The Duttons’ empty trust fund could have cut their tax bill. Here’s how it worked

Two childcare centres were dropped from the opposition leader’s parliamentary disclosures as he ramped up his push to become prime minister, preventing the public getting a full picture of his wealth.

Peter Dutton claimed at a press conference on Wednesday that his 15 failures to disclose the sale of properties, or to declare the purchase or sale of properties outside the 30 day period set down in the rules, did not matter as he revealed his family’s trust, RHT Family Trust, no longer held any assets.

“The assets we own are ... a house which has been declared, our private residence. We have money in the bank and that’s it, there are no assets in any trust,” Dutton said.

Credit: Graphic: Jamie Brown

That trust had been used for years in property transactions including the buying and selling of two childcare centres and a shopping plaza, which could have minimised the Duttons’ tax bill.

Dutton also refused to say how much he and his family were currently worth, declaring that is “not something I’m going to provide” after this masthead revealed he had conducted $30 million of property transactions across 26 pieces of real estate over 35 years, with additional assets bought and sold by the family’s trust, RHT Family Trust.

His property trading volume is even higher than $30 million as the purchase and sale prices of two of Dutton’s former properties, an investment flat in the ACT and a holiday house on Moreton Island in Queensland, are not included in that total as they are not publicly available.

Labor seized on Dutton’s share and property trading to accuse the opposition leader of being out of touch during a housing affordability crisis, just ahead of an election due by May.

Speaking on Seven’s Sunrise on Wednesday, Workplace Relations Minister Murray Watt questioned whether the property holdings were “why [Dutton] doesn’t understand the cost-of-living pressures that people are under”.

Finance Minister Katy Gallagher said Dutton should be more transparent.

“I think politicians have a responsibility, particularly those who are going to the highest office in the land, to make sure that they are adhering to the rules about declarations on the register,” she said, but stopped short of promising reforms to parliament’s Register of Members’ Interests.

On Wednesday morning, Dutton said he had always conducted himself with integrity and said he made no apologies for his success.

“I’ve been proud of what my family and I have been able to achieve,” he said. “I actually think the Australian public wants somebody who knows how to manage money, knows how to manage the economy.”

The childcare centres owned by Kirilly Dutton in the Brisbane suburbs of Bald Hills and Everton Hills were both sold for undisclosed sums, and Kirilly resigned as a director of the two centres in June and October 2022, respectively, according to company records of RHT Investments.

Dutton did not make specific declarations about the sales of either childcare centre, which were offloaded at some time around the May 2022 election, before the then Morrison government went to the polls.

When he returned to parliament as the newly anointed opposition leader, he noted in his declarations that Bald Hills Childcare had “nil activity”, while Camelia Avenue Childcare was simply removed from the records.

Those two childcare centres were once held in the RHT Family Trust along with a Townsville shopping plaza comprising 11 shops that was sold for $840,000 in 2022, shortly before Dutton became opposition leader and as the family slimmed down its portfolio of investment properties.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has faced a barrage of questions about his property and share dealings.Credit: Rhett Wyman

He faced a barrage of questions about his share trading, including bank share purchases declared the day before a government bailout during the Global Financial Crisis in January 2009, as well as his property portfolio over the years.

Dutton denied receiving any confidential information before his share trades and said the looming package for the banks had been widely canvassed publicly, but stopped short of supporting the release of shadow cabinet minutes from 2009, which could clarify whether he was briefed on the government’s bank bailout plans.

On his failure to disclose the sale of two properties and 13 late disclosures of purchases and sales, Dutton said it was just “paperwork [that] hasn’t been filled in on time, but there’s nothing consequential in that ... my father and I started with nothing in a small building company, and half the transactions that are on that list are blocks of land that we bought, where dad built a house, and we sold the house and land”.

Asked about whether the family continued to receive income from the RHT Family Trust, Dutton said: “When Kirilly sold her last childcare centre, then that’s when the income from that trust ceased”.

Dutton first declared the existence of the RHT Family Trust – named for his children, Rebecca, Harry and Tom – in April 2014.

RHT Investments Qld, acting for the trust, purchased Edison Plaza on September 7, 2016, for $760,000, and sold it on March 11, 2022, for $840,000.

Peter and Kirilly Dutton were initially the two beneficiaries of the family trust, which allows families to legally split income between family members on high salaries and those with lower earnings, such as young adult children, to reduce their tax bills.

The Dutton children were added as beneficiaries in 2016. Dutton’s declarations show he stopped being a beneficiary in 2019.

How a trust works

• A trust is a legal vehicle that holds assets such as cash, property or shares in line with a document, known as a deed, that sets out its rules.
• People or a company make decisions for the trust. They are called trustees.
• Trusts are run to benefit other people or companies, who are called beneficiaries.
• The trust isn’t generally taxed on its holdings and many trusts are under no obligation to pay out money at any particular time.
• When trusts do pay out money to a beneficiary, that is taxed. That can help with tax by spreading out earnings across a family where one person may earn much more than the others, who will then be taxed at a lower rate.

Associate professor of taxation law at the University of NSW, Dale Boccabella, said trusts could help protect a family’s assets if a child got married and divorced but could also reduce tax.

“It is about tax minimisation and we, the public, are losing a lot of money,” he said.

The Tax Office estimated there were about 800,000 family trusts in operation today, Boccabella said, and they could cost the taxpayer billions annually through tax minimisation measures.

With Mike Foley, Olivia Ireland and Lachlan Abbott

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