The head of a usually quiet environmental group in Australia has hit back against News Corp and coal lobby attacks after hacked emails revealed it was partly funded from overseas.



Two emails forwarded to Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta – and published by WikiLeaks – show that one of the funders of the Sunrise Project is a large US-based charitable trust, the Sandler Foundation.

The Sunrise Project, headed by the former Greenpeace activist John Hepburn, works with other environmental non-governmental organisations, local communities and Indigenous groups, supporting and helping to coordinate their actions.

It has campaigned to stop Adani’s huge Carmichael coalmine in Queensland.

After revealing the emails, a report in the Australian newspaper said: “Australia is a key target in a global, no-holds-barred war against coal which has set a priority of shutting Adani out of Queensland.”

The paper said in an editorial: “We should decide what mining projects are opened up in this country and the circumstances in which they open.

“Such authority rests with Australia’s democratically elected representatives and established government processes. It does not belong with overseas governments (including prospective US presidents or their staff), self-appointed meddling international activists or local vigilante ‘lawfare’ litigants funded by activists.”

The paper also published an opinion piece by Brendan Pearson, the chief executive of the main coal lobby group, the Minerals Council of Australia. “This episode should prompt a rethink of the oversight of environmental groups that operate as charities and that have tax-deductible recipient status,” Pearson said.

Hepburn told Guardian Australia he was surprised the emails were considered newsworthy and said the Australian and the Minerals Council of Australia were acting hypocritically.

“They’re saying that we need to guard our sovereignty from environmental organisations, when the mining in Australia is 80% foreign-owned,” he said. “They put tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars into a massive public relations machine that is sustained and ongoing over time. They have incredible influence and revolving doors between the highest levels of politics and their lobby groups.

“And international foreign-owned mining companies dropped $20m into a campaign to prevent a new tax on their industry and, in doing so, destabilised a prime minister. And that is the big issue in terms of national sovereignty.”

Hepburn said it should be no surprise that people around the world were interested in Adani’s proposed mine.

He said: “It is no surprise that the ongoing expansion of coalmining in Australia is on the radar of Clinton’s most senior adviser. While the world is ratifying the Paris climate agreement in record time, Australia is becoming a global embarrassment for being the first developed country to go backwards on climate policy and fast-tracking the approval of new coalmines.”

In May 2015 Hepburn sent an email to a director of the Sandler Foundation outlining attacks the then Abbott government was launching against the charitable status of environmental groups.

The email was then forwarded by the founder of the Sandler Foundation, Herbert Sandler, to Podesta. Forwarding the message, Sandler said: “Astonishing and frightening actions by Australian government.”

He then said: “Full disclosure. We are a funder of the Sunrise project as part of our work on climate change.”

The only other published email relating to the Sunrise Project was one in which Hepburn was celebrating a federal court decision that overturned federal environmental approval for the Carmichael mine.

The contents of the emails show the Sunrise Project was keen not to disclose who its funders were, or who it supported financially.

Hepburn wrote: “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.”

Hepburn told Guardian Australia the disclosure would make its donors targets of the mining industry.

“The mining industry will use any possible excuse to attack the environmental movement,” he said. “We’ve seen the same thing play out in Canada and other countries too – mining industries will attack the charitable status, they will try and identify donors and publicly attack the donors, whether they are local or international philanthropists.”

He said donors to any charity expect to be able to do so privately. “If you give a donation to the RSPCA or some other charity, you don’t expect them to disclose that to the media. That’s the same with us – we’re no different to any other charity. We need to protect the privacy of our members and supporters.”