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Gold miner gets $1m for power plant it was going to build anyway

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Election Rorts | Liberal Party | QED

Gold miner gets $1m for power plant it was going to build anyway

April 2016 – February 2019

The Coalition government’s emissions reduction fund gives $1 million to one of the world’s biggest gold miners to help pay for a fossil-fuel power plant the company would have built anyway.

South African mining company Gold Fields is receiving funding for a gas-fired station to power the Granny Smith mine in outback Western Australia. According to its annual reports, it has received $126,000 and expects to get about $1m over seven years.

To qualify to bid into the emissions reduction fund, projects are meant to deliver emissions cuts that would not have happened without public money. But a Gold Fields spokesman said it would have built the gas plant regardless of support from the fund.

Kelly O’Shanassy, the chief executive of the Australian Conservation Foundation, said the situation was beyond parody.

Read more about this scandal

PS. The Granny Smith Goldfields recently announced that they will convert their energy to solar – no talk of grants from the Government, though…

What's a rort?

Conflicts of Interest

Redirecting funding to pet hobbies; offering jobs to the boys without a proper tender process; secretly bankrolling candidates in elections; taking up private sector jobs in apparent breach of parliament’s code of ethics, the list goes on.

Deceptive Conduct

Claiming that greenhouse gas emissions have gone down when the facts clearly show otherwise; breaking the law on responding to FoI requests; reneging on promised legislation; claiming credit for legislation that doesn’t exist; accepting donations that breach rules. You get the drift of what behaviour this category captures.

Election Rorts

In the months before the last election, the Government spent hundreds of millions of dollars of Australian taxpayers’ money on grants for sports, community safety, rural development programs and more. Many of these grants were disproportionally awarded to marginal seats, with limited oversight and even less accountability.

Dubious Travel Claims

Ministerial business that just happens to coincide with a grand final or a concert; electorate business that must be conducted in prime tourist locations, or at the same time as party fundraisers. All above board, maybe, but does it really pass the pub test? Or does it just reinforce the fact that politicians take the public for mugs?

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