The GetUp gravy train, page-14

It would be hard to get more transparency from Get Up without the coal-funded and (previously) tobacco-funded Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) being subjected to the same rules, which is why, if memory serves, the IPA opposes a Get Up crackdown.

The IPA is notoriously secretive about who funds it and what bang those funders get for their bucks. It has been significantly funded by Hancock Prospecting, of which Gina Rinehart is the Executive Chair. Hancock Prospecting paid the IPA $2.3 million in financial year 2016 and $2.2 million in financial year 2017. These payments were not disclosed in IPA annual reports. Gina Rinehart was made a life member of the IPA in November 2016. Other businesses who fund or have funded the IPA include ExxonMobil, Telstra, WMC Resources, BHP Billiton, Philip Morris, Murray Irrigation Limited, Visy Industries, Clough Engineering, Caltex, Shell, Esso and British American Tobacco (BAT). We know by their accounts, not the IPA.

Funders are able to "earmark" their payments to support the work of particular units within the IPA, but to conceal what they're funding the IPA to say and do. So when the IPA goes on the ABC to comment as a "thinktank", they're being funded to push a commercial interest but give no disclaimer, which I think breaches the ABC charter.

At least Get Up is up front about what they do and their advocacy. On the other side, Gina and the coal barons use the IPA as a ventriloquist's dummy. They sit on her knee with her hand up their backsides mouthing the words, yet never admitting that they're a front for a billionaire's business interests.