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Foreign millions are quietly funding Australia’s green movement — and the Sunrise Project sits at the centre of it all.

Recently, on 1 April 2026, The Australian ran a report tracking the huge funds that are making their way to “green” organisations in Australia.

The standout organisation in this green hogwash is an organisation called the Sunrise Project. The Sunrise Project is a registered Australian charity and enjoys deductible gift recipient status.

Greg Roberts wrote in the abovementioned report: “The Sunrise Project has raked in hundreds of millions of dollars in donations from cashed-up overseas financiers to spearhead the push for net zero emissions, allowing it to fill the coffers of Australian conservation groups turning a blind eye to mounting concerns about the environmental impacts of renewable energy projects.”

Roberts continued: “The Sunrise Project received almost $343.5 million in grants and donations between 2018 and 2024. Over the same period, the charity forked out more than $279 million in grants to groups and projects in Australia and overseas.”

Benefactors

One of the Sunrise Project’s beneficiaries is Friends of the Earth Australia, which has received some $26 million in donations and other income in recent years. Roberts also reported that Sunrise had made $365,000 in payments over three years to the CFMEU.

Among the foreign benefactors of the Sunrise Project in 2023 were:

• Sequoia Climate Foundation (US)
• Bloomberg Philanthropies (US)
• Zega Family Foundation (US)
• Wallace Global Fund (US)

The Sunrise Project has form. Its founder, John Hepburn, began his environmental career campaigning to stop sandmining for rare-earth minerals on North Stradbroke Island in Queensland. He was then with Friends of the Earth.

Later, in 2012, he was with Greenpeace and his name featured prominently – as one of three authors – on the cover of a document entitled Stopping the Australian Coal Export Boom. On page two of the document, it is proudly announced that: “This proposal is … made possible by the generous support of the Rockefeller Family Fund.”

Hepburn founded the Sunrise Project in that same year, 2012.

The document was the product of an alliance of environmentalist groups, among them: Beyond Zero Emissions, GetUp!, United Voice (a union affiliated to the ALP), the Pew Environment Group (a conservation group associated with the US Pew Charitable Trusts), the Nature Conservation Council of NSW, Capricornia Conservation Council, Environment Victoria, the Mineral Policy Institute, the Climate Action Network Australia (an alliance of over 75 local, state, national and international environmental groups), and the Mackay Conservation Group.

Most of these organisations are eligible to receive tax-deductible donations, as recorded on the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission website. These include: Beyond Zero Emissions, the Nature Conservation Council of NSW, Environment Victoria, the Mineral Policy Institute, and the Climate Action Network Australia.

Shut Down Coal

The anti-coal alliance had as its immediate campaign aim to prevent the development of Adani’s coal project in the Galilee Basin, near Townsville. The alliance’s campaign eventually failed, and the coal mine got approval in 2014 and began operations in 2021. It is known as the Carmichael coal mine.

The alliance’s broader aim was to shut down Australia’s coal mining industry altogether, and to ensure that fossil fuel reserves remain forever in the ground. Of course, if such reserves remain in the ground and must so remain, they are no longer “reserves”; they are just “rocks”.

Moving along to 2016. In November of that year, News Weekly reported on a Wikileaks document dump that included emails revealing American funding behind the anti-coal campaign in Australia. Among these were documents that showed that the Sunrise Project had received funding from the Sandler Foundation.

The Sandler Foundation was formed in 1991 by finance billionaires Herbert and Marion Sandler.

One of the Sunrise Project’s most overtly party-political lobbying campaigns came as the federal election approached in 2019. News Weekly reported that it funded the radical political-activist group GetUp! to the tune of $495,000 in 2018-19. This funding allowed GetUp! to target 30 Coalition-held seats at the 2019 federal election, though it only achieved one success, unseating Tony Abbott from Warringah.

Under Australia’s Foreign Influence Transparency Scheme, which came into operation in December 2018, an organisation must register certain activities if they are taken on behalf of a foreign principal; a foreign principal includes a “foreign political organisation”. Registrable activities include political lobbying. A search of the Scheme’s website gave no results for the Sunrise Project.

Whether receiving funding from foreign organisations that give a “free rein” to their recipients to act as they see fit would make the Sunrise Projects’ activities registrable under the Scheme is a pertinent question.

There has been a runaway proliferation of environmental groups. The Register of Environmental Organisations lists well over 600 of them. Entry on the list means the group has deductible gift recipient (DGR) status. The latest version of the Register searchable online is dated 11 April 2022, and is available on the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry website.

However, the Tax Office is now the responsible entity for the maintenance of the Register, but it does not publish the list as was done in the past.

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Republished with thanks to News Weekly. Image courtesy of Adobe.