"Unthinkable" - $444 Million GB Reef Grant From Oz Gov To Tiny Non-Profit Remains A Mystery
The environment minister, Josh Frydenberg, would not say whose idea it was to award a $444m government grant to the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, on the same day a former member of the foundation’s board described the allocation as “unthinkable”.
Michael Myer, of the Myer family, was a member of the reef foundation’s board from 2001 to 2004 until he became concerned at what he called the growing “corporatist” direction of the organisation.
Myer, a conservation activist who endorsed Richard Di Natale before the last federal election, said he had deep concerns the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, and Frydenberg, had offered such a large sum of money to “an organisation that is really not set up to manage that kind of money”. “What is shocking to me is that without any due diligence half a billion of taxpayers’ money has been given to what is still a small charity,” he said. “It’s unheard of.”
Although the foundation has said climate change is the biggest threat to the future of the reef, the agreement between the government’s reef trust and the foundation does not use the words once in more than 90 pages.
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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/aug/09/great-barrier-reef-former-board-member-describes-444m-grant-as-unthinkable