Coal Australia maintains it was not posing as a grassroots organisation to push a particular message - often described as astroturfing - by providing $3.68 million to Australians for Prosperity.
The funding injection made it the majority financial backer of the campaign group that ran attack ads against Greens, Labor and teal independent candidates at the federal election in 2025.
Coal Australia chief executive Stuart Bocking said the industry group was "not engaged in astroturfing" and there were logistical reasons for giving money to groups such as Australians for Prosperity.
"One of those would be in terms of the sheer campaigning logistics, we are an industry body," Mr Bocking said during a federal parliamentary hearing into information integrity on climate change and energy.
"Presumably we do it for the same reason why Climate 200 and other groups use significant third parties," he added, referring to a progressive funding body for independent candidates.
Greens Senator Peter Whish-Wilson, chair of the inquiry committee, asked why the industry body was not upfront about the financial backing and why the information only came to light through disclosures to the Australian Electoral Commission.
"Australians didn't find out until more than six months after the election that you were funding a significant attack campaign at an election against the Greens, Labor and teal independents," Senator Whish-Wilson said.
"Do you think that's fair, that Australians wouldn't know where that funding was coming from?"
Mr Bocking said the industry group had satisfied all disclosure requirements on election campaign backing.
The turbulent information environment influencing the climate and energy debate in Australia has been described by multiple witnesses during hearings that continued in Canberra on Monday.
University of Technology Sydney senior lecturer Jeremy Walker said Australians had been exposed to professionally produced disinformation campaigns secretly funded by fossil fuel interests for decades.
Dr Walker said the Atlas Network, a global network of more than 600 "ostensibly independent nonprofit economics research institutes", had long been taking money from fossil fuel companies and spreading anti-climate and anti-renewables messaging on their behalf, including in Australia.
"Their messaging shapes elections, destabilises governments, obstructs, represses and cancels investment in the replacement of fossil energy," said Dr Walker, of the university's Climate Society and Environment Research Centre.
Australian think tanks such as the Institute of Public Affairs and the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS) could be linked to the Atlas Network, he said on Monday.
In a submission to the same inquiry, the CIS said its research was fully independent and rejected the claim its work was influenced or directed by the Atlas Network or any external body.
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