Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to talk today about the misuse and misappropriation of funds by Hillsong Church. Questions on notice asked by the shadow minister for Indigenous affairs and media reports have revealed that over $1.2 million in business development grants to the Hillsong Church’s benevolent organisation, Hillsong Emerge, have been wasted. There are very few visible results from the grants, apart from well looked after Hillsong Emerge staff. These are grants that are supposed to assist disadvantaged Indigenous Australians.

Hillsong Emerge spent $315,000 from a federal government grant to employ seven people for a microcredit program in Sydney that gave just six Indigenous people a loan. The total grant for the microcredit program was $965,421, with 93 borrowers across Australia. Only $362,673 of the grant ended up in the hands of Indigenous borrowers. The sum of $610,000 was also spent by Hillsong on projects for ‘business development’ and ‘self-confidence for young women’ in Sydney, which are supposed to help Indigenous people find employment.

Answers to questions asked by the shadow minister reveal that, from 74 clients, Hillsong Emerge advise that to their knowledge ‘none of those assisted have moved to full self-employment’. This shows a frightening lack of oversight and monitoring on behalf of the federal government in administering these grants and indeed in making them in the first instance. It shows how the Howard government has reached a new low of incompetence in Indigenous affairs. It forces us to question the government’s decision to remove responsibility for programs like this from Indigenous organisations.

The government scrapped ATSIC, citing mismanagement and poor financial accountability. Unwisely, responsibility for programs like that administered by Hillsong Emerge were taken away from Indigenous Australians. What we see here is a terrible waste of funding under the government’s new arrangements for Indigenous affairs that were supposed to improve accountability. This funding has been squandered by non-Indigenous people who are completely unaccountable and who cannot show any real results for their spending.

We know in the case of Hillsong what it was all about. It was about the member for Greenway. It was about the Prime Minister flying the flag and showing how beneficent he was to the Christian community, not caring about the accountability measures that should be provided. On 14 February an article appearing under the headline ‘Hillsong stripped of grant’ stated that Hillsong Church’s benevolent arm had been stripped of a $414,000 grant it obtained from federal funds because of its deception. Hillsong was deceiving Aboriginal people. Let us understand what is happening here: these people got these grants by deceiving not only the government but also Indigenous Australians. (Time expired)