Thank you for not coaling, Canberra

3 months ago 5

Opinion

November 14, 2025 — 5.30am

In this edition of On Background, the National Press Club’s upcoming coal love-in, News Corp’s internal staff dash cams, the A-Leagues’ broadcast race heats up and a poster fight at the ABC.

The upcoming programming at the National Press Club (NPC) is not one to miss, if you are a keen observer of the national conversation, or love coal.

On the face of it, the Club is the nation’s pre-eminent forum for journalism and public scrutiny. But behind the scenes, it’s afflicted by the same optics problems that haunt Canberra, lobbying and access for those prepared to pay.

Hugh Marks, the boss of the ABC will make his first major public address in the capital next week. That one will be televised, and relevant to all Australians who pay for the national broadcaster.

The week after, deputy opposition leader Ted O’Brien will front up to journos where he will likely field questions on the topic du jour, the Liberal party’s dumping of its net zero policy, their infighting and why they want coal to stay around longer.

But next Tuesday there’s another speaker, no doubt keen to put forward the case for fossil fuels: Michelle Manook, the chief executive of FutureCoal, the world’s only global coal lobbying body. Her session is titled: “Thank You for Not Coaling— when the world insists coal has no future, what would you do?”

London-based West Australian Michelle Manook is FutureCoal’s chief executive.

Manook, an Australian, is the public face of the organisation, which until 2023 was known as the World Coal Association.

FutureCoal’s list of members is short. In Australia, that includes the Minerals Council of Australia (the kind folk who provided Scott Morrison with his performative lump of coal in 2017, and who also lobby for BHP, Rio Tinto, Glencore, Hancock etc), Whitehaven and Bowen Coking Coal, the Queensland Resources Council and Yancoal. US giant Peabody and Japanese heavy mining manufacturer Komatsu are also members.

Oh, and Russia’s largest coal supplier, the Siberian Coal Energy Company, also known as SUEK, a company sanctioned by the United States and the European Union. The Financial University of Moscow is a research partner of FutureCoal, and the university’s vice chair (according to LinkedIn), Stephan Solzhenitsyn, is a Russian citizen residing in Moscow and until recently, CEO of SUEK.

Great! Let’s hear what they have to say.

“Where coal has been demonised, ‘clean coal’ must humanise” the debate, Manook said in a statement responding to President Trump’s clean coal vision earlier this year. “All fuels are equal,” FutureCoal says, which sounds like a joke, but isn’t.

Cash cow

Whether spruiking the virtues of coal deserves a podium, considering the overwhelming climate science stacked against it, is worth considering. Another point worth pondering is the platforming of individuals representing sectors that heavily lobby in the capital, and companies in those sectors that sponsor the Club itself.

Tickets at these events go for $120 a pop, or $95 for a member, while corporate sponsorships for the Club cost $25,000 a year, and with 77 corporate partners, that figure is close to $2 million.

The club’s president Maurice Reilly tells On Background $17,000 of this figure is ostensibly a “line of credit” for tickets to events, while the remaining $8000 is a “branding fee”.

Membership doesn’t buy anything else, including speaking access, he says.

Then there is principal partner Westpac, foundation partner Telstra, and media partners. There’s also membership fees, cash for hiring out its event space when not in use, and revenue from its bar and restaurant.

Those who stand behind the “hallowed lectern” are invited by the club because they possess an “unparalleled breadth of ideas”, according to the NPC website. The scale of potential influence is “immense” due to the live broadcast and media coverage, it adds. To be fair, most of the guests are genuinely people of public interest and influence.

With this much influence, the speakers are selected by its board, made up of some of the Gallery’s top journalists.

While Telstra and Westpac are companies Australians interact with daily, the full list of corporate members includes many major companies most Australians haven’t heard of. Mostly, they are part of the defence, pharmaceuticals, resources and infrastructure, IT and financial services industries, which lobby the government heavily.

Within the defence sector, major weapons manufacturers BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin, Leidos, Thales, SAAB, Raytheon Australia, KBR and others are listed online as NPC members.

Mike Johnson, CEO of the Australian Industry & Defence Network, a defence lobby, was a speaker at the club just one month ago.

Also in October, Chris Hedges, a Pulitzer-winning former Middle East bureau chief for the New York Times was due to speak. He didn’t, however, with the club making headlines for cancelling his lecture, citing a plethora of speakers addressing the conflict in Gaza, including last week’s address with UNICEF’s James Elder.

Sure, not everyone agrees with Hedges, but a range of perspectives can’t hurt, as they’ve made clear with the FutureCoal speech this week. There are controversial topics, like the coal debate.

Reilly defended the booking of Manook, saying she will have to face hard-hitting questions from journalists following her address. But not if they aren’t there.

Given there’s a lot going on in Parliament House currently, On Background wonders how many senior journalists will actually get to be there. That might leave board members, junior journalists, sponsors or even school kids to ask the hard-hitting questions.

The Walkley Awards and the Press Gallery Mid-Winter Ball have both moved away from fossil fuel sponsors in the past two years after courting controversy. Whether the Press Club does the same, only time will tell.

Somebody’s watching me

News Corp is in the process of fitting new cameras into its pool cars, used by its journalists when going out to chase stories. The only hitch is that those cameras will be looking inside the car, as well as outside.

The company recently informed its staff of its new “In-Vehicle Monitoring System” being fitted in its fleet, with the internal-facing cameras initially remaining switched off and not “actively” recording any data. All of this is under the guise of safety, you see.

“We understand that the introduction of camera technology may raise questions,” an email read. You don’t say?

To say the news has gone down like a lead balloon would be an understatement. A News Corp spokesperson said no decision has been made yet.

Football….anyone?

The champagne corks are popping at A-Leagues’ HQ, as On Background hears there is a second bidder in its broadcast rights race, with Disney’s sports giant ESPN officially lobbing in an offer as it continues to build out its local presence.

The A-Leagues have spent the past five years with Paramount+ and Network 10, and are currently in the process of negotiating the next set of rights, which until now, have only attracted serious interest from its incumbent partners. Last time around, there were no competitive offers either.

ESPN wants a slice of the A-League action.

But while they are considering ESPN’s offer, the league wants a free-to-air partner attached, so has been courting interest from Channel Nine, which isn’t currently there.

Former Labor Senator Stephen Conroy, who is executive chairman of the Australian Professional Leagues (the body which oversees the A-Leagues) joined Foxtel’s new board this month, which surely recuses the company from the process.

Union split

It’s crunch time at ABC HQ, with a vote expected to go ahead on Friday over management’s latest pay offer, which totals a 10 per cent pay rise over three years, with things turning nasty by the day. One of the two major unions representing ABC staff, the CPSU is expected to accept the offer, while the MEAA is expected to vote no.

But with ‘Vote No’ MEAA posters allegedly removed and replaced with glossy black “VOTE YES” posters (which staff members point are far more expensive to print) and counter claims to boot, management have threatened to lodge a breach of good faith bargaining claim with the Fair Work Commission against the union and staff.

“It’s undergraduate student politics shit,” one staffer said.