Government’s letter to conservation groups has ominous implications.

The environment department has recently begun sending letters to conservation groups registered as eligible for tax deductible donations, as they do every year. But this year the correspondence is different, in a disturbing way.

 Lock the Gate is one of the environmental groups that
has been told to provide a breakdown of its expenditure. 

In the past the groups, which include all the big names such as the Australian Conservation Society, The Wilderness Society, Lock the Gate, Greenpeace etc, as well as small local conservation organisations, were simply asked to reveal the total expenditure from their public fund. This year they have also been asked to break down their expenditure into the amounts spent on “on ground environmental remediation”, “campaign and advocacy”, “research” and other administration.

It sounds like a boring technicality but it seems to represent a significant victory in the long-running campaign by the mining industry and conservative politicians to hobble advocacy for the environment.

Read Lenore Taylor’s story on The Guardian - “Government’s letter to conservation groups has ominous implications.”