A Tasmanian Liberal senator has claimed the Bob Brown Foundation should be stripped of its charitable status after it used illegal activity to call for donations.
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Senator Claire Chandler this week said the group had used images on Facebook of activists chained to forestry machinery during protest action near the Mount Field National Park to call for donations.
"The Bob Brown Foundation is not a charity," she said.
"It is a vehicle for wealthy supporters to reduce the tax they pay while funding illegal invasions of workplaces.
"It is beyond the pale for Australian taxpayers to be subsidising this activity through allowing tax-deductible donations."
Senator Chandler said the Charities Act made it clear that engaging in or promoting activities that were unlawful was an illegal purpose for a charity.
If charities backed down every time they were criticised by vested interests and their political lackeys, they would be rendered ineffective.
- Bob Brown Foundation chief executive Steven Chaffer
Bob Brown Foundation chief executive Steven Chaffer said the organisation was registered as a charity to protect the environment which was all its activities sought to achieve.
"We are never going to apologise for, nor retreat from, vigorously pursuing that objective," he said.
"A charity that politely sits on its hands, ignoring the very problem it was set up to address, is failing in its obligations to its supporters and the wider community.
"Our supporters expect us to take on threats to the natural environment, wherever they arise and without fear or favour and this is precisely what our foundation does.
"If charities backed down every time they were criticised by vested interests and their political lackeys, they would be rendered ineffective which, of course, is the aim of such attacks."
An activist was arrested by police for trespass at Wednesday's protest action near the Mount Field National Park.
