This is part two in a series. For the rest of the series, go here.
Exactly how did the Esther Foundation — a Pentecostal-linked organisation with a history of fundamentalist Christian practices — end up receiving a $4 million grant, announced personally by Scott Morrison, in the lead-up to the 2019 election?
One clue is that the foundation is in the marginal seat of Hasluck, held by cabinet minister Ken Wyatt. But Crikey‘s investigation also found a tangled web, with the prime minister and a federal grants program ripe for marginal seats funding rorts at the centre.
Remarkably, the federal Health Department — which is the source of the grant — disputes the public record of how the grant was made. It has also implicated the office of Health Minister Greg Hunt with the prospect that it was only a matter of days between the government receiving a grant application and approving it.
Here’s the timeline and the evidence.
March 7, 2019: Morrison announces that the Esther Foundation will receive a $4 million grant. He makes the announcement in person during a visit to the foundation in Perth.
Using language which underlines his personal involvement in making the grant, he tells his grateful audience: “I don’t invest in things that don’t work. If I have I stop them.”
The announcement gains local media coverage.
May 18, 2019: Federal election held. Wyatt is returned.
June 11, 2019: The federal government’s grants portal, GrantConnect, shows the federal Health Department approves a $4 million grant to the Esther Foundation. The approval notes it was made under the Community Health and Hospitals Program (CHHP).
July 1, 2019: In a statement published on the department’s website, Hunt announces the $4 million grant to the Esther Foundation as one of a number of projects to be funded under the CHHP.
What is the CHHP?
The CHHP was announced by Morrison in mid-December 2018 as he marshalled his forces for the unwinnable May 2019 election. It put $1.25 billion in funding at the federal government’s discretion and was immediately panned as “bad policy but maybe good politics”.
The Grattan Institute’s health specialist and former federal Health Department head, Dr Stephen Duckett, said the CHHP should be awarded “a big policy fail”.
“The new Morrison proposal tramples all over [existing] policy rationality in the interests of electoral expediency,” Duckett wrote shortly after it was announced.
“It replaces state-based planning with submission-based funding, which will enable a politician with a whiteboard in Canberra to override state priorities in favour of projects which have the greatest electoral appeal in targeted marginal seats,” he added prophetically.
Health Department contradicts the record
Crikey put its evidence to the Health Department last week, and also sought comment on whether or not Morrison’s office had played a role in the grant.
The department responded that the public record was wrong, that the grant was not made under the CHHP and that it would “seek to correct” the GrantConnect record.
“This commitment was included in the 2019-20 budget [released April 2, 2019] as part of the measure titled Prioritising Mental Health — caring for our community,” it said.
However, it did not address the question of why the Esther Foundation grant was included in a list of CHHP projects announced by Hunt.
And the department’s version raises yet more questions.
In its statement to Crikey the department said the foundation had “submitted a request for funding” direct to Hunt “in February 2019” (no date was specified).
According to this timeline it was only a matter of days, or weeks at most, for the $4 million decision to be made and subsequently announced during Morrison’s visit to Perth on March 7, 2019.
Crikey asked the department what due diligence had been on the Esther Foundation, given the allegations made against the organisation and subsequent changes to key management.
“The Department of Health undertook a delivery risk assessment of the proposal and provided advice on the findings of that assessment to the minister,” it said.
The department’s statement pointedly gives no detail on what it told Hunt about the risk of committing $4 million to the Esther Foundation.
Is this another sports rorts?
The grant to the Esther Foundation — however it was made — is of a kind with other grant rorts by the Morrison government in the run-up to the 2019 election, with public money being applied for overtly political purposes. These include the sports rorts affair, the car park funding rorts, and the Safer Communities grants.
The Australian National Audit office (ANAO) has been checking grants made under the Safer Communities fund and signed off by Peter Dutton as former Home Affairs minister. The grants include a separate $630,000 grant to the Esther Foundation for a security upgrade of its premises.
The ANAO’s report is due to be tabled in the coming weeks. The ANAO has also listed the CHHP scheme as a “possible” audit for this year.
There is, though, one major difference between the Esther Foundation grant and all the others which may or may not have washed through Morrison’s office: nowhere else is there such clear evidence of the prime minister’s personal involvement.
Next: Scott Morrison and the art of the Christian dog-whistle.
