This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

Queensland’s ruling party took tens of thousands of dollars in donations from coal seam gas companies despite one of its senators denying it received any contributions a federal inquiry has heard.

Donor records show the Liberal National party (LNP) had taken more than $65,000 from two companies in the coal seam gas (CSG) industry.

Barry O’Sullivan – one of four federal government senators leading the open sabotage of a federal inquiry into the Queensland government told a hearing in Brisbane on Friday that the Liberal National party had received “zero” contributions.

Georgia Woods, national policy coordinator for anti-CSG activists Lock The Gate, told the inquiry that donor records showed a number of CSG companies gave money to the LNP in the last four years. She was asked to produce that information on notice.

A subsequent search of Australian electoral commission (AEC) records by Guardian Australia shows CSG companies Origin and Santos gave $19,330 and $45,398 respectively between July 2011 and June 2013. Those donations are not reflected in party declarations.

Queensland electoral commission records also show donations to the Queensland LNP filed by both companies.

Santos and the related company GLNG Operations gave $56,548 and attended 17 party fundraisers between January 2012 and September 2013.

Two of its returns were filed by an employee, Brad Burke, who is a former political staffer for both one-time federal opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull and the Queensland premier, Campbell Newman.

Origin declared $36,245 in donations to the LNP between October 2011 and June 2013 – although this appeared to include $14,250 also declared to the AEC.

The apparent wrong-footing of O’Sullivan on the issue of CSG donations came during often rancorous proceedings he derided as a “sham”. The LNP regards the inquiry as a “circus” orchestrated by Clive Palmer.

O’Sullivan and three other government senators are intent on derailing what they see as a “witch-hunt” motivated by Palmer’s desire to seek revenge after his falling out with the Newman government of which he was once the biggest financial backer.

They are pressing for Palmer himself to appear at the inquiry, which has so far failed to secure appearances by any senior Newman government minister.

The hearing on Friday often descended into bickering as committee chairman, Palmer United party Senate leader Glenn Lazarus, battled to keep order.

After complaints from others in the committee about the government senators’ regular interjections, backchat and “appalling” treatment of witnesses, senator Ian Macdonald replied: “If you choose to participate in a farce, you get everything coming your way.”

Lock the Gate president Drew Hutton said the Newman government had made the system of environmental protection around mines “so heavily weighted in favour of proponents that it is virtually impossible for other stakeholders to have any hope of having their concerns addressed”.

That system had been “broken for many years”, he said, adding there had “never been a coal mine in the history of this state that has been through the approvals process and rejected on environmental grounds”.

“Instead of attempting to remedy this, the Newman government has taken a chainsaw to the ramshackle system under the cloak of removing red and green tape, leading the observer to believe [it] must consider the public interest to always and completely align with the private interest of the developers,” Hutton said.

“In short, the Newman government has reduced environmental regulations to a low level that has not been seen in Queensland for decades.”

He said the Newman government had tried to “freeze the community” out by passing laws that made it impossible for all but directly affected landholders “to object to a mining project in court”.

“[Notorious former premier] Joh Bjelke-Petersen didn’t interfere with these rights but this government is,” he said.

This included a move to allow the government’s top bureaucrat, the coordinator general, to hasten project approval by declaring a mine a “medium” environmental risk when all mines were “high risk, high impact”.

Hutton said it was “unfortunate” the commonwealth had flagged handing back its responsibilities to the state under the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.

Despite pastoralists, indigenous custodians and environmentalists being united in support for “wild rivers” laws applying to the Cooper Basin in the state’s west, the Newman government had rescinded them because of “an enormous amount of shale gas” in the area, Hutton said.

Hutton said some farmers “get a good deal” from allowing CSG companies to access their land.

But he said most did so because they felt they could not legally fight the companies, and complaints were legion about them “treating [farmers] like dirt”, including by changing terms of agreements without consultation.

Hutton also alleged government environmental officers were chronically over-stretched, saying one currently had 70 environmental impact statements sitting on his desk, while another had been given a single afternoon in 2010 to produce an entire chapter on the impact of a CSG project and “had a breakdown”.

Lock The Gate’s submission also detailed some $17,324 worth of hospitality given to senior Queensland government bureaucrats by mining companies in the two years to September 2014.

They ranged from private meals to State of Origin corporate box seats to bottles of wine and Christmas hampers.

Hutton said the former Labor government had failed to examine underground water impacts of Santos and Queensland Gas Company CSG projects in 2010 – a mistake repeated by the Newman government on a more recent Arrow Energy project.

Asked by O’Sullivan if any actions by the Newman government may have been unlawful, Hutton said the Arrow approval, along with the earlier two, may have been but this was yet to be tested in court.