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RUBY:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am.

The hard right group behind the “No” campaign is amassing a multi-million dollar war chest to take down its next opponent: the Australian Greens.

Advance has called the Greens the “single biggest threat to freedom, security and prosperity in Australia” – and they have big plans to target their voters ahead of the next election.

Today, special correspondent for The Saturday Paper Jason Koutsoukis on who is behind Advance… and why they believe they can flip progressive women to the hard right.

It’s Monday August 19.

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RUBY:

So Jason, the lobby group that calls themselves Advance. We first heard about them last year. They were a key force behind the No campaign in the lead up to The Voice referendum, since their huge success in that campaign. What have they been doing?

JASON:

Well, quite a lot actually. Ruby, right now, Advance is getting ready for the next federal election, which we're expecting between March and May next year. So far, Advance says they've raised $1.5 million of a $5 million fundraising target ahead of the election. If you log on to their website, they say they've got 306,000 online supporters, and 32,000 donors. They've hired 23 full time staff, and they've expanded the permanent campaign infrastructure to include things like data analytics, creative department, digital communications, fundraising, political strategy, even a call centre.

Audio excerpt — Speaker:

"And tonight, it is our pleasure to welcome our special guest, Matthew Sheahan, the CEO of Advance Australia. And our topic tonight is value based, powerful campaigning."

JASON:

And in a recent presentation to the Australian Jewish Association, Advance’s CEO Matthew Sheahan described Advance’s goal as wanting to defend the fruits of the Judeo-Christian West.

Audio excerpt — Matthew Sheahan:

“We wanted to defend the fruits of the Judeo-Christian West. And for the purposes of our organisation, that was three things. So freedom, security and prosperity.”

JASON:

He says that's what they do all year round, every day.

Audio excerpt — Matthew Sheahan:

“We don't campaign on any other issue. We exist solely to campaign and promote those three things.”

JASON:

He says they recently did research into the biggest threat to freedom, security and prosperity and landed on the Australian Greens.

According to Matthew Sheahan, Advance's entire focus from now until the election will be to try to inflict damage on the Greens’ brand. He even said we're actually doing nothing else between now and the next federal election but this campaign. He's made aim is to shrink the Greens vote back to where they were in 2016.

RUBY:

Right. And obviously the Greens have grown as a political force since 2016. At the last election they did particularly well. They won six Senate seats. They now have 11 senators and four MPs in the House of Representatives. Clearly Advance sees them as a threat, so tell me a bit more about Advance’s research into the Greens?

JASON:

So Matthew Sheahan said that he instructed the polling researchers that Advance wanted to understand what the Australian people thought about the political parties from a brand point of view. And he was very careful to say that he didn't want to know about what people thought about the policies or the politicians. He wanted to get voters in a room and start thinking about how did their political parties make voters feel.

What the research came back showing was that, for both the major parties, roughly a quarter of people said that they believe that those parties stand for nothing. For the Nationals, they're in even worse trouble, with almost half of people saying that they think the National Party stands for nothing.

But when it comes to the Greens, Advance’s research showed that nearly 80% of people surveyed, and that's not just Greens voters, but all voters think that the party stands for action on climate change or protecting the environment. And gives them enormous credibility, in, in the minds of voters. And that's why they have the most trusted political brand in the country. And the thing that really irks Matthew Sheahan about that is that he believes fundamentally that the Greens present themselves as a party that is primarily concerned about the environment and that voters have swallowed that.

RUBY:

Ok, so it sounds like Advance is going for the Greens because of what they represent - from a political standpoint… but also because of the trust that people have in them. So how do they plan to dislodge that level of support?

JASON:

Matthew Sheahan characterised most voters as being low information voters. That most voters are going into the polling booth saying to themselves, I don't really want to be here. I'm not that interested in politics. But if I vote for the Greens, at least in the number one position, well, at least I'm going to feel good about something that I did today.

The group that Advance’s identifying as being the most persuadable. Are predominantly women aged between 33 and 49. According to the research they're the ones that think that the Greens are doing the right thing by the environment, but they don't really know much else about the party. And, I think Advance believes that if they can reveal to that age group just who the Greens are, that they might not be prepared to vote for them again.

Audio excerpt — Matthew Sheahan:

“So women are twice as likely to vote Green or Teal or Greens, the men. So as of a few weeks ago, 18% of all women in this country intended to vote Green. It's only about 8% of males.”

JASON:

And the other thing that he's taken from the Greens, having such a strong political brand is that, instead of attacking the party head on as a group that wants to enact, radical change, the first step in in Advance’s campaign has to be trying to take a different approach, and try to meet voters where they are with the message that the Greens are not what they used to be.

Audio excerpt — Matthew Sheahan:

“If we came out and said, you know, the Green are this, the Greens are that, they’re bad, you know that I want to breach the US alliance. They wouldn't actually hear, cognitive dissonance would kick in. And we saw it in focus groups. The shutters would go up. So we've got to be a bit more softly softly in the beginning. And this is the message that tested the best out of the research.”

JASON:

The message that Advance wants voters to hear is I haven't changed. It's the Greens that have changed. And the idea here is that it lets voters off the hook and saves face for changing their position.

Audio excerpt — Advance Ad:

“The Greens party is a party of hatred of Western civilisation, which wants to destroy every tradition.”

JASON:

The campaign, that the Greens aren’t who they used to be, they’ve given it a name, Greens Truth.

Audio excerpt — Advance Ad:

“On our current trajectory there is absolutely no reason why over the next 10 to 20 years, we're not going to see a Green’s government.”

JASON:

And the centrepiece of that campaign will be a documentary film. That Advance says has a $317,000 production budget that promises to tell the full story of how and why the Greens have fallen so far.

According to a fundraising pitch that was emailed to supporters on Thursday, this documentary will not only inform and motivate voters on its own, they're also going to use it as the the basis for all of their advertising going forward, so social media, television and all the other campaign material that they're planning to put out trying to paint the Greens as a scary left wing party.

RUBY:

Coming up – Jason goes looking for the people behind Advance.

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RUBY:

Jason, you've been looking into the lobby group Advance, and you've found that their entire focus ahead of the next election is going to be on bringing down the Greens. So at this point we know a lot about who they don't like, what they're opposing and what their plan is. But we know less about the group itself, about Advance. So tell me a bit about them?

JASON:

Well, I think the thing that struck me most about this group in writing this story was just how elusive it is as an organisation, and we don't really know all that much about it. We know that it was founded in 2018, with about $280,000 in seed funding that was contributed by a retired Sydney fund manager named Simon Fenwick. But, I don't really know much about Simon. We also know that, there's a lot of people who were attached to the Liberal Party that are quite close to this group. So Tony Abbott, the former Liberal leader and former prime minister, is on Advance’s advisory board. There's a couple of former ACT Liberal politicians who are also on that advisory board. We know that Advance’s spokesperson before the 2022 election was Jacinta Price. She's now, of course, Senator Jacinta Price. So while the Advance claims to be independent, they do have a lot of ties to the Liberal Party. When it comes to Matthew Sheahan, I wasn't really able to find out that much about him. You know, he really just came onto the scene, as the executive director of Advance. But, his working life prior to that was difficult for me to uncover anything really substantial.

RUBY:

Okay. Well given that then and given the certain sense of mystery surrounding Advance and who belongs to the group and where the money comes from, what was it like as a reporter trying to get information about them?

JASON:

Oh, it was quite difficult. There's an address, an email address on the website for media inquiries. I sent through a few requests for interviews with Mr. Sheahan and, you know, I got a couple of replies saying, look, we're happy to answer questions. Those emails weren't signed or, you know, it wasn't clear who those replies were coming from. For an organisation with 23 staff, I thought, well, I'll go and visit their headquarters, which are listed on the website as being at level four, at 15 Moore Street in Civic, the main civic centre here in Canberra. So I went there to just knock on the door and see if I could talk to anyone that way.

RUBY:

Was anyone there?

JASON:

Well, when the elevator door opened on level four. I quickly realised that this was a co-working space. When I asked for Matthew Sheahan somewhere there, the receptionist said, well, do you mean the Advance guy? And, and I said, yes. And, and then I just got the, the, the reply that, well, Matthew comes in here sometimes, but, not very often. So it turns out that they don't actually have an office there. They just list this place as their office, and, I guess they come to some sort of hot desk arrangement or, perhaps they have a meeting there from time to time. So it really does raise a few questions as to, you know, who are these 23 staff they supposedly have, where are they spending all the money they raise? And, you know, even things like the website, you know, strike me as being a little bit elusive because you look through some of the photographs they have of all these, very enthusiastic, volunteers that they have supporting them.

But, if you, if you sort of look behind the images, you quickly realise that these are just, stock images that, Advance’s bought from an agency and not representing real people that support the, the organisation. And I think there's also some questions about where they get all their money because, just to if you look at the Australian Electoral Commission, declarations on, money raised and spent during the referendum campaign, you see that, Advance collected 1.3 million in donations, ahead of the referendum, but they spent, 10.4 million on the No campaign.

RUBY:

So whereas that 9.1 from then?

JASON:

That's not clear. There was an affiliate group that was, essentially a part of, Advance called, Australians for Unity. They also spent 11.8 million, after raising about 10.8 million in donations. So it might be a situation where Australians for Unity has given money to Advance, but it's difficult to actually work that up because Advance is so secretive when it comes to the sources of its money. And I even called Matthew Sheahan to ask him about it. And, he said to me that he couldn't talk because he was going through airport security. Now, that might well be true, but it certainly seemed to be the world's quietest airport security I've ever heard.

RUBY:

Okay. So even without speaking directly to Matthew Sheahan, tell me where you arrived at the end of your reporting on this in terms of how successful you think Advance is going to be ahead of this election in targeting the Greens, do you think that they can do what they're setting out to do?

JASON:

It's difficult to really know. I guess all we can go on, Advance’s past performance. The effort to promote the No campaign during the The Voice referendum last year, was, by Advance’s measure, successful. 60% of people voted no. And, an Advance has taken a lot of credit for that. But a lot of other political analysts say, well, as soon as you had the main opposition parties coming out against the Voice, then the Yes vote was doomed and it wouldn't have mattered, what a group like Advance was doing.

When I called Adam Bandt's office, on Thursday morning. They were very happy to put Adam in front of me, and talk about how he thinks the Australian Greens will be best placed to respond to this, this campaign that, Advance’s planning and Bandt seemed pretty unfazed by the threat posed by Advance. He thinks that voters trust the Greens because it consistently fights for the things that the people care about. Well, Advance may have a few wealthy donors who want to defend their obscene wealth. According to him, a key question to ask of the group is why are they doing what they're doing? In his view, the conservatives are attacking the Greens and not Labor, because it's the Greens that is the progressive alternative. So for Adam Bandt, whatever Advance does or is planning to do isn't really going to change his strategy or the strategy of his party.

RUBY:

Well, Jason, thank you so much for your time today.

JASON:

Ruby, it's a pleasure to talk with you as always.

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RUBY:

Also in the news today,

Government frontbencher Ed Husic has accused Peter Dutton of playing politics with one of the “worst humanitarian crises we’ve ever seen”.

Mr Dutton has been calling on a ban for visas for Palestinians escaping the war, citing security risks.

His comments sparked outrage in parliament, with Independent MP Zali Steggall calling Mr Dutton “racist”.

Sky news is now reporting that Mr Dutton is seeking legal advice against Ms Steggall.

AND

Former Prime Minister John Howard has said the Northern Territory intervention was “totally justified”.

His comments come weeks after the Territory’s police commissioner Michael Murphy apologised for the force’s involvement. Mr Murphy had acknowledged that many Indigenous Australians viewed the Intervention as racist.

But Mr Howard defended the measures, including restrictions on alcohol and pornography and the control of welfare through the Basics Card. The Liberal government’s intervention laws suspended the Racial Discrimination Act.

I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am. Thanks for listening.

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