Tasmanian MP Andrew Wilkie says the federal government has done little to ensure the quality of Australia's coal exports since a Newcastle laboratory was implicated in a fake testing scandal four years ago.
Mr Wilkie tabled in Parliament on Monday documents he said contained evidence of fraud in the coal export industry.
"Alarmingly, the previous Coalition government was aware of these allegations but buried them," he said.
"And I'm concerned that the current government's response is also underwhelming."
The independent MP told Parliament in 2022 that employees at Hunter mine operators Peabody and Glencore, testing companies ALS and SGS, Macquarie Bank and financial services firm Ernst&Young were "knowingly involved" in "widespread fraud" to inflate the quality and value of coal shipments.
"In essence, coal companies operating in Australia are using fraudulent quality reports for their exports and paying bribes to representatives of their overseas customers to keep the whole scam secret," he said at the time.
ALS called in the police in 2020 to investigate its Mayfield laboratory after independent forensic investigator McGrathNicol found approximately 45 to 50 per cent of the company's coal tests were "manually amended" to inflate the coal's apparent quality.
ALS suspended four senior staff, including three based in Newcastle, after the fake tests came to light. All four left the company soon after.
A Newcastle Herald report in 2020 quoted industry sources saying falsified test results were an "open secret" in the Hunter coal sector.
Geneva-based SGS denied in 2020 that it had been involved in falsifying tests after being accused of doing so in a court case brought by a former manager at Queensland miner TerraCom.
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission investigated ALS but did not take action.
The issue re-emerged on Friday when EY's Oceania head of risk management, Leigh Walker, told a senate inquiry into the government's use of consultants that there was no evidence to substantiate allegations it had turned a blind eye to falsified test results while auditing Peabody from 2003 to 2008.
Ms Walker said EY had not carried out its own investigation into the matter but had relied on statements by ALS and Peabody that testing had not falsified the stated quality of the mining company's coal.
Mr Wilkie tabled a statutory declaration on Monday by a former Peabody executive who alleged he had "regularly discussed" with EY auditors the issue of inflated test results.
"In our conversations, I asked how EY could sign off on Peabody's financial statements when they knew that they were artificially inflated by the fraudulent coal quality tests," the executive's statement said.
"The impact of the altered coal quality reports on the value of Peabody's assets would have been substantial.
"Had it been known that the coal coming from these assets was lower-quality, Peabody would have written down their value on publicly available financial statements."
Mr Wilkie said he "applauded" the senate finance and public administration references committee for pursuing EY over the scandal.
"The coal testing laboratory ALS has admitted that about half the quality certificates it issued had been 'manually amended without justification' for almost 13 years," he said.
"That's a polite way of saying they faked the results.
"Indeed, documents in my possession do show substandard preliminary test results and then false, contractually compliant results in final reports."
