Energy giant AGL has been fined $124,000 for failing to declare political donations it made to the New South Wales Labor, Liberal and National parties.

The penalty, handed down in the NSW Land and Environment Court on Thursday, comes after AGL last year pleaded guilty to 11 counts of breaking political disclosure laws between January 2008 and April 2014.

The donations, totalling $73,800 during the six-year period, came at a time when the company was seeking development approvals for several projects on the state’s mid-north coast.

In August 2014, community members in Gloucester in the NSW Hunter region uncovered undeclared donations from AGL to major political parties. With the NSW Environmental Defenders Office, they complained to the NSW environment office, which investigated and charged AGL with 11 criminal counts of breaching the act.

“We were looking at something in the original planning documents because we always thought there was something not quite right about it,” Jenni O’Niell, a resident and member of the Gloucester Groundswell, an anti-CSG group, told the Guardian in February.



The NSW Environmental Planning and Assessment Act states that all political donations must be declared for up to two years before an applicant submits a development proposal.

By comparing donations listed by the Australian Electoral Commission and those in AGL’s development application for CSG fields in Gloucester, O’Niell and a local barrister, John Watts, found the company had failed to declare political donations in the development application.

“Sometimes you don’t quite believe what you’re seeing. You suspect you might be missing something,” O’Niell said.

In 2015, after the complaints were made, AGL changed its policy so it would no longer make political donations.