The program featured former Liberal Party member Guy Pearse and Four Corners host Janine Cohen, while others concerned about the influence exerted by the fossil fuel lobby also participated.
According to the program, lobby groups representing the coal, car, oil, and aluminium industries have wielded their power to prevent Australia from reducing its greenhouse gas emissions, which were already among the highest per capita in the world in 1990.
Pearse cited recorded interviews with AIGN members and said that lobbyists had written cabinet submissions, ministerial briefings, and costings in two departments on at least half a dozen occasions over a decade.
Pearse says that this influence is entrenched to such an extent that fossil fuel industry lobby groups have actually been writing Australia's greenhouse policy at least since the Kyoto Protocol in 1998, and probably even before John Howard became Prime Minister in 1996.
The talk said that the "Greenhouse Mafia" is predominantly representative of the coal, oil, cement, aluminium, mining and electricity industries[3] In July 2007, Pearse released his own book on the subject, High & Dry: John Howard, Climate Change and the Selling of Australia’s Future.