Simon Holmes à Court lit a fire for independents who say he holds no sway

Australia Broadcast Center

29-04-2025

As a child, Simon Holmes à Court loved to burn things.
He and his little brother were "big pyromaniacs" who would start grassfires with magnifying glasses, and fashion flamethrowers from a hose and barbecue gas cylinders, he told his mother's biographer.
"We lit everything."
Decades later, the 52-year-old has ignited a conflagration scorching Australia's political duopoly.
His brainchild, Climate 200, a multimillion-dollar fundraising outfit that began with all the hallmarks of a trolling exercise of the Liberal Party, helped 10 independents win seats in the last federal parliament.
Liberal opponents paint it as a smoke-and-mirrors attempt to infiltrate politics and lead Australia down a path to US-style big-dollar democracy.
But to supporters, it's a cleansing fire bringing accountability, climate change and gender equity to the forefront of politics, sweeping away decrepit party systems.
And with potential for a minority government to be elected this time around, Climate 200 is backing the biggest array yet of independent candidates who could hold the balance of power.
As founder of Climate 200, Simon Holmes à Court has helped reshape the make-up of federal parliament.
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So-called teal candidates argue that neither Holmes à Court nor Climate 200 dictate policy, or which party they could help form government.
But the scenario begs questions about what kind of power Holmes à Court — who declined an interview with the ABC — could wield as the architect of the most disruptive force in Australian politics.
From heir to Silicon Valley engineer
A scion of British nobility, Holmes à Court grew up in the glare of publicity surrounding his father Robert, a 1980s corporate raider who became Australia's first billionaire.
The third of four children, Simon was seen as practical and apt to go his own way.
Boarding at the elite Geelong Grammar School, he received a $3-a-week allowance, and was angered by the violent bullying culture he experienced — a fellow boarder whipped him with a bicycle tyre tube tied to a broomstick.
He was 18 when his father died in 1990, no longer a billionaire after losing big in a stockmarket crash.
Simon Holmes à Court was 18 when his father, Robert, a one-time billionaire, pictured with his wife Janet, died.
A share of the family fortune set Holmes à Court up for a life of wealth and philanthropy, albeit without the trappings of a superyacht-rich mogul.
The reported value of the sibling stakes in the family conglomerate before it was split up was about $35 million each.
The year he lost his father, Holmes à Court was studying arts/law at the University of Western Australia, and running his first business selling hardware for Apple Macintosh computers.
He dropped out of university in 1991 and worked for a non-profit international student organisation, then as a systems engineer for a family-owned building company in Malaysia from 1993.
He studied cognitive and computer science at US Ivy League school Dartmouth College, graduating near the top of his class in 1997.
He moved to San Francisco and worked for Silicon Valley companies during the dotcom boom, including on a computer-based gaming "console" that Sony acquired to kill off a competitor to its PlayStation.
On his return to Australia in 2001, Holmes à Court oversaw family cattle stations in the Northern Territory.
In 2003, he co-founded a start-up called Observant, which sold remote monitoring technology for livestock and crops, and eventually unloaded its assets for about $2.5 million plus performance bonuses.
'Not just a wealthy person trying to hide away'
An ABC estimate, based on latest finance regulatory records of fund raisings, suggests Holmes à Court's small stakes in some unlisted Australian finance and renewable-energy-linked companies could be worth less than $10 million.
That includes about a $1.1 million stake in solar equipment supplier 5B Holdings.
That's just a part of his wealth, which includes listed company shares and property.
His home on a massive block in the inner Melbourne suburb of Hawthorn cost $2.9 million almost 20 years ago.
He also owns a rural property near Daylesford in central Victoria, which led to another formative experience — helping to set up
It sprang from an encounter with Danish "hippie" Per Bernard, who was spreading the word about how such projects without big business involvement were common in his home country.
Simon Holmes à Court, pictured top right, and Per Bernard, left in the brown vest, with fellow members of the Hepburn wind farm co-operative in 2011.
"He was obviously touched by what was happening, and he continued to come … eventually he introduced himself, and [his name] didn't mean anything to me, I'm from Europe," Bernard says.
"But I understood he had a deep interest in actually becoming involved in the whole process.
"Partly because of Simon's great experience in financial matters — which I have zero experience in — he then led the co-operative through the fundraising period, and was obviously successful."
Bernard says Holmes à Court can "see the turbine from his house".
"He wasn't just a wealthy person trying to hide away up in the hill. He became part of the community," he says.
"It's one thing to be told we need renewable energy, another thing to get communities on board and take action and feel that they're part of it.
"I think partly, in many ways, that's possibly what inspired Simon."
From trolling to political insurgency
By 2018, Holmes à Court was a full-blown energy nerd but still a political novice.
He was also a donor to Josh Frydenberg through membership of the federal energy minister's fundraising vehicle Kooyong 200.
Their relationship set off a chain reaction that Liberal Party figures still rue.
Holmes à Court was in China visiting a wind factory when he learned
Around the same time, Holmes à Court became the accidental spearhead for a campaign to get children out of immigration detention in Nauru.
His cheeky Twitter post offering to pay for a "Kids off Nauru" campaign advertisement to be beamed onto the Sydney Opera House went viral.
Simon Holmes à Court and Climate 200 backed the campaign of independent Monique Ryan after falling out with Liberal incumbent Josh Frydenberg.
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Holmes à Court received a phone call welcoming him to the campaign and he ended up raising $120,000.
In 2019, he was invited to Canberra to witness the passage of the Medevac bill despite opposition from the Morrison government, seeing firsthand how independents could rock political incumbents.
Around this time, he was kicked out of a Frydenberg campaign event at a Melbourne polo club, which left him standing with a glass of wine on the footpath — the catalyst for him becoming a full-blown political provocateur.
He set up a Climate 200 website mimicking the format of Frydenberg's Kooyong 200.
The joke became a deadly serious political insurgency that unseated Frydenberg — and helped elect more independents to parliament in 2022 than in any comparable democracy, according to the Australia Institute.
War chests for independents
Photo shows
A compilation photo of Allegra Spender, Alex Dyson, Kate Chaney and Zoe Daniel.
Political funding body Climate 200 is bankrolling up to 75 per cent of campaign costs for several independent candidates this election.
Climate 200 styles itself as a financial backer and service provider to independents who already have their own campaign teams, fundraising and a critical mass of community support.
Candidates applying online for the group's backing literally tick three boxes: support for action on climate change, gender equity and integrity.
There's no grilling over policy specifics.
Campaigns can then apply through an online portal for Climate 200 funding for staff and resources like electioneering materials and office rents.
Climate 200 has a donations committee that decides — and not every request is met in full.
The group channels the bulk of resources towards the most bankable prospects, seats where an incumbent major party MP is in what Holmes à Court has called "the danger zone" — a primary vote below 43 per cent.
Alex Dyson, pictured left on the campaign trail in Colac this month with doctor Rob Grenfell, has received more Climate 200 funding as his prospects at the ballot box have improved.
Alex Dyson, a former Triple J host running as an independent in the regional Victorian seat of Wannon, is seeing the fruits of making inroads in two previous tilts.
With Climate 200 tipping in about half of Dyson's $132,000 in donations in 2022, he whittled Liberal MP Dan Tehan's primary vote down to 44 per cent.
This time around Climate 200 has so far donated $485,000.
A collection of wealthy donors outside Wannon, including Rupert Murdoch's niece Eve Kantor and her partner, have poured in another $295,000.
A campaign spokesman for Tehan said that Dyson "claims to be independent but the truth is 80 per cent of his funding comes from outside Wannon; most of it from Sydney millionaires, and over $450,000 from Climate 200".
"These aren't local farmers, tradies or community groups; they're corporate investors and political insiders with their own agenda."
Dyson, who unlike Tehan discloses donors on his website in near real-time, says the Liberals are "throwing the kitchen sink at whatever attack line that they can find".
"I've tried to ensure that it's matching local donations, and we've had 1,500 local donors plus now," he says.
He says this included a woman who "donated $500 and she said, 'I've donated you money so you're not influenced by money'".
Backing candidates 'most likely to succeed'
There's no question that Climate 200's formidable fundraising machine delivers a war chest that independents could only dream of raising on their own.
Atlassian co-founder Scott Farquhar has been a major donor to Climate 200.
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Holmes à Court has said Climate 200 is still David to the major parties' Goliath, which has raised half a billion dollars for campaigns since 2019.
But almost $24 million for Climate 200 in that time is nothing to sniff at, with big donors including IT billionaires Scott Farquhar and Mike Cannon-Brookes.
Holmes à Court himself has contributed about 2 per cent — but he and his networks play a key role bringing in other money.
The group attracted the biggest political donor in Australia last financial year, share trader Rob Keldoulis, who gave $1.1 million.
He gave $50,000 to Alex Dyson's campaign in December.
"I joined a briefing that Simon held about three or four months before the last election … I was initially skeptical because, you know, money and politics only ever means you want something in return," Keldoulis says.
He says there's rightly public cynicism about donors seeking "a seat at the table [but] not only don't I have a seat but there isn't even a table to have at with the independents, that's the whole point".
"You donate because you want independent candidates free of influence and you donate because you want a candidate who can represent the views of the electorate, not a party position or a lobby group or an influential donor."
Another major donor is Fairground, a philanthropic foundation with links to the Barlow family, which grew wealthy from a share of the 7-11 convenience store chain.
Fairground has promised to match $1 million in what Climate 200 calls "grassroots donations".
Fairground chief executive Deb Barlow says she's met the Climate 200 founder once but "I do not know Simon personally … I do not know any candidates or [am I] interested in influencing any candidates".
"We contacted Climate 200 because of the inaction of the major parties on climate change," she says.
"They spend too much time fighting with each other and not enough developing the best policies to serve our communities in face of the undeniable climate crisis.
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We went via Climate 200 rather than direct funding to the independents because Climate 200 have collected the data and research as to which candidates are most likely to be successful.
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Teal MPs, from left, Allegra Spender, Monique Ryan, Sophie Scamps, Kylea Tink, Kate Chaney, Zali Steggall speaking at Parliament House.
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Arming candidates with research
One of the ways Climate 200 empowers independent candidates is through voter research they couldn't otherwise afford.
Erchana Murray-Bartlett, who is running as an independent in the Gold Coast seat of McPherson, says she changed the way she talked to voters about nuclear energy after receiving data showing 60 per cent of the electorate supported it.
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So rather than me going, I'm anti-nuclear — you know, that would be detrimental to my strategy in my messaging around the energy transition — it was like, OK, how can we neutralise and educate and change the conversation away from, is nuclear good or bad, [to is it] cost effective?
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Independent candidate Erchana Murray-Bartlett says voter research from Climate 200 influenced her public discussion of nuclear energy.
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She's also seen data showing the opposition leader is "relatively popular so I tend to avoid talking about Peter Dutton as a figure and more about the game — the Liberal Party versus Labor policy — and what's on the table".
These voter attitudes were picked up through text message polling.
Climate 200 has commissioned so much research that its pollsters decided to develop an artificial intelligence chatbot for future surveys.
Influencing parliament's makeup but 'no evidence' of calling shots
Holmes à Court has repeatedly faced questions about whether he would pull strings from the shadows on policy, or any decisions in Canberra that would benefit his own financial interests in renewable energy.
He's repeatedly insisted Climate 200 support comes with "no strings attached" and he never discusses policy with independents.
And he's been repeatedly forced to deny a conflict of interest, arguing that only a tiny sliver of his investments are based on renewable energy.
The ABC has been told that his biggest investments by far are in global technology stocks such as Apple and Amazon; he also owns shares in listed mining companies — half of them in gold and critical minerals and none of them exclusively involved in fossil fuels.
Simon Holmes à Court's contributions to Climate 200 and independents have been eclipsed by other wealthy donors persuaded by his arguments.
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Evan Moorhead, a lobbyist and former Queensland Labor state secretary, says there is "really no evidence that Holmes à Court or Climate 200 have been directing politicians in the term of the last parliament".
"They haven't built the influence of a new political party, but that was never their aim. Judged upon their initial target of building a parliament that supports action on climate change, you've got to say they've been successful," he says.
Victorian Liberal senator James Paterson accuses Climate 200 of importing "American-style big money politics to Australia [with] very wealthy people who provide the overall majority of their funding".
He says this means so-called community independents are "hand-picked by a tiny group of very wealthy people who want to influence Australian politics".
Climate 200 doesn't have to direct independents on policies because they "already have signed up to the agenda", he says.
Independent MP Allegra Spender said more investment needed to go into mental health prevention.
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Last month, at the National Press Club, Holmes à Court insisted he would have no role in conversations about minority government, and independents would have to answer to their voters "on an electorate-by-electorate basis".
"It's a matter for those who are elected on the day," he said.
His account of exerting no influence on the teal independents was tested by an Australian Financial Review report last year.
It suggested he had asked Wentworth MP Allegra Spender to lobby the paper to drop him from its "covert power list".
Holmes à Court said last month the story had a "cute hook" but was "false" and he'd sought a retraction.
"I can say categorically, I have never asked any MP to ask a question of anything from anyone," he said.
Independents rebuff suggestions they dance to Climate 200's tune.
Independent candidate Zoe Daniel celebrates her victory in the once-safe Liberal seat of Goldstein in Melbourne's inner-south-east on May 21, 2022.
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Goldstein MP Zoe Daniel says it "doesn't write my policies, influence my decisions, or set my agenda".
"No one from Climate 200, including Simon Holmes à Court, has ever contacted me about policy — and if they did, they'd get the same answer I give anyone: I don't do deals," she says.
Dyson says he's met Holmes à Court "a few times" and the Climate 200 convener could never be a powerbroker "if the other independents are anything like me".
"Like, just say no," he says.
"I would sooner give up the role than be railroaded into something that doesn't benefit the people of Wannon — and that's a superpower".
If voters this weekend deny major parties an outright victory, and teals become powerbrokers in a hung parliament, all eyes will be on how they vote.
Critics will watch for any sign of behaviour they've accused the major parties of — yielding to the interests of those who helped put them there.
Senator Paterson says Holmes à Court will be "obviously a very powerful figure".
"I'm not one of these conspiracy theorists who believes that donors direct policy outcomes, and political parties just represent the interests of their donors," he says.
"But that hasn't been the teal argument … they believe that [major party] donors do direct political outcomes and do drive policy outcomes.
"So I just think it deserves scrutiny, given the tests that they've set for themselves."