Fwd: IMPORTANT: Charity Inquiry

From:hms@sandlerfoundation.org To: john.podesta@gmail.com Date: 2015-05-25 14:16 Subject: Fwd: IMPORTANT: Charity Inquiry

Sergio Knaebel Begin forwarded message: Hi Sergio, Following on from developments in Canada and in India, the Abbot Government has established a Parliamentary Inquiry to examine the activities of environmental charities. It is part of an anti-environmental agenda that has been building for a few years now and is being pushed in large part by the mining industry as well as by various right wing think tanks and far-right members of the Liberal Party. We have been tracking it closely but have decided not to make any submissions or to engage in any way as we have no desire to get drawn into it. However, it is clear that the mining industry has other intentions. I have attached a word document with a series of articles that ran in the Australian Financial Review and The Australian last week, including one in which the head of the Minerals Council called for The Sunrise Project to have it's charitable status removed. The article has no substance but the interesting thing is that it was published at all. We (a small NGO that literally nobody has even heard of) posted a blog on our website saying that fossil fuels in the Galilee Basin should stay in the ground, and the next day the head of the most powerful industry group in the country is in the paper calling for our charity status to be revoked. It is kind of nice to know they are paying attention. Clearly we are in their sights. The leaked documents relating to the Wangan and Jagalingou that were the basis of the original articles were documents that we knew would be made public. We had to send them to the entire W&J family council including a number of people who were supportive of the mine. They were drafted with the intention of managing risk and the fact that the articles were not all that bad is a testament to that. We have know that Adani had them since October last year. What we didn't predict was that they would leak them to the media to coincide with the charity review and to focus on that angle. The Heads of Agreement between W&J and Sunrise bends over backwards to ensure that we comply with our charitable obligations - so it is really just an excuse for a beat up. The long and the short of it is that 1. There is a reasonable likelihood that Sunrise will be called to testify to the inquiry; 2. It is a House of Representatives Committee that has very strong coercive powers to summon witnesses and to call for documents to be tabled; 3. This could potentially include board minutes, grant agreements etc 4. If I refuse, the maximum penalty is 6 months in jail. If I didn't have children I'd be happy to tell them where to go (on principle) but it isn't really an option; 5. This potentially creates a situation where we may need to disclose our funding and grant agreements; Next steps: We have a strategy session with our lawyers and board on Thursday to plan out our response. As part of this we are seeking advice on steps we might take to avoid disclosure, challenge and limit disclosure, or to ensure that any disclosure is limited to the committee members and is not made public. I have no concerns whatsoever about our compliance with our charitable obligations but I do have concerns about the potential PR impact of disclosure of both our funding and grantees - should that eventuate. Obviously there are a lot of things we can do to manage these risks and this has a long way to run. Hopefully I am just being paranoid but from experience I prefer to hope for the best while planning for the worst. I'll give you an update when we talk on Friday but wanted to put this on your radar. John -- John Hepburn Executive Director The Sunrise Project www.sunriseproject.org.au<http://www.sunriseproject.org.au> p: +61 407 231 172 e: john@sunriseproject.org.au<mailto:john@sunriseproject.org.au> s: johnhepburn ____________________________________________ The Sunrise Project Australia Limited ACN: 159 324 697