Federal MP Andrew Wilkie has accused mining companies Glencore and Peabody of corruptly falsifying coal test results to boost profits.
The independent MP from Tasmania used a speech in Parliament on Monday to call for "at least" a parliamentary inquiry into the coal industry.
Mr Wilkie also accused coal companies of paying bribes to representatives of their overseas customers to ensure coal shipments were not rejected on arrival.
He said a coal industry executive had provided him with thousands of documents which "prove Australian companies have been lying for years about the quality of our coal".
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He named Glencore, which operates nine mines in the NSW Hunter region, and Peabody, which owns Wambo underground mine near Singleton also in the Hunter region, along with Anglo American, TerraCom, Macquarie bank and global accounting firm Ernst&Young among the industry players implicated in the alleged scandal.
Coal testing giant ALS called in NSW Police in 2020 to investigate its Hunter testing laboratory after revelations it had faked coal sample reports to artificially boost the quality and value of Australian exports.
The Australian Security and Investments Commission investigated ALS and decided to take no action, even though the company admitted publicly that up to half its test results had been doctored over the past 13 years.
The Newcastle Herald reported in 2020 that faking coal tests was an "open secret" in the Hunter mining industry.
ALS suspended four senior staff, including three based in Newcastle, after the false tests came to light. All four left the company soon after.
Mr Wilkie said a parliamentary inquiry might be the only way of shedding light on the industry's "shocking misconduct" after other agencies refused to act.
"The fraud is environmental vandalism and makes all the talk of net-zero emissions by 2050 a fiction," he told Parliament.
"It could also be criminal, trashing corporate reputations as well as our national reputation.
"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.
"And this has allowed them to claim for years that Australian coal is cleaner than it is in order to boost profits and prevent the rejection of shipments at their destination."
He said the misconduct covered exports to Japan, South Korea, China and India among others.
"The misconduct also includes the ALS company, which has already been forced to admit its fraudulent testing to the ASX when it conceded that, and I quote, approximately 45 to 50 per cent of the certificates of analysis were manually amended without justification," he said.
Mr Wilkie said he had evidence another testing company, SGS, also faked tests at a similar rate.
He produced an SGS report which he said showed a coal sample with a moisture content of 16.7 per cent, "which is pretty damp and won't burn well", had been changed to 15.9 per cent in the final version.
He alleged Ernst&Young were aware of the industry scams but chose to ignore them because the coal companies were "lucrative".
Mr Wilkie said the executive's allegations had already been put to the Australian Federal Police, ASIC, NSW Police, Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources and the former government but "not one authority has been willing to act".
"So this time let's ditch the game playing and go straight to an inquiry so the industry can be held accountable for its sins and so Australia can restore its reputation as an honest trading partner," he said.
"And most importantly so we can learn just how dirty the world is and how much more urgent our response to climate change must be."
Fellow crossbench MP Allegra Spender said there was a need for people to come clean about coal industry practices.
"Accounting for carbon emissions is critically important for our transition to net-zero," she said on social media.
"We've seen serious questions about the carbon credit system and now evidence that coal miners have falsified records for years."
- with Australian Associated Press
Michael Parris
Michael Parris reports on politics for the Newcastle Herald. He started at the Herald in 1994 after working in the ABC Newcastle newsroom. Michael spent much of his career as a sub-editor before moving into political reporting in 2017. He was a finalist in the Sports Australia national media awards for his stories about a male-only tennis club in Newcastle. He has covered NSW and federal elections, state and federal budgets and local politics. He has also written extensively about the COVID-19 pandemic with a special focus on data analysis and the effects of lockdowns on the Hunter community.
Michael Parris reports on politics for the Newcastle Herald. He started at the Herald in 1994 after working in the ABC Newcastle newsroom. Michael spent much of his career as a sub-editor before moving into political reporting in 2017. He was a finalist in the Sports Australia national media awards for his stories about a male-only tennis club in Newcastle. He has covered NSW and federal elections, state and federal budgets and local politics. He has also written extensively about the COVID-19 pandemic with a special focus on data analysis and the effects of lockdowns on the Hunter community.
