There’s a reason political commentators refer to Australia’s “climate wars”. Every time a climate policy is put on the table, supporters and opponents come out in force and duke it out.

Last year, debates over Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions target led to a heated contest between various groups such as the Climate Council — arguing for strong action — and others such as the Business Council of Australia, which commissioned modelling to highlight the economic costs of a strong target.

This was not a one-off. Since at least the 1990s, emissions-intensive industries such as coal and gas and their lobby groups have had an outsized influence on climate policy. This includes groups such as the Minerals Council of Australia, which represents BHP, Rio Tinto and Whitehaven Coal, and Australian Energy Producers, which lobbies on behalf of BP, Shell and Woodside, among others.

Until now, we did not have a good understanding of who mobilises on climate policy in Australia, what side of the issue they fall on, and in which arenas they mobilise. In our new research, we found a core set of only 20 groups dominating climate policy debate in Australia, including gas corporations, industry lobby groups, environmental NGOs, and think tanks.

To find out which groups are most influential, we collected data on all organisations active on climate policy in Australia between 2017 and 2022. This included examining the number of groups as well as their volume........

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