Climate 200 founder Simon Holmes à Court has paid $15,000 to secure a mystery flight with Sussan Ley – and put a climate scientist and a young climate organiser on the plane – winning a charity auction at Parliament’s Midwinter Ball.
The flight, and lunch with the opposition leader at a country pub, was offered in the auction organised by the Canberra press gallery for the annual event.
Holmes à Court, a businessman, climate activist and political benefactor, beat out at least six other bidders in the online auction. Bidding dramatically escalated in the final minutes of the auction, up from $7,000 on Wednesday afternoon.
Ley donated a flight on her Cessna-182 light aircraft, departing from Albury or Canberra, with a meal at a “classic Australian pub”. Shearing lessons are an optional inclusion.
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Holmes à Court will pay for the prize personally, and plans to give the tickets to a climate scientist and Katya Zheluk, an 18-year-old Climate 200 outreach organiser.
Climate 200 said Holmes à Court wanted to donate to the charities receiving support from the auction, and give the Liberal leader “some much needed exposure to the demographic who are abandoning Liberals at the ballot box: younger Australians”.
Zheluk and her fellow passenger, who is still to be nominated, are expected to discuss issues including climate change, integrity and equality during the flight with Ley.
The date of the flight is still to be confirmed.
Zheluk’s home town of Blackheath, in the New South Wales Blue Mountains, burned during the black Summer bushfires. She plans to study politics, philosophy and economics at university from 2026.
She welcomed the opportunity to talk to Ley “over a cold Australian lager”.
“The Coalition faces a credibility crisis on climate, one that Ley has helped create through years of policy obstruction, distraction and delay, and is now poised to deepen by potentially abandoning net zero altogether,” she said.
“If the leader of the opposition genuinely believes her party needs to shift rather than simply rebrand the same failed approach, then she needs to hear directly from young Australians, like me, whose futures she’s been willing to gamble with for political expediency.”
Anthony Albanese attracted $13,232 in the auction, with his offer of a game of tennis at his official Canberra residence, The Lodge.
Other prizes in the auction, which raised a total of $370,000, included breakfast with the treasurer, Jim Chalmers, and the finance minister, Katy Gallagher, and Qantas business class return air fares for two people, to either London or Los Angeles.
ACT independent senator David Pocock offered a ticket to attend a political event as his guest, and leading press gallery journalists offered dinner at the National Press Club. Attenders will include Insiders host David Speers, The West Australian’s Canberra bureau chief, Katina Curtis, Sky News chief news anchor Kieran Gilbert and The Daily Telegraph’s national political editor, Clare Armstrong.
In 2024, mining magnate and former MP Clive Palmer just missed out on winning a dinner with Albanese and his partner Jodie Haydon as part of the auction.
