Inquiry will look at what the Great Barrier Reef Foundation is capable of delivering

A parliamentary inquiry will examine how a $444m grant for work on the Great Barrier Reef was awarded to a small not-for-profit charity, the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, with no competitive tender process.

Labor, Greens and crossbench senators have backed the inquiry, which was moved by a Greens senator, Peter Whish-Wilson.

And Labor’s environment spokesman, Tony Burke, has asked why there was no correspondence between the Great Barrier Reef marine park authority and the office of environment and energy minister, Josh Frydenberg, in the weeks leading up to the grant being announced in April.

A request by Labor under freedom of information laws for communications relating to the foundation between the authority and the minister’s office during the month of April produced no documents, a letter from the authority said.



“It beggars belief that a record-breaking donation to a private foundation would take place without the minister seeking any advice from the Great Barrier Reef marine park authority which is charged under Australian law as being the principle adviser on matters about the Great Barrier Reef,” Burke said on Wednesday.

“It is still not clear that the Great Barrier Reef Foundation is even able to cope with a grant of this size. Their previous revenue for 2015 and 2016 was $9.6m and $8m respectively. The foundation has six full-time and five part-time members.”

The Senate inquiry will examine the foundation’s capacity to deliver components of the reef 2050 plan, whether other organisations and agencies would have been better placed to manage such work, the governance of the foundation and the process by which the grant was awarded.

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Public hearings are likely to take place in Canberra and Queensland and the Senate committee will report in July.

Whish-Wilson said the inquiry was a case study in how the government was outsourcing its core environmental obligations to the private sector.

“In this case we have seen them outsource the control of the purse strings for reef science and repair, and in other cases we have seen the government seek funds from the private sector to save endangered species or help manage its own national parks,” he said.

“There can’t be any more important task for the Australian government than being steward of the Great Barrier Reef, one of the true natural wonders of the world, and with this Senate inquiry we will get to the bottom of what it means to have had this funding redirected away from the existing public agencies.”

The foundation has come under scrutiny since the government announced before the federal budget in May that it would receive the record grant.

It has said it did not apply for the funding and was contacted by the Australian government before the initial announcement in Cairns on 29 April.

“The foundation is in the unique position of working across the entire science community and all levels of government, with leading scientists from different institutions, and the Great Barrier Reef marine park authority – the reef managers,” a spokeswoman said previously.