Steve Hutchins (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak today about a number of issues that have been raised in the House of Representatives recently regarding Hillsong. Senators do not need to be told by me that the 2004 federal election result in Greenway was made possible by the tens of thousands of dollars that were poured into the Liberal Party campaign and the coffers of Louise Markus’s campaign fund. Louise Markus’s own spokesperson readily admits that in the 2004 election Hillsong members doorknocked and handed out pamphlets for Louise Markus.

Leigh Coleman is the business manager for Hillsong Emerge and employed Louise Markus. Louise Markus was employed primarily as a social worker. Her role there, as I understand it, was to provide services for the Hillsong community. Mrs Markus was a full-time employee on the payroll of the Hillsong company. Mrs Markus has an intimate understanding of how the company works, who runs it and what they would do with the money coming in from grants. So it is no surprise that Mrs Markus wrote a glowing endorsement of the grant application submitted by the organisation that employed her. Mrs Markus did as any loyal former employee and dedicated follower would do: she heartily endorsed the grant application.

Leo Kelly, the Labor Mayor of Blacktown, is a fine example of grassroots representation in the community. Councillor Kelly has admirably served the community of Blacktown for over 20 years with a no-nonsense approach that has delivered immeasurable results for the people of Blacktown City. It was a complete surprise to me that the member for Mitchell, Alan Cadman, attacked the good work of Councillor Kelly in an adjournment speech on the last day of the last session of parliament. The member for Mitchell should take a leaf from Councillor Kelly’s book and, instead of defending a profit-making venture like Hillsong Emerge, should be as concerned as Leo Kelly is that the program simply does not do what Hillsong said it would do in its grant application. That is wrong.

The facts speak for themselves on this issue. I have read the original grant application that Hillsong put together and have made the following notes about the application. The sorry saga starts with an application for funding by the Hillsong Emerge group to the Attorney-General’s Department which asks for $414,479 for a project that will be completed over three years. Hillsong write in section 2 of the application that they are key community stakeholders and that they have a range of community organisations that have formed together to be known as the ‘Community Crime Prevention Partnership’. The truth of the matter is that these community groups had never met and had not formed any partnership together, formally or informally. The stakeholders that Hillsong list as being involved are in fact not involved as community partners at all.

Hillsong go on to claim in their application that each of these community partners will run its own programs and that Hillsong will ‘collate the data gathered by each of the partners and use it to plan, implement and evaluate a three-year project’. That looks good on paper. It completes the necessary paperwork to make everybody feel good about working together, getting information, helping people and reaching a common goal. All I can say is this: at the time of the application being submitted to the Attorney-General’s Department, the organisations that Hillsong list that would be working together had not even been approached to join the partnership. I ask the government senators here today: how did Hillsong think they were going to get all this data collected when there was in fact no community organisation even aware that this submission included them as project partners? It must be said that this is quite puzzling indeed. This is the application that Louise Markus gave a glowing endorsement for. I ask you, Madam Acting Deputy President: did Louise Markus even read what she was supporting before, with one flick of the pen, getting it through the Attorney-General’s Department and to the minister’s office?

Hillsong, in section 3 of their application for funding, ‘Project workplan’, provide so-called crime statistics that completely contradict what the New South Wales government’s own website lists as accurate crime figures. There has been a trend over the 2000-04 period for crime rates to remain steady or decrease in that region. Louise Markus is all over this application, endorsing it and helping it through the processes. As a former employee of this organisation, Louise Markus jumps to be a ringleader and then pulls the grant through the slippery channels of a discretionary government slush fund.

One would assume that Hillsong know a thing or two about budgets and money. I would take a guess here that Louise Markus is also aware of how projects are funded and how projects are calculated. This Hillsong budget, I might add, includes $107,000 set aside for ‘administrative costs’—a big black hole where money can be sucked out at any time by the Hillsong group of companies. We all know that it is not hard to knock up a ledger line under an all-encompassing ‘administrative costs’ group. It is specifically designed to act as a generic budget line. What the people of the community of Greenway want to know is: did any of this $107,000 go into making pamphlets or flyers or sending mail-outs to any member of the Hillsong congregation?

So, left in the funding is $103,584 for wages. This would be close to $34,528 as an annual salary. Madam Acting Deputy President, you would have to agree that this is a junior salary level. Exactly how did the group plan on running such a huge project with such junior staff? Interestingly enough, a local Hillsong worker in Blacktown, Ms Mara Mackey, said that ‘all staff members have to be involved in the church’. Does that mean that the junior staff who were running this huge three-year project with taxpayers’ money were assessed on their capacity to do the job by the religion that they followed rather than their project management skills?

When the inaccuracies and lies were exposed, this grant fell dead in the water. In order to save face, a deal was offered by Hillsong to one of their so-called ‘community partners’. In a handwritten letter to the Riverstone Aboriginal Community Association, Mr Leigh Coleman writes that Hillsong Emerge will support the association in obtaining some $280,000 as long as the Riverstone Aboriginal Community Association abides by the rules and parameters set out by the Hillsong Emerge board of directors. This is another example of how Hillsong continues to monopolise the projects. Was Mr Coleman, Mrs Markus’s former boss, ever really concerned about the local Aboriginal people benefiting from the money—or was it just a shameless exercise in saving face and diverting a public outcry?

The questions I get asked all the time in Greenway concerning the issue of Hillsong are raised along these lines: were any of the song booklets being passed around at the local Hillsong gathering printed on ‘administrative costs’ paper? The questions I get asked the most about Louise Markus are: is Louise helping the government repay a debt to Hillsong that allowed the Liberal Party to spend next to nothing on the campaign itself in Greenway and was this part of a deal that saw a quiet backhander to the organisation that took the gamble during the campaign? I want to believe that is not how democracy works in Australia. I want to believe that Louise Markus would not preach about social service one day and be involved in money smuggling the next.

What does the local matriarch of the Hillsong movement and federal member Louise Markus do about this? Nothing. Louise Markus has done nothing to stop any of this rorting from happening. People in Greenway ask me: why hasn’t she ever admitted that the budget is out of whack with any other similar project proposal? Why is this one different? Madam Deputy President Moore, I ask you: what am I, and you, and the good people of Greenway meant to think when Louise Markus stays silent on this issue? What are people meant to say when Louise refuses to acknowledge that the Hillsong budget was thrown together without substance or any reasonable way to work? Spending years as a social worker would have exposed her to numerous grants and budget plans. Louise Markus’s fingerprints are all over this dodgy budget, and for as long as she remains silent on the issue her guilt gets thicker.

The substance of this application was to commence a project aimed at reducing crime in Indigenous communities. The application asked for $610,968 to fund this program. In a separate application for funding the Hillsong group, again supported by Mrs Markus, stated that the aim of the project was to engage Aboriginal people into self-employment. Senator Abetz would later reveal that this money had not assisted any of the program’s participants into self-employment. Why is Louise Markus supporting an application that sees taxpayers’ money tied up in a program that is not targeted at finding employment for Aborigines? It is particularly sad to see that Louise Markus can see this money being taken from the truly needy people in her own electorate, and lap up the good times at Hillsong with their closed-door programs.

Hillsong have repeatedly tried to dodge questions about the grant applications and subsequent debacles by ignoring requests for interviews from local journalists. This continual evasion of any scrutiny into Hillsong becomes even more concerning when an outstanding local journalist, Nick Soon, was approached by the office of Kevin Andrews, offering to reply on Hillsong’s behalf.

Ron Boswell (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Acting Deputy President, I raise a point of order. I draw your attention to standing order 193. Mrs Markus is a member of the House of Representatives and the senator is absolutely abusing standing order 193, which says that you cannot maliciously attack a member of either house of parliament, in this case the House of Representatives.

Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Acting Deputy President, on the point of order, I have been listening carefully to my colleague’s contribution and it seems to me, with respect, that he is outlining a range of issues and questions as to behaviour. I suggest that it is not transgressing standing order 193.

Helen Coonan (NSW, Liberal Party, Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Acting Deputy President, on the point of order: unfortunately, I have not heard all of Senator Hutchins’s contribution; I have heard some of the latter part of it. I am fairly sure that Senator Hutchins is framing his argument with questions, as Senator Wong puts it, with adverse conclusions that certainly reflect on the character of Mrs Markus. I would think it fairly and squarely offends the standing order.

Claire Moore (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have listened to the comments and to Senator Hutchins’s contribution. My understanding is that he is asking questions and making statements. I will continue to remind him of the standing order if I believe he goes across that line. At this stage I am listening and I ask you to continue your contribution, Senator Hutchins, bearing in mind the standing order.

Steve Hutchins (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The office of Minister Kevin Andrews did answer questions on behalf of Hillsong. I would like to know why. It seems very suspect that the minister would want to involve himself in defending an organisation that has so blatantly manipulated the grants process. Minister Andrews goes to great lengths in an email to defend the Hillsong application. He says, ‘Much of the criticism that has been made seems to be politically motivated against Hillsong itself.’ Minister Andrews knows that this is not an attack on Hillsong followers or believers, or beliefs. As with any organisation that receives government money—taxpayers’ money—it is essential that the organisation remains accountable for how it is spending the people’s money.

I am shocked, quite frankly, that Minister Andrews would act as a bodyguard to Hillsong. The minister’s office writes to journalist Nick Soon that the whole reporting of the grant is a nonissue. He claims that the reporting ‘misses the intention of a pilot program’ and, even though they did not help a single Aborigine to become employed, ‘That is okay. It was just a pilot program—no big deal. That 25 people have renewed confidence in themselves to become self-employed is to be congratulated.’ None of them actually were self-employed at the end of the program, but Minister Andrews thinks it is well worth $610,968 of taxpayers’ money to help 25 people feel good about themselves.

I do not think that is good enough. It is not good enough that the minister feels he needs to shield the blame from Hillsong and its endorser Louise Markus. What we have here is a local rort pushed along by the member for Greenway and pandered to by this federal government. The member of Greenway, the minister and the Prime Minister should be ashamed.

Helen Coonan (NSW, Liberal Party, Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Acting Deputy President, I raise a point of order relating to standing order 193.

The Acting Deputy President:

Senator Hutchins, I do take the point of order at this stage. I ask you to withdraw that particular statement.

Steve Hutchins (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I certainly do, Madam Acting Deputy President.