So what is GetUp! really up to?
They call themselves an “issue based” organisation and claim they neither make financial donations to, or receive same, from registered Australian political parties, nor do they run or fund candidates at Australian elections, yet they are certainly a political presence and were especially visible when it came to ousting Tony Abbott in favour of Zali Steggall for the seat of Warringah in the 2019 Federal Election, despite Steggall’s denial of any association with them. But GetUp!’s Louise Hislop, part of the Warringah Action Group, was sharing information on how to target Tony Abbott in the lead-up to the election and GetUp! threw a great deal of money into Steggall’s campaign. Meanwhile, Steggall was also denying that her campaign manager, Anthony Reed, was a member of the Warringah Action Group. But I don’t think I believe her on either count.
Headquartered in Sydney, GetUp! was foundered by Jeremy Heimans, and David Madden, co-founders of international activists groups Avaaz and Purpose and Win Back Respect, and Amanda Tattersall, co-founder of Labour for Refugees. Their website was launched on 1 August 2005, along with a television ad campaign. Initially they stated the aim of their campaign was to help voters to “keep the Howard Government accountable” after it won a majority of seats in the Australian Senate following the 2004 Federal Election. They also claim to be a non-profit organisation, but have an annual budget now of around $10 million, apparently funded by “thousands of small-dollar donations from everyday Australians”.
Early members of the GetUp! board were drawn from across the political spectrum and included Cate Faehrmann, Bill Shorten (who was the National Secretary of the Australian Workers Union at the time), Former Liberal Party Leader, John Hewson and entrepreneur, Evan Thornley. CEO of superannuation fund Future Super and Australian political activist, Simon Sheikh, became the National Director of GetUp! in September 2008, at the age of 22, and remained in the role until July 2012.
Paul Costing is the current National Director.
Calling itself a movement to “build a progressive Australia” GetUp!’s initial funding of $50,000 was donated by the Labour Council at the suggestion of Amanda Tattersall. The second major donation was $100,000 and came from the Australian Workers Union, after which Bill Shorten served as a GetUp! board member until 2006. But their largest donation, received in the early days of the Group’s formation, was $1.1 million from the Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union (CMFEU) in 2012. GetUp! claim they have not received further donations from any Unions since 2012, but by 2018, had raised more than $11 million in donations.
In 2015, GetUp!’s accounts indicated that four per cent of its total revenue for the year was received from large individual donations and the Group noted in its 2015 Annual Report that 11, 700 core members had donated 45 per cent of the organisation’s annual revenue. In 2017, GetUp! disclosed $217,,418 in gifts, worth much more than $13,200 (which need to be declared to the Australian Electoral Commission). Used on political expenditure over the course of the year, approximately $106,000 of this came in from overseas sources.
GetUp! campaigns very actively against politicians who refuse to toe the GetUp! line. They target conservative politicians, and for an organisation that claims to make no donations to political parties, they certainly spend up big on campaigns designed to oust the ones they don”t like. They have been tagged by some as a highly partisan, extreme left wing front that targeted the Liberal Party in the last election via handing out how-to-vote cards to specifically direct support away from Liberal candidates, due to the Liberal Party’s stance on immigration, Islamic terrorism and climate issues. They continue to maintain strong links to the Greens and the CFMEU. They still claim they are a non-profit, non-political group, but their actions and their wealth appear to indicate otherwise. Why else spend so much time and money on actions directed at driving the campaigns of candidates they prefer over those they want to see voted out? This is political activism at its most aggressive.
I don’t believe for a moment that GetUp! have Australia’s best interests at heart. I believe their vision of a “progressive Australia” is seriously flawed, as it supports their own heavy-handed doctrine and after the way they conducted their efforts to get their puppet, Zali Steggall, elected, these would be the very last people we would want having any influence on how our country is run. Like most extremist groups, they are all about pursuing their own agenda, wielding their own power, and, of course, money.
And they certainly have plenty of that.