Oonagh ReidyThe ACCC has began proceedings against Global Green Plan Ltd for alleged contempt of court.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission alleges that Global Green Plan, a company that is currently working with schools in Victoria and has links with Rupert Murdoch’s mother Dame Elizabeth, breached Federal Court orders to purchase over 4,000 Renewable Energy Certificates.
In 2009, the eco company acknowledged that it contravened the Trade Practices Act when it failed to purchase enough RECS to cover the sales made to consumers through its GreenPower business ‘GreenSwitch’.
However, Global Green, who was to purchase 4,137 renewable certs by November last, failed to do so despite court orders.
The Commission has now been forced to institute “proceedings in the Federal Court for breach of the undertaking,” and Justice Bennett has now ordered the company to purchase the RECS, it said in a statement today.
Dame Elizabeth Murdoch, the mother of News Limited Boss Rupert Murdoch, last year told US President Obama of a Global Green Plan Foundation project of which she is patron, which is developing an environmentally focused Victorian school curriculum warning of the dangers of climate change.
The curriculum, aimed at middle-years students, was launched last year at Williamstown High School in Melbourne, where Dame Elizabeth was described by Global Green Plan foundation president Hal Hewett as “the world’s only centenarian climate change campaigner”.
A hearing has been set for the Sydney Federal Court for 21 April 2011.