Speaker 1: From Schwartz Media. I'm Ruby Jones.
Speaker 2: This is seven am. The hard right group behind the
Speaker 2: No campaign is amassing a multi million dollar war chest
Speaker 2: to take down its next opponent, the Australian Greens. Advance
Speaker 2: has called the Greens the single biggest threat to freedom,
Speaker 2: security and prosperity in Australia and they have big plans
Speaker 2: to target their voters ahead of the next election. Today,
Speaker 2: special correspondent for the Saturday Paper Jason Kotsukus on who
Speaker 2: is behind Advance and why they believe they can flip
Speaker 2: progressive women to the hard right.
Speaker 1: It's Monday, August nineteen, So, Jason.
Speaker 2: The lobby group that calls themselves Advance, we first heard
Speaker 2: about them last year. They were a key force behind
Speaker 2: the No campaign in the lead up to the Voice referendum.
Speaker 2: Since they're a huge success in that campaign, what have
Speaker 2: they been doing.
Speaker 3: Well, quite a lot actually, Ruby. Right now Advance is
Speaker 3: getting ready for the next federal election, which we're expecting
Speaker 3: between March and May next year. So far, Advance says
Speaker 3: they've raised one point five million dollars of a five
Speaker 3: million dollar fundraising target ahead of the election. If you
Speaker 3: log onto their website, they say they've got three hundred
Speaker 3: and six thousand online supporters and thirty two thousand donors.
Speaker 3: They've hired twenty three full time staff, and they've expanded
Speaker 3: the permanent campaign infrastructure to include things like data analytics,
Speaker 3: creative department, digital communications, fundraising, political strategy, even a call center.
Speaker 4: Jay Tonight, it is outside to welcome our special guest,
Speaker 4: Matthew Shan, the CEO of Advanced Australia, and our topic
Speaker 4: tonight is value based powerful campaigning.
Speaker 3: And in a recent presentation to the Australian Jewish Association,
Speaker 3: advance's CEO Matthew Shan described Advance's goal as wanting to
Speaker 3: defend the fruits of the Judeo Christian West.
Speaker 5: Was we wanted to defend the fruits of the Judeo
Speaker 5: Christian West and for the purposes of our organization, that
Speaker 5: was three things, so freedom, security, and prosperity.
Speaker 3: He says. That's what they do all year round, every day.
Speaker 5: We don't campaign on any other issue. We exist solely
Speaker 5: to defend and promote those three things.
Speaker 3: He says. They recently did research into the biggest threat
Speaker 3: to freedom, security and prosperity and landed on the Australian Greens.
Speaker 3: According to to Matthew, she advances entire focus from now
Speaker 3: until the election will be to try to inflict damage
Speaker 3: on the Greens brand. He even said, we're actually doing
Speaker 3: nothing else between now and the next federal election, but
Speaker 3: this campaign his main aim is to shrink the Greens
Speaker 3: vote back to where they were in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 2: Right, And obviously the Greens have grown as a political
Speaker 2: force since twenty sixteen. At the last election they did
Speaker 2: particularly well. They won six Senate seats. They now have
Speaker 2: eleven Senators and four MPs in the House of Representatives.
Speaker 2: Clearly Advance sees them as a threat. So tell me
Speaker 2: a bit more about advances research into the Greens.
Speaker 3: So Matthew, She said that he instructed the polling researchers
Speaker 3: that Advance wanted to understand what the Australian people thought
Speaker 3: about the political parties from a breat point of view,
Speaker 3: and he was very careful to say that he didn't
Speaker 3: want to know about what people thought about the policies
Speaker 3: or the politicians. He wanted to get voters in a
Speaker 3: room and start thinking about how did their political parties
Speaker 3: make voters feel. What the research came back showing was
Speaker 3: that For both the major parties, roughly a quarter of
Speaker 3: people said that they believe that those parties stand for nothing.
Speaker 3: For the Nationals, they're in even worse trouble, with almost
Speaker 3: half of people saying that they think the National Party
Speaker 3: stands for nothing. But when it comes to the Greens,
Speaker 3: Advances research showed that nearly eighty percent of people surveyed
Speaker 3: and that's not just Green's voters, but all voters think
Speaker 3: that the party stands for action on climate change or
Speaker 3: protecting the environment, and gives them enormous credibility in the
Speaker 3: minds of voters. And that's why they have the most
Speaker 3: trusted political brand in the country. And the thing that
Speaker 3: really irks Matthew Sheen about that is that he believes
Speaker 3: fundamentally that the Greens present themselves as a party that
Speaker 3: is primarily concerned about the environment, and that voters have
Speaker 3: swallowed that.
Speaker 2: Okay, So it sounds like Advance is going for the
Speaker 2: Greens because of what they represent from a political standpoint,
Speaker 2: but also because of the trust that people have in them.
Speaker 2: So how do they plan to dislaunche that level of support.
Speaker 3: Matthew she And characterized most voters as being low information voters.
Speaker 3: That most voters are going into the polling booth saying
Speaker 3: to themselves, I don't really want to be here. I'm
Speaker 3: not that interested in politics. But if I vote for
Speaker 3: the Greens at least in the number one position, well
Speaker 3: then you know, at least I'm going to feel good
Speaker 3: about something that I did today. The group that Advances
Speaker 3: identifying as being the most persuadable are predominantly women, age
Speaker 3: between thirty three and forty nine. According to the research,
Speaker 3: they're the ones that think that the Greens are doing
Speaker 3: the right thing by the environment, but they don't don't
Speaker 3: really know much else about the party, And I think
Speaker 3: Advance believes that if they can reveal to that age
Speaker 3: group just who the Greens are, that they might not
Speaker 3: be prepared to vote for them again.
Speaker 5: So women are twice as likely to vote Green or
Speaker 5: Tel or Greens the men. So as of a few
Speaker 5: weeks ago, eighteen percent of all women in this country
Speaker 5: intended to vote Green. Tell me about eight percent of males.
Speaker 3: And the other thing that he's taken from the Greens
Speaker 3: having such a strong political brand is that instead of
Speaker 3: attacking the party head on as a group that wants
Speaker 3: to enact radical change, the first step in Advances campaign
Speaker 3: has to be trying to take a different approach and
Speaker 3: try to meet voters where they are with the message
Speaker 3: that the Greens are not what they used to be.
Speaker 5: If we came out and said, you know, the Greens
Speaker 5: are this the Greens so that they're bad, you know,
Speaker 5: they want to breach the US alliance, they wouldn't actually hear.
Speaker 5: Confidentive dissonance would kick in, they'd say, and we saw
Speaker 5: it in focus group. The shutters would go up. So
Speaker 5: we've got to be a bit more softly softly in
Speaker 5: the beginning. And this is the message that tested the
Speaker 5: best out of the research. They're not they used to be.
Speaker 3: And the message that Advance wants voters to hear is
Speaker 3: I haven't changed, it's the Greens that have changed. And
Speaker 3: the idea here is that it leads voters off the
Speaker 3: hook and saves face for changing their position.
Speaker 5: The Greens party is a party of hatred of Western civilization,
Speaker 5: which wants to destroy every tradition we've been built on
Speaker 5: the Greens.
Speaker 3: The campaign that the Greens aren't who they used to be.
Speaker 3: They've given it a name, Green's Truth. On our current trajectory,
Speaker 3: there is absolutely no reason why next ten to twenty
Speaker 3: years we're not going to see a Greens government. And
Speaker 3: the centerpiece of that campaign will be a documentary film
Speaker 3: that Advance says has a three hundred and seventeen thousand
Speaker 3: dollars production budget that promises to tell the full story
Speaker 3: of how and why the Greens have fallen so far.
Speaker 3: According to a fundraising pitch that was emailed to support
Speaker 3: us on Thursday, this documentary will not only inform and
Speaker 3: motivate voters on its own, they're also going to use
Speaker 3: it as the basis for all of their advertising going forward,
Speaker 3: so social media, television and all the other campaign material
Speaker 3: that they're blarning to put out trying to paint the
Speaker 3: Greens as a scary left wing.
Speaker 2: Party coming up, Jason goes looking for the people behind Advance. Jason,
Speaker 2: you've been looking into the lobby group Advance, and you've
Speaker 2: found that their entire focus ahead of the next election
Speaker 2: will be on bringing down the Greens. So at this
Speaker 2: point we know a lot about who they don't like,
Speaker 2: what they're opposing, and what their plan is, but we
Speaker 2: know less about the group itself, about Advance, So tell
Speaker 2: me about them.
Speaker 3: Well, I think the thing that struck me most about
Speaker 3: this group in writing this story was just how elusive
Speaker 3: it is as an organization, and we don't really know
Speaker 3: all that much about it. We know that it was
Speaker 3: founded in twenty eighteen with about two hundred and eighty
Speaker 3: thousand dollars in seed funding that was contributed by a
Speaker 3: retired Sydney fund manager named Simon Fennick, but I don't
Speaker 3: really know much about Simon. We also know that there's
Speaker 3: a lot of people who were attached to the Liberal
Speaker 3: Party that are quite close to this group. Tony Abbott,
Speaker 3: the former Liberal leader and former Prime Minister, is on
Speaker 3: as advisory board. There's a couple of act Liberal politicians
Speaker 3: who are also on that advisory board. We know that
Speaker 3: Advance as spokesperson before the twenty twenty two election was
Speaker 3: just Enterprise. She's now, of course, Senator Justiner Price. So
Speaker 3: while the Advance claims to be independent, they do have
Speaker 3: a lot of ties to the Liberal Party. When it
Speaker 3: comes to Matthew Shean, I wasn't really able to find
Speaker 3: out that much about him. You know, he really just
Speaker 3: came onto the scene as the executive director of Advance,
Speaker 3: but his working life prior to that was difficult for
Speaker 3: me to uncover anything really substantial.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, given that then, and given a certain sense
Speaker 2: of mystery surrounding Advance and who belongs to the group
Speaker 2: and where the money comes from, what was it like
Speaker 2: as a report trying to get information about them?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 3: It was quite difficult. There's an address an email address
Speaker 3: on the website for media inquiries. I sent through a
Speaker 3: few requests for interviews with mister Shean and I got
Speaker 3: a couple of replies saying look, we're happy to answer questions.
Speaker 3: Those emails weren't signed or it wasn't clear who who
Speaker 3: those replies were coming from. For an organization with twenty
Speaker 3: three staff, I thought, well, I'll go and visit their headquarters,
Speaker 3: which are listed on the website as being at Level
Speaker 3: four at fifteen More Street in Civic, the main civic
Speaker 3: center here in Canberra. So I went there to just
Speaker 3: knock on the door and see if I could talk
Speaker 3: to anyone that way.
Speaker 1: Was anyone there?
Speaker 5: Well?
Speaker 3: When the elevator door opened on level four, I quickly
Speaker 3: realized that this was a co working space. When I
Speaker 3: asked for Matthew Sheen somewhere there, the reception has said, well,
Speaker 3: do you mean the Advanced guy, and I said yes,
Speaker 3: and then I just got the reply that, well, Matthew
Speaker 3: comes in here sometimes, but not very often. So it
Speaker 3: turns out that they don't actually have an office there.
Speaker 3: They just list this place as their office, and I
Speaker 3: guess they come to some sort of hot desk arrangement,
Speaker 3: or perhaps they have a meeting there from time to time.
Speaker 3: So it really does raise a few questions as to,
Speaker 3: you know, who are these twenty three staff they supposedly have,
Speaker 3: where are they spending all the money they raise? And
Speaker 3: you know, even things like the website you strike me
Speaker 3: as being a little bit elusive because you look through
Speaker 3: some of the photographs they have of all these very
Speaker 3: enthusiastic volunteers that they have supporting them. But if you
Speaker 3: sort of look behind the images, you quickly realize that
Speaker 3: these are just stock images that Advances are brought from
Speaker 3: an agency and are not representing real people that support
Speaker 3: the organization. And I think there's also some questions about
Speaker 3: where they get all their money, because if you look
Speaker 3: at the Australian Electoral Commission declarations on money raised and
Speaker 3: spent during the referendum campaign, you see that Advance collected
Speaker 3: one point three million in donations ahead of the referendum,
Speaker 3: but they spent ten point four million on the No campaign.
Speaker 1: So where is that nine point one from then.
Speaker 3: That's not clear. There was an affiliate group that was
Speaker 3: essentially a part of Advance called Australians for Unity. They
Speaker 3: also spend eleven point eight million after raising about ten
Speaker 3: point eight million in donations. So it might be a
Speaker 3: situation where Australians for Unity has given money to Advance.
Speaker 3: But it's difficult to actually work that out because Advance
Speaker 3: is so secretive when it comes to the source of
Speaker 3: its money. And I even called Matthew she to ask
Speaker 3: him about it, and he said to me that he
Speaker 3: couldn't talk because he was going through airport security. Now
Speaker 3: that might well be true, but it certainly seemed to
Speaker 3: be the world's quietest airport security I've ever heard.
Speaker 2: Okay, So, even without speaking directly to Matthew Sheer, tell
Speaker 2: me where you arrived at the end of your reporting
Speaker 2: on this in terms of how successful you think Advance
Speaker 2: is going to be ahead of this election in targeting
Speaker 2: the Greens. Do you think that they can do what
Speaker 2: they're setting out to do.
Speaker 3: It's difficult to really know. I guess all we can
Speaker 3: go on advances past performance. The effort to promote the
Speaker 3: no campaign during the Voice referendum last year was, by
Speaker 3: Advances measure successful. Sixty percent of people voted no, and
Speaker 3: Advance has taken a lot of credit for that. But
Speaker 3: a lot of other political analysts say, well, as soon
Speaker 3: as you had the main opposition parties coming out against
Speaker 3: the Voice, then the yes vote was doomed and it
Speaker 3: wouldn't have mattered what a group like Advance was doing.
Speaker 3: What I call Adam Band's office on Thursday morning, they
Speaker 3: were very happy to put Adam in front of me
Speaker 3: and talk about how he thinks the Australian Greens will
Speaker 3: be best plays to respond to this campaign that Advance
Speaker 3: is planning, and that seemed pretty unfazed by the threat
Speaker 3: posed by Advance. He thinks that voters trust the Greens
Speaker 3: because it consistently fights for the things that the people
Speaker 3: care about, while Advance may have a few wealthy donors
Speaker 3: who want to defend their obscene wealth. According to him,
Speaker 3: a key question to ask of the group why are
Speaker 3: they doing what they're doing? In his view, the Conservatives
Speaker 3: are attacking the Greens and not Labor because it's the
Speaker 3: Greens that is the progressive alternative. So for Adam Bound,
Speaker 3: whatever Advance does or is planning to do, isn't really
Speaker 3: going to change his strategy or the strategy of his party.
Speaker 2: Well, Jason, thank you so much for your time today.
Speaker 3: Ruby, it's a pleasure to talk with you as always.
Speaker 2: Also in the news today, Government frontbencher Ed Husick has
Speaker 2: accused Peter Dutton of playing politics with one of the
Speaker 2: worst humanitarian crises we've ever seen. Mister Dutton has been
Speaker 2: calling on a band for visas for Palestinians escaping the war,
Speaker 2: citing security risks. His comments sparked outrage in Parliament, with
Speaker 2: Independent MP Zali Stegel calling mister Dutton racist. Sky News
Speaker 2: is now reporting that mister Dutton is seeking legal advice
Speaker 2: against Miss Stegel and former Prime Minister John Howard has
Speaker 2: said the Northern Territory intervention was totally justified. His comments
Speaker 2: come weeks after the territory's Police Commissioner, Michael Murphy apologized
Speaker 2: for the force's involvement. Mister Murphy had acknowledged that many
Speaker 2: Indigenous Australians viewed the intervention as racist, but mister Howard
Speaker 2: defended the measures, including restrictions on alcohol and pornography, and
Speaker 2: the control of welfare through the Basics Card. The Liberal
Speaker 2: government's intervention Laws suspended the Racial Discrimination Act. I'm Ruby Jones.
Speaker 2: This is seven am. Thanks for listening.