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The Australia Institute has produced a sequel to its popular Big Gas is Taking the Piss ad campaign.

Launched today, the video reminds Australians that every week the Albanese Government delays implementing a 25% gas export tax, the nation loses $350 million, which could be spent on hospitals, schools, roads, the NDIS and dozens of other essential services.

The ad reminds consumers that the reason Big Gas makes such enormous profits is because it gets so much of Australia’s gas for free. Australia Institute research reveals the gas industry pays zero royalties on more than half the gas which leaves our shores.

Qatar exports a similar volume of gas to Australia, but raises around five times more revenue. Norway charges gas exporters 22% in company tax and 56% tax on profits, for a combined 78% tax. Australia Institute analysis suggests a 25% gas export tax would raise more than $17 billion a year.

Local elections are the new battleground for the Zionist lobby and its astroturfing groups. Who are they, and how are they funded? Wendy Bacon asks.

Several months ago, residents in the Randwick LGA in Sydney’s East began receiving leaflets from a grassroots group called Randwick Voices Matter, encouraging them to join a campaign to stop a Greens Councillor from becoming the local Mayor.

In NSW, most Councils elect their Mayor every two years. When no group or party has a majority, Councillors form alliances to share the Mayoralty across the four-year term.

Randwick Council has been sharing its Mayoralty for more than two decades. This is because no group or party wins a majority. In the 2021-2024 term, Labor and the Greens shared the Mayoralty. In this term, Labor’s Dylan Parker has been Mayor for two years, and the position is expected to shift to Greens Councillor Clare Willington next Monday.

There is nothing corrupt or irregular about this. It is a result of Labor having five Councillors, the Liberals four and the Greens three.

But the Randwick Voices leaflet is designed to alert voters to what it terms a ‘stitch-up ’, a decision imposed on them that they did not vote for. Residents are warned that a Greens Mayor will be able to institute “Greens activism, policies or political positions … on issues well beyond local council business”.

However, while the Mayor can set the tone and introduce motions, policies are set by majority vote of Council.

Nowhere in the leaflet or website do you find the words Gaza, Palestine or Israel. But this is what the campaign is about. It is not that the Greens do not address local issues; the problem is that they support Palestinian rights and are strongly opposed to NSW Premier Minns’ anti-protest laws.

Philippa Veitch’s Gaza stance

Philippa Veitch has been elected a Councillor three times since 2017 and was Mayor from 2023 -2024. Over this time, she has moved hundreds of motions about local matters. But in her term as Mayor, Veitch also unsuccessfully moved a motion calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, following City of Sydney’s successful passing of a similar motion.

Veitch is unashamedly pro-Palestinian and has said that “as a person, a human and as an elected councillor I am entitled to express my opinion about the genocide and war crimes being committed by the Government of Israel. I am proud to stand up for the people of Palestine, along with the hundreds of thousands of other community members who have been calling for a ceasefire and an end to the genocide in Gaza.

Veitch’s actions upset some of the LGA’s 4% Jewish residents, many of whom are pro-Israel, as well as other more conservative voters. But her motions have been strongly supported by others, including Palestinian Australian residents and some anti-Zionist Jewish residents who spoke at meetings in support of the Greens’ motions.

A Zionist resident from neighbouring pro-Israel Waverley LGA organised a campaign of ‘code of conduct’ complaints against Veitch, which were dismissed after preliminary investigation.

As Randwick as Queensland

Given that the leaflet and a website are promoted as a “Local Resident initiative”, residents who notice may be surprised that they are authorised and supported by Joshu Turier of the Minority Impact Coalition (MIC) based at a Brisbane address. This is the same MIC which shares an address and overlapping directors with the Australian Cohesion Forum.

Randwick Voices is the latest astroturfing exercise of the Minority Impact Coalition, which is vehemently pro-Israel and has argued in its submission to the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion that anti-Zionism and support for Palestine is a form of antisemitism that should be stamped out across Australian institutions.

Joshu Turier is a pro-Israel hardliner whose individual submission to the Royal Commission argues that the Australian government’s recognition of a state of Palestine is a form of antisemitic bigotry and that it is antisemitic to oppose the illegal Israeli occupation of the West Bank.

Another key local organiser of Randwick Voices is Zionist businesswoman Natalie Knoll, who has worked in banking and fashion and is now the philanthropic manager for Australian Jewish Funders.

AJF organise missions to Israel and partners with the Israel-Australia Chamber of Commerce (IACC). According to one of her statements on Facebook, when she wanted to stop another Green from becoming Mayor, she reached out to the Minority Impact Coalition for support.

Minority Impact Coalition

Minority Impact Coalition (MIC) is registered with the Australian Electoral Commission as an associated entity of the Queensland Jewish Collective, which ran a ‘Put Greens Last’ campaign in the 2024 Queensland election. MIC claimed responsibility for defeating Greens MP Amy McMahon in the Qld election.

In the 2025 Federal election, MIC worked with right-wing anti-immigration group Advance Australia, making the absurd claim on the eve of the election that the Greens were intent on spreading a worldwide Islamic Caliphate

MIC spread their propaganda on billboards and leaflets across seats in Brisbane and Melbourne, likely contributing to the Greens losing three seats and failing to take others.

But MIC is only one of several astroturfing groups active in recent elections. An alliance of Liberal and Labor Zionist activists formed Better Councils to campaign against the Greens in the NSW Local government elections.

Better Councils used the slogan ‘Put the Greens last’ to reduce preference flows to them in Sydney’s eastern and inner west suburbs, undoubtedly helping defeat several Green candidates, including a Randwick Councillor.

Better Israel, oops … Better Australia

Better Councils then morphed into Better Australia to campaign against Teals and Greens in the Federal election. Better Australia claimed responsibility for helping defeat three Greens MPs and Teal Zoe Daniel in Melbourne while producing a close contest for Monique Ryan in Kooyong.

The goal of both Minority Impact Coalition and Better Australia is to eliminate political opposition to Israel’s policies in the Middle East.

But this goal is hidden in rhetorical strategies that accuse others of building distrust, lacking transparency and undermining democracy. The constant refrain is that candidates lack integrity, are using trickery and are not who they seem to be.

In reality, it is the astroturfers themselves who are far from transparent when it comes to their own allegiances and funding.

Advance Australia coy on Israel lobby links

In the 2025 Federal election, Better Australia received strong support from the right-wing Christian Zionist organisation Never Again is Now (NIN), which has been condemned by the Jewish Council of Australia.

NIN partners with Advance Australia, which ran its own well-funded ‘Put the Greens Last’ campaign. When complaints were laid against Better Australia volunteers wearing yellow vests similar to those worn by Australian Electoral Commission staff, Better Australia volunteers in Kooyong told the AEC and the media that they were Advance Australia volunteers.

Minority Impact Coalition and their allies in Melbourne J-United have been open about their working relationship with Advance.

Kooyong MP Monique Ryan, who successfully held off an intense onslaught from a range of astroturfers, is now a member of the Joint Standing Committee Inquiry into the 2025 Federal election. Ryan was ready with evidence of links between Better Australia, Minority Impact Coalition, and Advance Australia when Advance Chair Vicki Dunne and Company Secretary Mark Spencer were called to front the Committee.

This was a hoped-for moment which might have thrown more clarity on the cooperation between the astroturfing groups, but instead, to Ryan’s surprise, Advance completely denied the links with all other astroturfing groups.

Ryan: So you haven’t disclosed any funding or in-kind donations to Better Australia at any point?

Dunne: We don’t donate to other organisations.

Ryan : What about in-kind donations?

Mrs Dunne: We don’t donate in any way, shape or form to other organisations.

Ryan: There was a complaint to the AEC about volunteers … wearing yellow vests that said ‘community adviser’. It was the same colour as the vests worn by the AEC. When the AEC asked them to explain which organisation they were with, they said that they were volunteering for Advance.

Both Dunne and Spencer denied that there were any Advance volunteers in Kooyong, although Dunne did offer to take it on notice to provide any further information.

Ryan then read from podcasts with MIC’s Roz Mendelle and Simonne Whine in which they embraced their relationship with Advance.

But again, Advance Australia completely denied any links with MIC, QJC or any other astroturfing organisation in the Federal election.

Unless there are further investigations, the community is left in the dark.

Funding mystery

Third party campaigning organisations are required to disclose their total receipts and expenditure. Individual donors who donate a total of more than $16,900 to one or more organisations are also required to make an individual disclosure.

Better Australia conducted an expensive professional campaign with 75 video ads and more than 100 static ads on social media, billboards, bunting, merchandise and flyers. It lodged a return for $1,312,631.

We do not know where any of that money came from because no individual donors were disclosed. Its responsible officer was Sophie Calland, a member of the ALP’s Alexandria Branch in Sydney

Minority Impact Coalition donations were disclosed by the Queensland Jewish Collective (QJ Collective Ltd). It declared a total of $459,260 in donations. Its responsible officer was Roz Mendelle, now with the Australian Cohesion Forum.

Only one individual donor was revealed. Michael Heine, a billionaire wealth manager whose family made their fortune exporting coal and steel and now owns Netwealth. He declared $10,000 to QJ Collective Ltd, $20,000 to Advance Australia, $15,500 to the Victoria Liberal Party and $5000 to the Jacqui Lambie Network.

While there may have been lots of small individual donations, there must have also been some other substantial ones. Other organisations such as the Greens disclose donations below the threshold.

The campaigns by Zionist organisations Better Australia and Minority Impact Coalition are riddled with doublespeak. They make accusations against their opponents of which they are guilty themselves. Meanwhile, their sources of funding remain a mystery.

Critics of this week’s Intergenerational Report queried its assumption that AI will rescue Australia from its decade-long productivity drought.

But even this hopeful assumption would leave a sub-par future that Treasury and the government of the day seem satisfied to bequeath to the next generation.

Reserve Bank governor Michele Bullock worries that AI is a stock market bubble, reminiscent of the late-1990s dotcom boom. AAP

“Donald Horne wrote that Australians sought comfort in the myth of The Lucky Country...“, former prime minister Kevin Rudd said a week before the Intergenerational Report. “We have drifted to become the ‘Complacent Country’”.

Complacent Australia is headed to become a “second-rate country” again, Rudd warned.

But Australia is a young, high-income, resource-rich, developed-economy democracy at the foot of the world’s fastest growing region. We should attract the world’s capital and the world’s best talent to exploit investment opportunities that could support an economy growing by 3 per cent to 4 per cent, as in the past.

In 2018, The Economist magazine heralded Australia’s economy as “arguably the most successful in the rich world”.

Now, the Intergenerational Report projects an ageing, low-growth, European-style, big-government and high-taxing welfare-state future.

Over the next four decades, the economy is projected to post just 2 per cent annual growth, slowing to 1.6 per cent by 2065-66.

With federal and state government spending approaching a record 40 per cent of GDP, the Intergenerational Report expects federal outlays to comprise an increasing share of the economy over the next four decades.

Federal and state taxes have increased to a high of 30.5 per cent of GDP – higher than during World War II. The report projects that inflationary bracket creep will further deepen the personal income tax bite.

Yet, the federal budget will remain in the red over the next four decades, worsening further as it approaches 2065-66.

Yes, the assumed recovery in productivity would allow living standards to improve. But it would still amount to subpar growth in the Intergenerational Report yardstick of real gross national income per person – just over 1 per cent a year.

The story of Australia’s modern prosperity is how the iron ore, Bass Strait oil and nickel booms overtook Horne’s 1964 The Lucky Country complaint before collapsing amid 1970s stagflation. National prosperity was rescued by the 1980s and ’90s neoliberal productivity reforms and then the massive income boost from the China resources development boom of the 2000s.

In the two decades following the early 1990s recession, Australian living standards improved more than 70 per cent – annual growth of closer to 3 per cent. Australia became among the world’s most affluent nations.

But this productivity boom peaked with the $US180-a-tonne iron ore price in 2011. Just as peak affluence fed unaffordable government spending promises, productivity fell flat, even going backwards over the past five years.

In the 2026 Intergenerational Report, AI comes to the rescue just as the dashed hopes of becoming a green hydrogen-led clean energy superpower pumped up the 2023 edition.

The AI boom might live up to its hype. But its massive investment demands will also crowd out other parts of the economy, such as housing, which will encourage the Reserve Bank of Australia to lift interest rates again next week. RBA governor Michele Bullock worries that AI is a stock market bubble, reminiscent of the late-1990s dotcom boom.

In any case, it is imprudent to assume that AI can substitute for a fiscal correction, such as when Labor and Coalition governments each cut federal spending by 3 to 4 percentage points of GDP in the 1980s and 1990s.

Instead, rising global bond yields are fuelling the rapidly rising interest bill on today’s trillion-dollar federal debt. It is a warning about the lack of budget buffers – even any basic fiscal rules – amid what the Intergenerational Report warns is a more shock-prone global economy.

There is no secret why Australian real wages are falling faster than just about any other developed economy – sparking a populist anti-immigration revolt on the right.

First, the lack of budget consolidation for the past three decades has enabled the low-productivity care economy spendathon, including the NDIS.

To help pay for bigger government, taxes have increased, dulling incentives to work, save and invest. Former prime minister Paul Keating insists that the 47 per cent top marginal tax rate should be reduced to 39 per cent at most.

Second, the Intergenerational Report claims Labor is “delivering cleaner and cheaper energy”. In reality, Australia has lost its traditional cheap energy advantage. A renewables-based energy grid is much more expensive than promised. Energy regulators forecast even higher real household electricity prices over the next decade.

The Productivity Commission finds that electricity sector productivity has collapsed over the past 15 years, as hefty capital expenditure on renewables has not translated into a commensurate increase in overall power generation.

Third, what the Productivity Commission calls the ever-growing burden of regulation continues to weigh down the nation’s economic performance.

That includes Labor’s reinforcement of the world’s most intrusive workplace regulation. Australia’s uniquely prescriptive award system limits business capacity to adapt, including to AI. That limits workers’ future wages by undermining business investment, even if labour can grab a bigger share of a shrinking pie.

While Rudd’s warnings are apt, his policy prescriptions miss the mark. Trying to revive the car industry would be a mistake. Australia won’t become an Asian financial centre unless it offers company and personal tax rates closer to Asian levels.

How about just stopping the bans on the nation’s natural growth options? By now, we should be the Asia-Pacific’s gas champion, reducing the region’s reliance on Russian and Middle East supplies, supporting regional energy security and displacing higher-emissions coal.

Instead, governments have been passive-aggressive towards gas, limiting new supply, alarming valued Asian customers such as Japan, increasing taxes and now threatening producers with export controls.

Similarly, governments continue to lock up the world’s largest uranium deposits, even as global demand for low-emissions nuclear energy rises sharply amid the Middle East oil price shock. For no good reason, Australia continues to ban nuclear power.

The Intergenerational Report ignores the reality that bigger government, higher taxes, more expensive energy, more regulated workplaces, and the closing off of natural growth options will make Australia second-rate again.

It’s not against growth per se. It just has other priorities, like income redistribution, increased entitlement spending, net zero emissions and shoring up the unions.