Over the past few months, Australia has experienced its worst bushfire season in decades, with at least 23 people dead and more than 1,500 homes destroyed. However, in the face of the devastation, we’ve also witnessed incredible solidarity with the communities affected. People have offered their homes to strangers in need of shelter, neighbours have gathered to knit pouches for wildlife, even school kids have held bake sales to raise much-needed funds. In a society as generally alienated and disconnected as ours, these communal efforts are rare and heartening, and we should be proud of how everyday people have come together.
Notably, fundraising efforts have been buoyed by donations from the very wealthy, and public sentiment towards these donations has largely been positive. However, it’s important to view this so-called generosity in context. While multi-billionaire James Packer has donated $5 million to the NSW Rural Fire Service (RFS), this represents a fraction of his total wealth. Packer’s net worth was last year estimated at $4.94 billion, making his donation roughly 0.1% of his total wealth.
Australian businessmen John Gandel (net worth of $6.60 billion) and Justin Hemmes (net worth of $1.06 billion) have also made contributions that round out to similar fractions of their total wealth. Anthony Pratt, Australia’s richest person (net worth of $12.9 billion) and friend and supporter of US President Donald Trump, has donated $1 million. California-based Apple CEO Tim Cook also stated that his company (last valued at $1.85 trillion) will make a donation, though did not disclose the amount. Likewise, mining billionaire Twiggy Forrest’s $70 million donation represents but a small fraction of his net worth, estimated at $7.8 billion in 2019. Infuriatingly, the majority of Forrest’s donation will go to a fund that he owns and operates, which he plans to use to investigate the causes of these fires.
It’s worth noting that Forrest is perhaps one of Australia’s biggest tax dodgers. In 2011, the Senate heard that Forrest’s company Fortescue had not once paid company tax, and in 2013, he challenged the mining tax in the high court and lost. In 2015-16, his company generated $9.1 billion in sales, but paid less in company tax than the Warrnambool Cheese & Butter Factory. I’ll return to this point later.
The donations made by these billionaires will no doubt be significant to those directly affected by the catastrophic events of the past few months. We can and should be happy that this money has been directed to those in need. But now is not the time for unquestioning gratitude. Now more than ever before, we need to consider the power structures which govern us, and which have so far prevented climate justice. Simply put, as Australia burns, we need to remember what brought us here. People like Forrest and Murdoch exist at the expense of our communities and our planet - the economics of monopolisation and overproduction that have created climate change are the very backbone of their success.
The incredibly wealthy exert their influence not only over the market, but over politicians too. In 2018-2019, James Packer donated $180,638 to state Liberal, Labor, and National parties through his business Crown Resorts Limited. From 1998 to 2018, the Australian Electoral Commission reported that Crown donated $2,708,754 to registered political parties in the past financial year, split fairly evenly among the main players. Gandel and Pratt both donated large sums to various branches of the Liberal Party in 2018-2019, and Justin Hemmes is a well-known supporter and likely donor, having hosted a $10,000-a-head fundraising event for then Prime Minister Malcoln Turnbull and the Liberal Party of Australia in 2016.
We cannot lose sight of the motivations behind these political donations, and indeed the donations to bushfire relief. Packer’s donation to the RFS comes following recent explosive reports on Crown’s questionable conduct, including interactions between Crown personnel, the Department of Home Affairs, and firms involved in organised crime (including human and drug trafficking), to arrange visas for ‘high rollers’. This scandal resulted in the Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity holding public hearings for the first time in its history to investigate what the Commission believes to be grounds for corruption.
Australians are rightfully angry at Prime Minister Scott Morrison for his party’s lack of action on climate change and his callous response to the unfolding disaster. But there’s plenty more to be angry about. Billionaires have donated to the bushfire crisis fund despite their continuous personal efforts to create the climate catastrophe that fuelled the fires. If we go on thanking the wealthy for relatively insignificant contributions to disasters, whilst ignoring their role in perpetuating the root cause of climate change, things are bound to stay the same.
If the rich truly want to address the effects of climate change, then their fortunes would be better spent via the public purse. We could begin to mitigate some of the damage done by corporations to our planet by raising the corporate tax rate and using the increased revenue to fund a disaster relief fund or other measures to mitigate climate change. (To illustrate the scale of the current problem: nine fossil fuel giants, including Shell, Santos, and Exxon Mobil paid $0 in tax during the financial year 2017-18.)
Failing to take such measures now likely means returning to this conversation in another five years, during another unprecedented fire season that will claim more lives and more homes. In the meantime, the rich will have continued to profit at our expense whilst paying minimum tax, and future generations will have been further robbed of their future.
Ashley Sutherland is a community organiser based in Narrm (Melbourne). She is currently the Victorian Campaigner for the Alliance for Gambling Reform, working to re-frame gambling as a public health issue. The above article does not necessarily represent the opinions of her employer.