New documents detail the governor general’s support for a controversial charity that won an $18m federal government grant – including that he planned to tell the late Queen about it.
The former prime minister Scott Morrison announced funds for the Australian Future Leaders Foundation in the March 2022 budget, after governor general David Hurley first raised the charity with him in 2020.
There were concerns the foundation was not operational when it was awarded the money, and that there was no competitive tender.
The Liberal government lost the May election and Labor scrapped the grant in September.
According to the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC), where the foundation is referred to as the “governor general’s Australian Future Leaders Foundation”, it plans to deliver a leadership program to “better prepare, better equip and better connect Australia’s future leaders for a more uncertain world by leveraging 65,000 years of collective knowledge and our unique national diversity”.
Hurley and his office have maintained that while they strongly supported the charity, they remained independent of any funding discussions or day-to-day management. The prime minister’s department has previously said due diligence was carried out before the funding was awarded.
The Greens senator David Shoebridge said it was “obviously wrong” for the governor general to lobby the prime minister for a private cause while claiming to be independent. He grilled Hurley’s official secretary, Paul Singer, in Senate estimates and asked for documents that have now been released.
Those documents include the minutes of meetings between Hurley, Singer and the foundation’s head, Chris Hartley, as well as the governor general’s office strategy for 2022, which outlines 10 “key deliverables” for 2022, including celebrating the Queen’s platinum jubilee, establishing a policy to reach net carbon zero by 2050 and supporting “the delivery of the inaugural governor-general’s Australian Future Leaders Program”.
The meeting minutes show discussions about the new charity had begun in August 2020, and that Hurley had shared the idea with Morrison in September.
The meeting minutes show that on 6 August 2020, Hurley, Hartley and Singer discussed the idea of an “experiential program to build a cadre of Australian leaders across all sectors who are better connected, more collaborative and impactful”.
At that meeting, Hartley proposed Hurley as chair of the board, an idea Hurley declined, saying that while he would “lend his support” and “share the idea with the PM”, he needed to remain independent. At a meeting on 25 September, Hurley told Hartley that “he had raised the proposal with the PM, who had expressed interest in the concept”, according to the minutes.
By 29 January 2021, Hurley had written to Morrison, who had “expressed support”.
On 29 March 2021, meeting minutes record that the prime minister’s department has “been asked by the government to explore possible funding arrangements to support the program” and was “considering options for most appropriate mechanism for funding support”.
The minutes also note that it was “important that the foundation is established as a legal entity as soon as possible”.
The foundation was registered with the ACNC on 15 April. In May that year, the minutes note that PM&C was waiting on advice from the Australian government solicitor “to establish authority to support that program, which will be contingent on a brief being put to the government”.
The meeting also heard that Hurley intended to share the proposals with “HMTQ”, which stands for Her Majesty the Queen, and would note “parallels with HRH Duke of Edinburgh’s Commonwealth study conferences”.
There were further meetings in July, August, September, November and December on topics including the planned launch of the program.
The $18m funding over five years – with $4m a year pledged after that – was announced in the March 2022 budget. There were two more meetings before the new Labor government announced in September that the funding had been scrapped.
In February this year, Singer noted in a meeting with Hartley that decisions about funding were matters between the government and the foundation, and asked for Hurley’s name to be removed from the name of the program. He followed that up with a letter.
“As you are aware and agreed, notwithstanding the governor-general’s support for the development of [the] program, he cannot become – and has not ever been – involved in the day-to-day operations or management of the Australian Future Leaders Foundation. This is similarly the case for my office,” he wrote.
“I take this opportunity to clarify that the name of the program in its current form is not to include a reference to the governor-general.”
In estimates, Shoebridge asked Singer why it was still called the governor general’s foundation on the ACNC site. Singer said that it wasn’t until 7 September 2022 (when the funding was scrapped) that it was “understood that the program would not be proceeding in that form”.
Shoebridge told Guardian Australia the situation showed a “large accountability gap” in the governor general’s office.
“Any mature office with proper checks and balances would have killed this proposal off before it got started,” he said.
A spokesperson for Singer’s office said the governor general was “not involved in the day-to-day operations of the foundation or its governance”.
“It is on the public record that the governor general spoke with the then prime minister about the national leadership program, the potential national value and his support for the design and development of the initiative,” the spokesperson said.
“Notwithstanding that support, it was always understood and clear that the government of the day was responsible for funding decisions (including whether to and to what quantum).”
Guardian Australia has contacted Hartley and Morrison’s office for a response.
