Starting to wonder what they’re actually doing over there at the Grace Tame Foundation. For the second year running the organisation has failed to promptly lodge its accounts with the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission. They were four months late in filing last year and it seems the former Australian of the Year has missed the January 31 deadline once again for 2024.
Too busy to fill out the paperwork? Hard to believe looking at the only available rundown of spending and activities. For the year ended 2022 the Foundation recorded about $57,000 in seed funding and roughly $410,000 in donations. It spent a modest fraction of that total – $72,640 – on three core projects. The rest was kept in the bank.
To be fair, these are worthy projects. One is to achieve uniform grooming legislation. Another is to change the Bankruptcy Act so pedophiles can’t hide their assets in superannuation (and thereby avoid paying compensation to victims). A third project aims to adjust the language of offending itself, namely in South Australia and the Northern Territory, where the sexual assault of a child is still described, in law, as a “sexual relationship” rather than the “persistent abuse of a child”.
Minus the nickel and dime spending on a website ($3082) and office expenses ($589) and advertising ($364) and rent ($3467) it’s clear enough that the foundation didn’t really swing for the fences on its three key aims, leaving behind a net profit before tax of $369,414, or three quarters of its starting budget.
Our interest in the numbers for 2023 is simply to know whether the foundation is using its donations to good effect. When it last reported the foundation had two volunteer staff. Its four directors – Tame’s lawyer Michael Bradley, academic Michael Salter and survivor advocate Scarlett Franks, as well as Tame herself – draw no salary for their efforts. But again, what efforts? What is being spent, what is being achieved, and what are the outcomes?
Who knows, maybe they knocked it out of the park in 2023, although we’re yet to hear of any pivotal legislative amendments of the kind the foundation has been seeking.
We asked about the holdup and a spokeswoman said the accountants were to blame, which brought to mind the great Samuel Johnson, who memorably said all the way back in 1775 that blaming the accountants is the last refuge of a scoundrel*.
“We were already aware of the overdue status,” said general manager Chantelle Tibbotts. “The paperwork has been signed off on our end. We have been working with the accountants to ensure that it is lodged by the end of next week.”
*We joke. He really said: “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.”
Boardroom spill on cards for Sequoia
Big trouble in little Sequoia Financial Group, where a shareholder split is threatening to see off executive director Garry Crole and NED Kevin Pattinson. It’s a game of mikado trying to pick apart the motivations driving this attempted coup, the first inklings of which were announced to the market on Wednesday.
That came in the form of a 203D notice naming influential investors who wanted both men lined up for the guillotine.
On Friday night a second notice – the dreaded 249D – was expected to drop. It’s the one calling for an extraordinary general meeting to hold a vote and get the head-lopping under way.
Ugly stuff. Parties to the resolution are Sequoia’s major shareholder Tony Jones and Glennon Capital’s Michael Glennon, both of whom are said to be harbouring serious displeasure with Crole. Jones, apparently, is just generally annoyed with Crole and has been sabre-rattling about wanting larger dividends and a higher share price and, you know, sure, shoot for the moon and all that, don’t-ask-don’t-get – but it’s not all milk and honey out there on the markets right now. Also, Sequoia’s SP is sitting at 56c, and while that might be down on the 76 cent highs of 2022 it’s still a tripling of the tweens recorded in 2020.
As to Glennon’s gripe – it would be easy to follow a dotted line to a Crole decision two weeks ago to sell off a bunch of Sequoia’s shares in GC1. That’s Glennon’s listed small-cap play; it IPO’d at a buck in 2015 but now trades around 50c so, yeah, you bet they dumped it.
Glennon wouldn’t comment when contacted, but even we aren’t wholly convinced that the feud between them boils down to a sell-off of shares and the suggestion of concomitant vindictiveness in reply. In any case, what was sold by Sequoia was snapped up in a GC1 buyback anyway.
If anything, the broad and slightly vague point being made about Crole is that he’s been acting unilaterally with his decision-making, the doomed acquisition of ShareCafe, an investment website, being the oft-cited example; it’s a bin fire of legal action and counteraction, all of it being funnelled through the Victorian Supreme Court right now at the same agonising pace of those people who were digested in the film Nope.
Another wrinkle to mention is Crole’s relationship with Sequoia chairman John Larsen. Not much by way of communication between them these days, we hear. Very frosty. Larsen, incidentally, is a GC1 director, but let’s not dwell on any minor conflicts that might be in play there. What’s really unclear is on whose side the chairman is sitting at the moment. Not much face-time happening between Larsen and Crole, as we said, but plenty, we’re told, with Glennon and Jones.
If an offramp exists for Crole to save his position and patch up the shareholder split it’s that the agitators have put forth a manifesto demanding board appointments. One would be Sequoia’s head of professional services, Brent Jones (son of the aforementioned Tony Jones); the other is Diverger’s part-time chairman Peter Brook. The question now is whether or not Crole has an appetite for negotiating with terrorists, but it sounds like they might back down if they get what they want.
We asked Crole about the state of affairs and he confirmed his bemusement at everything going on, citing the strong performance of the company. As for his relationship with Larsen, he said: “I have total respect for John Larsen. I respect what he and I have built together at Sequoia.”
And he certainly didn’t have to put that on record, either.
The Cat’s lair gets a visit from the corporate cop
The Byron Bay home of media entrepreneur Antony Catalano was raided by ASIC investigators last week, allegedly in relation to trading in asset manager Magellan.
The Price is right for Rinehart
Gina Rinehart praised the Coalition’s Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, urged the ADF to shift to Darwin and chastised unacclimatised city folk, in a recorded address to the Institute of Public Affairs.