GetUp! winning cash war Illustration: Rod Clement. The Australian 12:00AM November 30, 2017 WILL GLASGOW Margin Call Editor Sydney @wmdglasgow CHRISTINE LACY Margin Call columnist Melbourne Leftist political activist organisation GetUp! has finished the financial year with almost $3 million in the bank and campaign funding commitments of $1.7m. Throw in the army of 400-odd campaigners the outfit has trained over the past year and the outlook for the next federal election is bleak for Liberal federal director Andrew Hirst, Immigration Minister Peter Dutton and his fellow GetUp!-targeted Coalition members. GetUp!’s just filed accounts reveal the increasingly powerful outfit generated $18m in donations over the past two years, which it has funnelled into its sophisticated campaigns to stymie the conservative side of Australian politics. A recent submission to the Senate’s electoral matters committee reveals that since its inception in 2005, GetUp! has gathered more than $55m in - donations. The fresh 34-page disclosure to the corporate regulator comes as the Paul Oosting-led not-for-profit battles the Australian Electoral Commission over its disclosure obligations. Tom Rogers’ AEC has argued there are grounds to suggest GetUp! should be classed as an “associated entity” of the Labor Party and the Greens, which would require it to outline the funding it receives and how it is spent. But under GetUp! chairman Phil Ireland, the group has resisted the AEC’s demands and retained Ron Merkel QC and law firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan to potentially act on its behalf. It is understood GetUp! has provided all requested material to the AEC and is awaiting a determination on its status. If the AEC designates GetUp! an associated entity, it is believed the activist group is planning to vigorously contest the decision. The AEC has twice previously investigated GetUp! — which was formed 12 years ago with $100,000 in seed funding from the then Bill Shorten-led Australian Workers Union — but determined no association. In 2005, now opposition leader Shorten was a GetUp! foundation director. The latest accounts show that GetUp! received 104,905 individual donations in the year to June 30, when it made a loss of $3255, spending all its revenue its various campaigns, including opposing the Adani coal project, supporting same-sex marriage, campaigning for the abolition of battery-caged chicken farming and the end of offshore detention of refugees. Total revenue in the year — its “most impactful to date” — was $8.4m, with $7.9m of that being donations. That was down from total revenue of $10m in the previous year, as donations swelled in the lead-up to the federal election on July 2. In contrast, millionaire Liberal leader and now Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was forced to shell out $1.75m of his own money for the Coalition cause. The audited accounts, which are said to give a “true and fair view” of the group’s operations, show that GetUp! banks with Bankwest (owned by the wicked Commonwealth Bank), as well as Mike Hirst’s Bendigo Bank. Ranks all set Of course, it’s not just GetUp!’s money that freaks out Coalition campaign strategists. It’s Paul Oosting’s swelling army of supporters. The report also provides insight into GetUp!’s decentralised “people power” strategy. In the year, its organising platoon of 12 full-time staff, plus a battalion of 100 volunteers, conducted a series of mass training events to teach a brigade of 400 volunteers how to conduct action groups in their local communities. GetUp! last year spent $3.6m on salaries to pay its staff of about 60. Among these are four full-time software developers to design “cutting-edge” apps and software platforms to drive engagement in the community. These apps include Kooragang, a tool “for running massive decentralised calling campaigns staffed by volunteers”, and Turf, “a door-knocking walk list mapping tool” to assist campaigning volunteers slogging the pavement. Elections have turned on smaller things. GetUp! is also a sizeable advertiser, last year paying more than $500,000 on advertising and promotion. That was down from $1.1m the previous year, which included the marathon election. And the outfit says it is focused on developing its own media channels to communicate with volunteers and voters directly to fulfil its key objectives: to “hold power to account” and “campaign for a more progressive Australia”. Legal showdown Meanwhile as the millions flood into the coffers of the Labor-and-Greens- aligned GetUp!, president Michael Kroger’s Victorian Liberal Party is just beginning its legal fight with its major donor, the Cormack Foundation. On Friday, Justice Jonathan Beach will hear the first case management of the Liberal family feud, which Kroger has taken into the Federal Court in Melbourne. The Charles Goode-chaired Cormack Foundation — which over the past 30 years has donated more than $60m to the Liberals — had argued that compulsory arbitration would be a quicker, more private, more gentlemanly way to resolve the dispute over the ownership of the $70m fund. Michael Kroger. Picture: Stuart McEvoy. But when his arbitration timeline wasn’t followed, the president last week launched the ownership dispute into the Federal Court. Kroger claimed in an email to Liberal Party members last week that a speedy resolution was still possible. “The Federal Court will now order a mediation at an early opportunity which is one of the immediate advantages of commencing proceedings,” Kroger wrote. We’ll find out soon if, after their no-holds-barred recent history with Kroger, the Cormack crew are in any mood for compromise. If not, this legal battle might rage on well past Daniel Andrews’ showdown with Matthew Guy at the Victorian state election next November. Tony and Barack It’s one of former ambassador Kim Beazle y’s favourite White House stories: the time Tony Abbott met Barack Obama in the Oval Office. “I was deeply worried,” Beazley told an audience gathered for a superannuation conference in Sydney yesterday. “It didn’t matter if it was social policy, or environmental policy, whatever it was, Tony Abbott had a totally different view to Barack Obama.” Beazley diligently prepared briefing notes for the visiting PM, but Abbott wasn’t interested. “It’s all bullshit. Don’t worry about it. I’m not going to use any of this stuff,” Beazley recalled Abbott saying. So in they went to the Oval Office to find Obama, vice-president Joe Biden, secretary of defence Chuck Hagel, secretary of state John Kerry and national security adviser Susan Rice. “I thought, ‘My god we are in for a belting’.” Obama opened: “Courteous, erudite, pointed,” Beazley recalled, dreamily. Then the president handed over to Abbott. Perhaps you might like to say something? “Well, Mr President, I don’t actually have a list of complaints,” Beazley recalled Abbott opening. “I know most people who come to this office have a list of complaints. I’ve got nothing to complain about to you. Others come with a list of things that they want from you. We don’t want anything from you.” Tony Abbott and Barack Obama Beazley recalled Abbott continuing: “But I want to say one thing. I think you’re about to get into a lot of trouble in the Middle East. And when you do, I want you to understand this. We are going to be with you and we are going to be with you in numbers.” Our former ambassador still remembers a sharp intake of breath along the line of Americans. Australia’s 28th prime minister certainly made an impact. Beazley said for months after that encounter, it was reported back to him that whenever Obama was frustrated by his various opponents, domestic or international, he would say: “We need more Tony Abbotts.” .