Former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott has been stood down as a trade advisor by the new Labour government, DeSmog can reveal.

Abbott is a trustee of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), the UK’s leading climate science denial group, and has previously said that “climate change is probably doing good”.

He was appointed as an advisor to the government’s Board of Trade in September 2020 by Liz Truss, who was at the time serving as international trade secretary in Boris Johnson’s Conservative government. 

Labour leader Keir Starmer said at the time that he had “real concerns” about Abbott’s appointment, following criticism of the former Australian prime minister’s radical right-wing views.

Abbott served as prime minister from 2013 to 2015 before being ousted by his Liberal Party colleagues. He has likened action to combat climate change to “primitive people once killing goats to appease the volcano gods”, and is a long-standing advocate for coal power, the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel.

Abbott has called decriminalising abortion “effectively infanticide on demand”, has suggested that men “are by physiology or temperament more adapted to exercise authority or to issue commands”, and was the leader of the 2017 campaign against legalising same-sex marriage in Australia (a campaign that he lost). 

His appointment to the Board of Trade was criticised by the actor Sir Ian McKellen and the Doctor Who screenwriter Russell T. Davies, as well as Caroline Nokes, who at the time was the Tory chair of the women and equalities select committee.

“I just don’t think this is a man who should be anywhere near our Board of Trade,” Nokes said. 

Abbott joined the GWPF board in February 2023, saying that the group has “consistently injected a note of realism into the climate debate”.

The GWPF’s director Benny Peiser has claimed it is “extraordinary that anyone should think there is a climate crisis” and the group has previously suggested that carbon dioxide pollution is “a benefit to the planet”. 

The world’s foremost climate science body, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has stated that carbon dioxide “is responsible for most of global warming” since the late 19th century, which has increased the “severity and frequency of weather and climate extremes, like heat waves, heavy rains, and drought”.

The IPCC has also stated that “climate change impacts will put a disproportionate burden on low-income households and thus increase poverty levels.”

DeSmog understands that all existing advisors to the Board of Trade have been stood down by the Labour government. 

This includes arch Brexiteer Lord Daniel Hannan, and David Meller, a Tory donor whose company was awarded £160 million worth of personal protective equipment (PPE) contracts during the pandemic after being referred to the ‘VIP’ lane by his ally Michael Gove, who was at the time serving as a Cabinet Office minister.

Meller had previously donated personally to Gove’s political campaigns and agreed to serve as the finance chair of the former minister’s short-lived party leadership campaign in 2016.

The government says that “the future direction of the Board of Trade is currently being considered” and it’s understood that new advisors will be appointed in the near future.

Tony Abbott, David Meller, and Meller Designs were approached for comment.

A version of this article has been published by The Mirror