All of that is outrageous, but a deeper issue arises from the decision. By giving this money to a private foundation, the government has sidelined Australia’s publicly funded research agencies. The Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) and the CSIRO – along with universities such as James Cook University – have long been involved in conducting research on the Great Barrier Reef. Their work means they are the institutions best placed to advise on how to preserve it, in consultation with the Department of the Environment and the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority. But to continue that work, these internationally renowned research agencies will now have to go cap in hand to a private charity to gain access to taxpayer funds. A charity that, until Malcolm Turnbull decided to give it nearly half a billion dollars of taxpayers’ money, had a budget of only $10 million and just six staff.

A charity that appears to have had no consistent and coherent view on the greatest threats to the reef: climate change, coral bleaching, run-off from land clearance and ocean acidification. Indeed, some of the business executives who are the foundation’s members are reported to be sceptics about climate change. None of that bodes well for the future of the reef, the biggest living organism on the planet and a unique natural treasure of which Australia is the custodian. But the $444 million grant also has grave implications for Australia’s broader science and research capabilities, because it is effectively the first stage in the privatisation of those capabilities. Since the Coalition took office in 2013, it has relentlessly cut funding for public research agencies, including CSIRO and AIMS.

The grant to the Great Barrier Reef Foundation takes the undermining of these agencies a step further, because a private organisation will be able to determine what research they undertake on the reef and what resources they will receive in order to do it. Loading Philanthropy is an admirable activity when it is conducted in a disinterested manner. But do we really believe that this foundation will operate in that way? The lack of transparency in the $444 million grant suggests that the allocation of these funds by the foundation will be anything but disinterested. When private interests, not the public interest, are able to determine the agenda for scientific research, science itself is placed in jeopardy.

The government has not tried to hide its hostility to Australia’s public research agencies. It has even attempted to stifle the ability of scientists who work in them to alert the wider community to their plight. In June I visited Townsville, and a meeting with scientists at AIMS was scheduled as part of that visit. But the minister, Michaelia Cash, directed that a local Coalition MP had to be present when I spoke to them. That was an extraordinary intervention in a shadow ministerial visit, and was clearly intended to constrain what the scientists might have said to me. It cannot have been a coincidence that the minister imposed this restriction after the grant to the Great Barrier Reef Foundation was raised at Senate estimates. I did not accept a meeting under those conditions. There will be other opportunities to talk to the scientists and I shall make sure that they can speak freely.