Gas lobby APPEA calls for transparency while its own financial reports vanish. What’s the scam?

by Michael West | May 19, 2023 | What's the scam?

There is no noisier, whingier bunch of lobbyists in Australia than APPEA, the town criers for multinational oil and gas corporations, but why have their own financial reports vanished? What’s the scam? 

On any given week you will find the Samantha McCulloch, chief executive of the Australian Petroleum Production & Exploration Association (APPEA) preaching to governments from the page one pulpits of the AFR, The Australian and whoever else is listening, sermonising about the pitfalls of taxes and regulations for her members such as Exxon, Shell, Santos and Chevron.

But when it comes to keeping its own house in order, APPEA’s most basic duty of disclosure, producing its once-a-year financial statements … sadly, no dice. They have disappeared. They used to publish them on their website; now you can’t even find them on an ASIC search. This is the most profitable sector in Australia, the gas cartel has hit every household in Australia with its nosebleed price rises.

So we asked the PR man Patrick Lion if he could please provide a copy of APPEA’s financials, seeing as this organisation was in such a position of power and influence daily instructing governments on how to go about their business, and doing so on a tax-free basis.

This from Patrick: “Hi Michael, thank you for the inquiry. We won’t be providing you with that.”

Wistful at Patrick’ response, we posed these questions to Samantha:

  1. APPEA has called on the government for transparency in relation to the Code (AFR): 

“Ms McCulloch said that while the industry and government were aligned on the need to ensure investment goes ahead, the latest version of the code relied on exemptions to the price cap for new supply being granted in a process that lacked clarity and transparency.

“It’s creating additional complexity and opaqueness in the market,” she said.

How do calls for transparency sit with APPEA’s own transparency? APPEA used to publish its annual reports online but no longer does. Neither are they searchable on the ASIC database (since 2020). Is APPEA still a ‘public’ entity or has its status changed?

  1. A request to APPEA to provide the documents has been denied. The accounts of other lobby groups are available publicly. Please explain.
  2. Given you make demands on the Government over policy on a regular basis and have significant public influence over policy via media and other lobbying could you please explain how there might be a public expectation that your organisation is more transparent?
  3. On a related matter, your foreign-controlled members pay, per dollar of total income, less tax than any other major sector of the Australian economy. Given your public demands, could APPEA’s members do better in pulling their weight funding public services in Australia?
  4. Please explain how APPEA’s failure to be transparent as to its funding and financial disclosures sits with the fact that it has a/. long enjoyed tax free status and is therefore indirectly subsidised by ordinary Australians, and b/ is financed by its members, the largest of which are foreign oil and gas giant, but which also include government organisations … which means APPEA and indeed the salaries of your executive team are funded in part by ordinary Australian taxpayers.

(These include South Metropolitan TAFE, Australian Institute of Marine Science, CareFlight, Curtin University, UNSW, South Australian Chamber of Mines and Energy – all of whose financials I’m pretty sure I could find fairly quickly).

We are yet to achieve a response from Samantha as to this basic duty of disclosure for a public entity but will share it should it ever be forthcoming.

PS: At this week’s annual APPEA conference, the calls were loud and long for more government subsidies for Australia’s most profitable industry, specifically for “incentives” for carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology which doesn’t work commercially, otherwise they would pay for it themselves.

Michael West established Michael West Media in 2016 to focus on journalism of high public interest, particularly the rising power of corporations over democracy. West was formerly a journalist and editor with Fairfax newspapers, a columnist for News Corp and even, once, a stockbroker.

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