From Schwartz Media. I'm Ruby Jones.
This is seven am. 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 Kotsukus on who is behind Advance and why they believe they can flip progressive women to the hard right.
It's Monday, August nineteen, 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 they're a huge success in that campaign, what have they been doing.
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 one point five million dollars of a five million dollar fundraising target ahead of the election. If you log onto their website, they say they've got three hundred and six thousand online supporters and thirty two thousand donors.
They've hired twenty three 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 center.
Jay Tonight, it is outside to welcome our special guest, Matthew Shan, the CEO of Advanced Australia, and our topic tonight is value based powerful campaigning.
And in a recent presentation to the Australian Jewish Association, advance's CEO Matthew Shan described Advance's goal as wanting to defend the fruits of the Judeo Christian West.
Was we wanted to defend the fruits of the Judeo Christian West and for the purposes of our organization, that was three things, so freedom, security, and prosperity.
He says. That's what they do all year round, every day.
We don't campaign on any other issue. We exist solely to defend and promote those three things.
He says. They recently did research into the biggest threat to freedom, security and prosperity and landed on the Australian Greens. According to to Matthew, she advances 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 his main aim is to shrink the Greens vote back to where they were in twenty sixteen.
Right, And obviously the Greens have grown as a political force since twenty sixteen. At the last election they did particularly well. They won six Senate seats. They now have eleven Senators and four MPs in the House of Representatives. Clearly Advance sees them as a threat. So tell me a bit more about advances research into the Greens.
So Matthew, She said that he instructed the polling researchers that Advance wanted to understand what the Australian people thought about the political parties from a breat 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, Advances research showed that nearly eighty percent of people surveyed and that's not just Green's voters, but all voters think that the party stands for action on climate change or protecting the environment, and gives them enormous credibility 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 Sheen 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.
Okay, 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 dislaunche that level of support.
Matthew she And characterized 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 then you know, at least I'm going to feel good about something that I did today. The group that Advances identifying as being the most persuadable are predominantly women, age
between thirty three and forty nine. 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 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.
So women are twice as likely to vote Green or Tel or Greens the men. So as of a few weeks ago, eighteen percent of all women in this country intended to vote Green. Tell me about eight percent of males.
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 Advances 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.
If we came out and said, you know, the Greens are this the Greens so that they're bad, you know, they want to breach the US alliance, they wouldn't actually hear. Confidentive dissonance would kick in, they'd say, and we saw it in focus group. 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. They're not they used to be.
And 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 leads voters off the hook and saves face for changing their position.
The Greens party is a party of hatred of Western civilization, which wants to destroy every tradition we've been built on the Greens.
The campaign that the Greens aren't who they used to be. They've given it a name, Green's Truth. On our current trajectory, there is absolutely no reason why next ten to twenty years we're not going to see a Greens government. And the centerpiece of that campaign will be a documentary film that Advance says has a three hundred and seventeen thousand dollars 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 support us on Thursday, this documentary will not only inform and motivate voters on its own, they're also going to use it as the basis for all of their advertising going forward, so social media, television and all the other campaign material that they're blarning to put out trying to paint the Greens as a scary left wing.
Party coming up, Jason goes looking for the people behind Advance. Jason, you've been looking into the lobby group Advance, and you've found that their entire focus ahead of the next election will 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 about them.
Well, I think the thing that struck me most about this group in writing this story was just how elusive it is as an organization, and we don't really know all that much about it. We know that it was founded in twenty eighteen with about two hundred and eighty thousand dollars in seed funding that was contributed by a retired Sydney fund manager named Simon Fennick, 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. Tony Abbott, the former Liberal leader and former Prime Minister, is on as advisory board. There's a couple of act Liberal politicians who are also on that advisory board. We know that Advance as spokesperson before the twenty twenty two election was just Enterprise. She's now, of course, Senator Justiner 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 Shean, 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.
Okay, Well, given that then, and given a certain sense of mystery surrounding Advance and who belongs to the group and where the money comes from, what was it like as a report trying to get information about them?
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 mister Shean and I got a couple of replies saying look, we're happy to answer questions. Those emails weren't signed or it wasn't clear who who
those replies were coming from. For an organization with twenty three staff, I thought, well, I'll go and visit their headquarters, which are listed on the website as being at Level four at fifteen More Street in Civic, the main civic center here in Canberra. So I went there to just knock on the door and see if I could talk to anyone that way.
Was anyone there?
Well?
When the elevator door opened on level four, I quickly realized that this was a co working space. When I asked for Matthew Sheen somewhere there, the reception has said, well, do you mean the Advanced guy, and I said yes, and then I just got 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 twenty three staff they supposedly have, where are they spending all the money they raise? And you know, even things like the website you 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 sort of look behind the images, you quickly realize that these are just stock images that Advances are brought from an agency and are not representing real people that support
the organization. And I think there's also some questions about where they get all their money, because if you look at the Australian Electoral Commission declarations on money raised and spent during the referendum campaign, you see that Advance collected one point three million in donations ahead of the referendum, but they spent ten point four million on the No campaign.
So where is that nine point one from then.
That's not clear. There was an affiliate group that was essentially a part of Advance called Australians for Unity. They also spend eleven point eight million after raising about ten point eight 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 out because Advance is so secretive when it comes to the source of its money. And I even called Matthew she 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.
Okay, So, even without speaking directly to Matthew Sheer, 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.
It's difficult to really know. I guess all we can go on advances past performance. The effort to promote the no campaign during the Voice referendum last year was, by Advances measure successful. Sixty percent of people voted no, and 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.
What I call Adam Band'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 plays to respond to this campaign that Advance is planning, and that 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, while 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 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 Bound, whatever Advance does or is planning to do, isn't really going to change his strategy or the strategy of his party.
Well, Jason, thank you so much for your time today.
Ruby, it's a pleasure to talk with you as always.
Also in the news today, Government frontbencher Ed Husick has accused Peter Dutton of playing politics with one of the worst humanitarian crises we've ever seen. Mister Dutton has been calling on a band for visas for Palestinians escaping the war, citing security risks. His comments sparked outrage in Parliament, with
Independent MP Zali Stegel calling mister Dutton racist. Sky News is now reporting that mister Dutton is seeking legal advice against Miss Stegel 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 apologized
for the force's involvement. Mister Murphy had acknowledged that many Indigenous Australians viewed the intervention as racist, but mister 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 seven am. Thanks for listening.