Tony Abbott’s top business adviser, Maurice Newman, has lashed out at the UN response to the Ebola outbreak and labelled the world body a “refuge of anti-western authoritarians bent on achieving one-world government”.



Newman, who is the chairman of the prime minister’s business advisory council, wrote an opinion piece for the Australian newspaper in which he said the UN’s “leanings are predominantly socialist and antipathetical to the future security and prosperity of the west”.

“The philosophy of the UN is basically anti-capitalist,” he writes. “Countries that pay the most dues, mostly rich Anglo countries, are those to which the world body shows the greatest disdain.”

Newman said the World Health Organisation, a branch of the UN, was led by “lofty protocols” but was ultimately “detached” from the real world. He blames this for the agency’s inability to contain the Ebola outbreak.

Australia lobbied hard for a seat on the UN security council, which it will hold until December, but Newman criticised the position as costly and pointless.

“It [the UN] eschews capitalism and subtly spreads the cause of socialism through treaties on everything from employment to climate change. Most important, it is directly accountable to no one and is an unworkable concept.”

Newman has come under fire in the past for claiming that the world is unprepared for “global cooling” because of “warming propaganda”.

In an August opinion piece, again for the Australian, Newman likened Australia’s climate change policies to “primitive civilisations offering up sacrifices to appease the gods”.

Those comments prompted calls for Abbott to sack Newman, but the environment minister, Greg Hunt, defended the adviser saying he, like the government, supports the science behind climate change.

In Tuesday’s opinion piece, Newman takes a swipe at the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, saying its “lack of integrity and poor scientific credentials have been widely exposed”.

“The IPCC is an advocacy group dedicated to wealth redistribution,” he writes. “Its links to Greenpeace and WWF [World Wildlife Fund] are deep. It panders to gender balance and regional representation, not scientific excellence.”

Newman has chaired the advisory council since the group’s formation in September 2013, just days after the federal election.

He was the head of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Australian Stock Exchange and chancellor of Macquarie University before his appointment.

The council meets the prime minister three times a year to discuss the government’s economic policies.