had contributed to Hazelwood coal power plant being shut, blaming the decision by its owners Engie for increasing power prices by 20%.

In 2015 the Abbott government introduced legislation to remove the right of most environmental organisations to challenge developments under federal laws, which never passed parliament. Last year Turnbull suggested the bill could be revived if the Senate supported it.