AFTER years of demonising coal workers, it has emerged Warringah MP Zali Steggall’s biggest political donor is a coal mining multi-millionaire.
A six-figure lump sum donation from a trust headed by investor John Kinghorn was curiously misreported by the Steggall campaign as being eight smaller contributions – so avoiding electoral commission requirements to identify the donor.
- Steggall’s proclaimed integrity and green credentials goes up in smoke.
- Campaign splits huge coal donation to prevent disclosing source.
- Accused of a deliberate & hypocritical tactic to avoid scrutiny.
Mr Kinghorn, who is the founder of RAMS Home Loans and currently faces charges alleging tax avoidance, is a former investor and director of Cascade Coal and Felix Resources, which was sold to China in 2019 for $3.5b.
Mr Kinghorn denies the charges.
INVESTIGATION
An investigation completed by the Australian Electoral Commission last year showed that a single $100,000 donation had been split by the campaign into eight separate $12,500 donations from individual Kinghorn family members.
According to The Sydney Morning Herald the Kinghorn donation was received in March 2019, after Ms Steggall announced she would challenge former PM Tony Abbott for the seat of Warringah.
The pledge was initially omitted in the campaign’s AEC return filed in October 2019 but was later included in a 2021 amendment, after the investigation had commenced.
Ms Steggall’s 2019 campaign financial controller Damien Hodgkinson is now a director and shareholder of Simon Holmes-a-Court’s Climate 200 campaign, which is funding green “independents” in the upcoming federal election.
Tony Abbott’s former Chief of Staff Peta Credlin has labelled the hard-Left Warringah MP as a “stone-cold hypocrite”.
“This was a deliberate tactic, I’d suggest, to avoid scrutiny,” she said.
“All pretty extraordinary when you consider Steggall’s promise on her own website to stand up for integrity and accountability to restore trust in Australian politics.
“She claims everything was disclosed but, I tell you what, I’ve always thought she was a rock-solid Lefty.
“We now know, don’t we, that she’s a stone-cold hypocrite.”
Ms Steggall has defended her campaign’s actions.
“These are donations from a number of members of a large family who nearly all live in Warringah,” she told The Sydney Morning Herald.
“If you ruled out taking donations from anyone who has invested in coal at one time or another, you pretty much rule out everyone as most people have through their superannuation.”
Mr Kinghorn was a board member and investor in Cascade Coal, the company that purchased the exploration licence over disgraced former ALP Resources Minister Eddie Obeid’s family farm.PC
In 2019 she was backed by wealthy business interests based on the climate hoax and warming scare politics and crony capitalists. And campaign assisted by the activist organisation GetUp created and financially supported in Australia by the Union Movement that controls and manages Labor and donates to the Greens. GetUp was established when now Labor MP Bill Shorten was a senior AWU executive and later he was appointed to the GetUp Board of Directors.
I understand that the role or position of GetUp is now Climate 200 established by the inherited high wealth individual Holmes a Court and other like minded climate hoax based entrepreneurs. They have a very narrow political agenda and are targeting only Liberal and National MPs again in 2022.
The I will appease anybody no name nobody is a shill and I knew when I saw her campaigning against Abbot and she got all the Feminazis on board ( just like Kevin 07 ) no real agenda just hijacking the climate agenda and the sisterhood she was elected for something different and has done F**K all since . Her office is in Mosman ( wealthy lower north shore ) Sydney Suburb were the locals drive High Priced Europeans cars ! Her video she made last winter from the Square in Parliament House standing beside a tree shedding its leaves and saying it was result of climate change when it is a deciduous tree ( sheds its leaves every year should have alerted all to her and those of her ilk that she is same as the rest . The fact she takes money from evil coal shows her hypocrisy knows no bounds .
Probably forgotten now, high school students from a Western Sydney school for aspiring models and actors hired to attend rallies and street campaigning wearing the teal so called Independent candidate shirt or orange GetUp shirt, as required for each appearance.
Political theatre very well planned to fool unwary voters to choose the “sensible right” candidate who later admitted she had never voted Liberal or National.
Via meetings, letters, comments, etc, ad nauseam., virtually ever since her election, I’ve been pushing
for Steggall to be universally and continually referred to as the “Independent Hypocrite for Warringah”.
When, for heaven’s sake, is this factually accurate reference going to catch on ?
When Steggall was inducted as an MP she signed the left’s hypocritic oath. Shame on her.
Watermelons – never to be trusted hypocrites. All of them ranting on about green policies and climate alarmism, none of them care one iota for the planet only how their fear porn can further their corrupt and diseased Marxist agenda.
What’s Alex Dore going to do now? Should have run for Warringah NOT Hughes. BUT Libs are on the nose anyway with primary vote in free-fall. We expected Liberals to represent Liberty and they didn’t. At least if you vote for a left candidate you know that’s what you’ll get?
Alex Dore is further left than Zali and only half as honest.
She’s a disgusting hypocrite; she personifies the inner city luvvies who espouse global warming nonsense while blithely continuing to rely on fossils. This is beyond cognitive dissonance, it’s stupidity, plain and simple. But the real stupidity lies with the idiots who voted for this.
A barrister should know better.
She campaigned for Warringah as a safe pair of hands from “the sensible right”, but later admitted she had never voted for the Liberal-Coalition. She actually has a very narrow point of view focused on climate hoax (as compared to natural Earth Cycles of climate and weather) and is supported by climate hoax based business and politics people, renewable unreliable energy for example.
Her campaign, described by various observers as one of the dirtiest they can remember, Bronwyn Bishop said for example. A campaign supported by the Union Movement’s GetUp activist group, noting that the Unions control Labor and fund that party, and fund the Greens and GetUp.
And now the news that she accepted a substantial “sneaky coal cash” donation.
I trust that the voters will not reward her again.