Disinformation group Advance Australia has been pouring advertising money into supporting the Liberals in the Dunkley by-election. Its funding includes over $1 million from a company whose ownership structure may be illegal. Anthony Klan reports.
Despite their claim to be a ‘grassroots’ movement of ‘ordinary Australians’, Advance Australia is bankrolled by a handful of wealthy families and individuals. According to the annual disclosure by the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) on 1 February 2024, the largest donation to Advance Australia was $1.025M, but the AEC does not know the legal source of those payments.
The payment was also the second biggest individual political donation in Australia in the financial year.
After being alerted to it by this writer, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has confirmed that they are now investigating the ownership structure of the company behind the $1.025M donation, Hadley Holdings Pty Ltd.
The use of a complex and highly unusual company ownership structure, which also repeatedly exploits a notorious Australian regulatory black hole, means it is impossible to verify the true source, or sources, of the money. Further, the ownership structure appears to be illegal — the company at the top of the “ownership” chain claims that it “owns” itself.
The ownership structure behind the biggest donation to “Advance”. Source: ASIC, AEC. Graphic: The Klaxon
The revelations come as the Advance, which has repeatedly been caught spreading disinformation and is a “false flag” operation run by fossil fuels and other vested interests, is aggressively targeting the Melbourne electorate of Dunkley ahead of Saturday’s Federal by-election.
It also comes as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese this week in Federal Parliament pointed to the “billionaires” behind Advance as to why donation law reform was needed — although he has announced zero changes since being elected almost two years ago.
The secretive Advance ran an aggressive campaign of disinformation ahead of the October 14 Indigenous Voice to Parliament referendum, which it is now replicating in a bid to prevent the election of ALP candidate Jodie Belyea.
Dunkley, currently held by the ALP on a margin of 6.3 per cent, became vacant after the ALP MP Peta Murphy died of breast cancer in December.
Hadley Holdings Pty Ltd
Hadley Holdings Pty Ltd is connected to a relatively unknown 95-year-old Perth businessman called Brian Anderson, who has been widely reported as the source of the two donations totalling $1.025M.
A wealthy former car salesman and mining investor whose fortune was bolstered selling engineering products in the resources haven of Western Australia, Anderson has publicly stated he is the source of the money or at least some of the money.
Yet Anderson’s statements raise more questions — and the retired businessman has repeatedly refused to comment when contacted by us.
In a February 2 article, the AFR reported that Anderson had been “struck by No campaigners Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and Nyunggai Warren Mundine” and “wanted to do what he could to support them.”
“My motives were because I thought the argument for the No case was correct, that [the Yes case is] divisive, and I wanted to support two of the Indigenous proponents, Jacinta Price and Warren Mundine,” Anderson is reported as saying.
Yet the payments were made in November 2022, which was not only almost a year before the referendum,
months before either Price or Mundine joined Advance’s “No” campaign against the Voice.
The two directors of Hadley Holdings Pty Ltd are Anderson and Perth accountant and tax agent Lena Hilton, 77, who owns accounting firm Hilton Partners.
Hilton has repeatedly refused to respond when approached by The Klaxon.
The Hadley Holdings AEC donor disclosure form was filed and signed two months ago on December 20 by Siva Paramalingam, who is also an accountant and tax agent at Hilton Partners.
He also refused to respond when approached for comment.
The ‘address’ for Hadley Holdings Pty Ltd stated on the AEC form is PO Box 1236, West Perth
Investigations show that while the directors of Hadley Holdings are Anderson and Hilton, the true ultimate owner, or owners, of the entity is hidden, even from authorities.
Opaque company structure
First, the $1.025m payments have been declared as made in two payments by a shell company, Hadley Holdings, which is 100% “owned” by another shell company, Anderson Nominees Pty Limited, which is 100% “owned” by another shell company, Yardia Pty Ltd.
Second, the “beneficial” owners, as in the actual owners of each of the three companies, are hidden.
Finally, the company at the top of the structure, Yardia Pty Ltd, claims it is 100 per cent owned by Yardia Pty Ltd.
Put another way, the biggest donor to Advance is a shell company owned by another shell company, which is owned by a third shell company; the “beneficial” (actual) owner of all three companies is hidden; all the directors of the three companies are refusing to talk; and, the company at the top of the structure claims it owns itself.
At the heart of Australia’s financial system is a black hole that allows the true owner, or owners, of any registered entity to remain entirely hidden. And it’s perfectly legal.
In what has drawn international condemnation from groups such as Transparency International, Australia has no register of “beneficial owners”.
That means the true ownership of any company can be hidden by naming a legal owner, who is different to the actual owner or owners.
That proxy owner has no rights to the company or its assets and must only act in accordance with the instructions of the actual owner/s.
ASIC investigates
We alerted ASIC on February 3 and asked how it could be legal, or even possible, for a company to be the stated owner of itself. On February 7, ASIC said it was looking into the matter further.
“I need to clarify a few things but it would appear a company, can, in some very limited circumstances, own shares in itself as outlined in [Corporations Act] section 259a & 259b,” an ASIC spokeswoman responded.
“However, those acquired under 259a must be cancelled immediately after the transfer, and ASIC notified…and those acquired under 259b have 12 months to cease the shares.”
When we asked in response, repeatedly, whether Yardia Pty Ltd fell outside those laws, ASIC did not respond.
Investigations show that even if Yardia Pty Ltd meets other “very limited circumstances”, it fails to meet either Section 259a (that such a structure is replaced “immediately”) or Section 259b (that it is removed after 12 months) of the Corporations Act.
The legislation states: “If, at the end of the 12 months (or extended period), the company still holds any of the shares (or units of shares), the company commits an offence for each day while that situation continues”.
Yardia Pty Ltd became the owner of Yardia Pty Ltd on 30 June 2021 — more than two-and-a-half years ago.
Twelve months from then was 30 June 2022, more than 600 days ago.
ASIC filings show Yardia Pty Ltd has four shares, each with a stated value of $1, and on 30 June 2021 those four shares were all transferred to Yardia Pty Ltd itself. (The ASIC form detailing the “ownership” change was filed by Hilton).
We have now been made aware the matter has been substantially escalated, with investigations now in the hands of specialist teams within ASIC.
Anderson, who turned 95 earlier this month, lives in a multi-million-dollar waterfront home in the exclusive inner Perth suburb of Dalkeith. It is possible that he is the (hidden) “beneficial owner” of all three companies. It is also possible Anderson is the only “beneficial owner” of all three companies.
But the central issue, and point of serious concern for Australian democracy more broadly, is that there is no way of knowing.
AEC disclosure limitations
On February 2, we asked the AEC whether it knew the “identity/identities of the beneficial (and so actual) owner of Hadley Holdings Pty Ltd” and, if so, who that was.
“We administer the Commonwealth funding and disclosure scheme detailed in the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918, this includes publishing disclosure data that is provided to us,” a spokeswoman responded. “These questions are outside of our remit as the AEC.”
The AEC doesn’t know the legal source of the payments.
Advance activities
Advance claims to be a “grassroots” movement of “ordinary Australians”, and uses the imagery of exhausted-looking blue-collar workers and campaigns against the “elite” and the “inner-city woke.”
“More of us are worried about what woke politicians and inner-city elites are doing to our country,” it declared ahead of the Voice referendum.
In fact, as previously reported, it is bankrolled by a handful of the mega-wealthy – the super-elite.
Of the Advance’s ten disclosed donor entities in 2021-22, all have fortunes in the tens of millions of dollars, and at least seven have estimated fortunes of $100m or more, including billionaire Sam Kennard, owner of Kennards Self Storage.
Most are so wealthy they appear in published media “rich lists” naming Australia’s wealthiest people.
Advance claims to be non-politically aligned, despite aggressively campaigning against the ALP in favour of the Coalition.
The outfit has heavily exploited Australia’s lack of truth in political advertising laws. Ahead of the 2022 federal election, Advance was caught lying by falsely claiming independent candidates David Pocock, now a federal senator, and Zali Steggall, now a federal MP, were actually Greens candidates in disguise.
Advance Australia fair? Why are the ‘No’ campaign people so afraid to be found?
This is an edited version of an article that first appeared in The Klaxon – original here.
Anthony Klan is an investigative journalist and editor of independent news outlet The Klaxon. He specialises in exposing corporate malfeasance and government corruption and has won multiple awards, including the Walkley Award for Business Journalism.