An independent federal MP has claimed in parliament that coal exporters have been lying about the quality of Australian coal to boost profits and prevent exports being rejected.
Andrew Wilkie said a coal executive had handed him "thousands of pages" of documents that allegedly revealed coal companies in Australia were using "fraudulent" quality reports for their exports and paying bribes to overseas officials to keep the matter secret.
"This has allowed them to claim, for years, that Australian coal is cleaner than it is, in order to boost profits and prevent rejection of shipments at their destination," Mr Wilkie said in parliament.
"The fraud is environmental vandalism and makes all the talk of net zero emissions by 2050 a fiction."
Mr Wilkie said the regulator, the Australian Securities and Investment Commission, had failed to act on reported fraud, even after coal-testing giant ALS referred itself to police in 2020 over claims it had faked coal certificates.
At the time, ALS said as many as half of its certificates had been "manually amended without justification", although the company said it had found no evidence of bribery.
In parliament, the Tasmanian MP named Terracom, Anglo American, Glencore, Peabody and Macquarie Bank as others involved in "shocking misconduct".
Mr Wilkie — himself a former whistleblower — only tabled two reports by coal tester SGS to parliament, however, in a press conference afterwards, he was joined by other independent MPs where he asserted the allegations by the coal executive were credible.
"I'm in no doubt that some people in those companies [are] aware of the fraud I have described," he said.
"In all of those companies I have listed, there are people involved, knowingly, in fraud."
Mr Wilkie said the SGS reports he tabled in parliament showed the companies were faking results.
He pointed to a draft report that showed higher moisture contents than in the final reported results, which would cause the coal to burn less efficiently, "representing hundreds of thousands of dollars in extra profit … and ensured it wouldn't be rejected on arrival".
Independent Sophie Scamps said that, if the coal industry could not be trusted on its lab results, it could not be trusted on "anything".
Mr Wilkie has called on the government to launch an inquiry into the claims of fraud.
The ABC has contacted SGS and ALS for comment.
