🎪 Fossil fuels, footy players and floods

What do you get when you mix together fossil fuel sponsors, politicians, News Corp, and Australia’s richest woman — all in a bush town near you?

Presenting The Bush Summit. 

The Bush Summit was started in 2019 by News Corp, who hosted the event in Dubbo, NSW, to spotlight regional issues.

Now it’s a full production — with politicians from the PM to the Premiers, Opposition leaders, and a few footy or cricket players chucked in for good measure. Because we’re in Australia, after all. 

📍 Where’s it happening?

If you live in one of these six towns, it’s coming to you in 2025:

  • Broome, WA

  • Mount Gambier, SA

  • Toowoomba, QLD

  • Wagga Wagga, NSW

  • Ballarat, VIC

  • Darwin, NT

💼 Who’s paying for it?

Since going national in 2023, the summit’s been backed by a who’s who of corporate Australia.

  • Woolworths — who, alongside Coles, have been slammed for squeezing farmers with their power to set sale prices.

  • Qantas — whose regional flight prices could fund a small nation.

  • Clubs NSW — yep, the group that reps pokies and pubs.

  • Ampol — the petrol giant.

And in 2023? Santos. The billion-dollar gas company that, in its own reporting, outlines how it paid no corporate tax in Australia in 2022 despite making a net profit here.

Oh — and earlier this year, they pled guilty to a WA oil spill that killed dolphins and sea life. Fine? Just $10,000.

🌍 Talking disaster solutions… with fossil fuels?

This year, News Corp says the summit will focus on “comprehensive responses to natural disasters.” Great! But also…really?

Because the companies behind these summits — particularly fossil fuel players — are also making those disasters worse.

That’s according to former CSIRO climate scientist David Karoly, who put it like this:

“Fossil fuel emissions are putting the weather on steroids — increasing the intensity and frequency of floods, cyclones, storms, droughts…”

Why?

  • A hotter planet = more moisture in the air → heavier rainfall events

  • A hotter atmosphere = shifting weather systems → less winter/spring rain in many parts of Australia

Only going to get worse: the grim reality of Australia's climate future

“Once-in-100-year floods” and "unprecedented disasters” now seem to be happening every few years across Australia. The easy answer? “It’s climate change.” That’s not wrong, but it’s also not the whole picture.

www.nationalaccount.com.au/p/grim-reality-of-australia-climate-future

⛏️ “Brought to you by” Australia’s richest woman.

Meanwhile, Gina Rinehart — this year’s headline sponsor through her companies Hancock Prospecting and S. Kidman — has previously used the summit to spruik her dream to “drill baby drill” and “dig baby dig”.

This year, she’s promised to speak on the bush’s big issues using “truth, facts and rationale… 20/20 vision”.

🧠 So what are we doing here?

News Corp reckons the summit will “discuss solutions to the urban–rural divide.”

But what does that actually mean?

Because regional communities do deserve a national platform. They’ve been hit hard by droughts, floods, and an ongoing sense that city politicians just don’t get them.

But if the only people with a mic are politicians and fossil fuel execs — or sponsored by them — then what are we really doing?

And hey — I’d love to be wrong.

If you’re in one of those towns, go along. Ask questions. Let us know how far you get.

Because Australians deserve better than a mining and fossil fuel-funded TED talk.

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