The Advance conference: platforming hate groups and unsavoury international guests

Another right-wing conference is on our calendar. This one is titled "Evolve: because being right isn't enough."

There is another right-wing conference taking place in Australia soon: this one is being held by Advance Australia on the 21st-22nd of February in Darling Harbour.

Advance itself functions as an astroturf (fake grass roots) organisation strongly connected to the Atlas Network. It made itself notorious leading opposition to the Voice to Parliament referendum. It has been found guilty of spreading “false information”.

Advance was co-founded by climate “contrarian” Maurice Newman, who has been a Mont Pelerin Society (MPS) member since 1976. He was the on the inaugural board of the Atlas partner, the Centre for Independent Studies.

The MPS is considered the architecture of neoliberalism and the “steering committee” of the Atlas Network. History professor Quinn Slobodian’s research, in Hayek’s Bastards, reveals that far right faux-populist politics is integral to the movement:

There are several Atlas Network partner affiliates speaking at this conference, representing both the CIS and the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA): Tony Abbott (IPA Distinguished Fellow, ARC board member), Jacinta Nampijinpa Price (CIS, ARC board), Daniel Wild (IPA Deputy Executive Director), John Roskam (former executive director of the IPA, now Senior Fellow) and Mia Schlicht (IPA Research Fellow).

Tony Abbott is an advisor to Advance. Simon Fenwick (IPA Non-Executive Director) is a major donor to the body. Gina Rinehart, the only recent publicly known IPA donor and an Honorary Life Member, gave $895,000 to Advance in the last year. Another sizeable donor is Sam Kennard, CIS board member.

Michael West Media also found five donors with links to the Plymouth Brethren.

Anthony Klan reported that “antisemitism” envoy Jillian Segal’s family vehicle had been one of the major donors to Advance. One of the founders of Advance is David Adler. The vanity project he established, the Australian Jewish Association, has been rejected by other Jewish associations as a peak body. Jeremy Liebler, for example, speaking for AIJAC, said “They do not communicate what, in any sense of the term, can be regarded as Jewish values…Some of the things that Adler has said are frankly nothing short of horrific.” ECAJ, of which Segal had been president, described Adler’s comments as “wrong, offensive and bigoted”. Michael West Media has been tracking Advance’s links to Zionist front groups targeting Green and independent electoral candidates.

Catholic Bishop Tony Percy is delivering the prayer at the first day’s dinner.

Two members of the Liberal Party’s insurgent wing are speaking: Alex Antic and Moira Deeming.

Speaker Stephen Doyle is represented as Campaign Director and Strategy Advisor to Advance. The firm of which he is managing director “The Whitestone Group” is described as a “political and social issues campaign agency”. Whitestone Strategic was co-founded by David Hutt of the Australian Christian Lobby: that body has been described as a hate group by the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism. Whitestone is paid from the public purse for its work for far-right politicians notably those associated with the (Christian Nationalist) Alliance for Responsible Citizenship Advisory Board including Andrew Hastie.

Julian Martin of BrandCentral is presenting his expertise on the use of data and research for campaigning.

There are three international guests who deserve attention.

The Sydney Morning Herald has covered the American conspiracy promoter Joel Gilbert who is speaking against “judicial activism.”

Dr Bradley Thayer is representing the American Freedom Alliance (AFA). This body is one of those founded and/or supported by Aubrey and Joyce Chernick through their Fairbrook Foundation. Fairbrook was listed in the top 7 or 8 foundations pouring millions into the Islamophobia network in two studies conducted by the Center for American Progress. (Other donors on that list are also key dark money contributors to the Atlas Network.) Fairbrook has funded illegal settler groups in Israel’s West Bank.

The Southern Poverty Law Center lists the AFA as a hate group. In one 2017 conference, for example, the AFA held a conference described thus:

Content warning: the rest of the description is much grimmer.

The following year’s event targeted immigrants more broadly.

In 2026, their Instagram account boasts of hosting far right Dutch politician Geert Wilders at a co-branded event with Steve Bannon’s War Room media organisation. Wilders spoke on “Defending the West Against Islamization.” One image of Steve Bannon at the event features: “We’re going to tell them, take your Sharia Law and shove it.” Another clip of a “fellow” of the body features the text: “Islam is a demographic and immigration time bomb”.

One of Thayer’s specialties is terrorism, but the event program suggests his presentation will focus on another: containing the CCP. This conversation hosted by the Atlas Network Hudson Institute illustrates his thinking. Fairbrook is a Hudson Institute donor.

AFA also promotes climate disinformation, flat earth and other conspiracies including, like Joel Gilbert, targeting Barack Obama.

The third international guest is Benjamin Harnwell representing Steve Bannon’s War Room as its international editor. Bannon’s War Room has been a substantial driver of the radicalising of the MAGA sphere. Bannon has also spent decades working to radicalise the Right across Europe. Jeffrey Epstein has recently been revealed to have a role in Bannon’s Movement. In an email to Epstein, Bannon described his goal as a “‘reverse Alabama’ — “Populist/Nationalist first; Conservative Christians (catholic/evangelical) next”.

Harnwell’s involvement in that story is a bizarre one. Harnwell founded the Institute for Human Dignity (or Dignitatis Humanae Institute), an extreme Catholic organisation where Cardinal Burke was president of the board of advisors. The “institute” was central to Bannon and Harnwell’s plan to stage a school in a monastery near Rome, with Bannon drafting its curriculum. The plan was a “defence of Christendom” and Harnwell referred to it as the “gladiator school”. Politico summarised: “The proposed academy’s curriculum — a cocktail of libertarianism and conservative Catholicism — had planned to include courses on “Cultural Marxism,” “The Church as an Early Business Enterprise” and Islam, and aimed to provide the world’s future populist politicians and influencers with the rhetorical skills needed to challenge liberal worldviews.”

From Reuters.

Harnwell’s Advance presentation is titled: “The Gladiator School: Fighting to defend the West”.

The Advance conference is an odd collection of influences, with a focus on the methods they think will help them transform the Australian civic discourse. The war against climate action is not forgotten with the IPA’s Mia Schlicht targeting Net Zero. Clearly the “race suicide” or cultural suicide panic of the far right is to be dominant. Tony Abbott’s speech is titled: “Mass immigration across the Anglosphere must cease”.

Australians must challenge the government to tackle people representing hate groups of all kinds, not just antisemitic. The presence of an international hate group and conspiracists at an Australian conference must be addressed. Is it time to label Advance a hate group and act accordingly?

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Note: Clive Palmer rejects the claim that Bannon was advising him on Australian political messaging.