‘Unfair and wrong’: Ex-RBA boss Philip Lowe vows to fight childhood trauma
Philip Lowe says his early life was one of ‘incredible privilege’, but as chair of Future Generation Australia he wants to help children who have faced adversity early in their life to thrive.
Philip Lowe describes his early life as one of “incredible privilege”.
Born to a schoolteacher mother and small business owner father, the former governor of the Reserve Bank grew up in the town of Wagga Wagga in NSW’s Riverina district, the eldest of five children.
While his parents couldn’t afford to send him to university, after becoming dux of both the high schools he attended, Lowe secured a scholarship at the University of NSW. That led him to a full time job at the RBA and he never looked back.
“I grew up in a strong family and was surrounded by that. So I had a very lucky experience. But through the charities that I’m associated with now and even when I was at the bank, you would meet people who’d had terrible events in their lives,” Lowe tells The Australian.
“If you are an adult, if you make the wrong choices in life, you have to live with the consequences. When you are a child and you experience an adverse event like bullying, sexual abuse or a period of homelessness, you have no control over that and no ability to recover from it unless someone extends a hand to you.
“That leaves a shadow over you for the rest of your life. I think it is fundamentally unfair that you have zero control over how that then shapes how your life turns out. To be frank, it is simply wrong.”
Those emotions drove Lowe back in March to become chair of the Geoff Wilson-founded listed philanthropic fund manager Future Generation Australia (FGX), which for the first time in its 10-year history is opening its books to new not-for-profit partners.
FGX, one of two listed investment companies in the Future Generation Group stable, will this week call for expressions of interest from not-for-profits which are supporting children in adversity.
“Australians who experience childhood maltreatment and abuse are far more likely to face physical and mental health problems, social, behavioural and educational issues, and to have high health service utilisation.
“Not only is this devastating for those involved, but it is costing the economy tens of billions of dollars each year,” says Lowe, who sits on the board of youth mental health charity Anika Foundation alongside current and former RBA governors Glenn Stevens and Michele Bullock.
He is also on the board of investment group Barrenjoey Capital Partners, whose co-executive chair Matthew Grounds is the co-founder of the Australian version of the Sohn Hearts & Minds conference, which raises money to support medical research. That annual event will take place on Friday, for the first time in Adelaide.
“One-third of all kids have some kind of real adversity in the first 10 or 12 years of their life. So what we are trying to do through the charities we support at Future Generation is to help children who have faced some adversity early in their life to thrive and perhaps, even in some cases, come out of that dark shadow that was cast over them,” Lowe says. “At Future Generation, we believe that every Australian child deserves the opportunity that a safe and positive childhood offers, and I know our shareholders do too.”
FGX’s landmark call for expressions of interest from charities follows a review of the group’s giving strategy, aimed at optimising the impact of its social investment.
It comes two years after a similar review at Future Generation led the company to focus on preventing mental ill-health and promoting wellbeing in young Australians.
Backed by more than 7000 shareholders, over the past decade FGX has donated $43m to Australian not-for-profits including Raise Foundation, the Australian Children’s Music Foundation and Giant Steps, while simultaneously providing investors with average annual returns of 9.6 per cent, 1 per cent higher than the ASX 200.
Since 2014 the Future Generation Group has donated $87.2m to charities while giving 1 per cent per cent of its assets annually to not-for-profits.
“It used to kind of annoy me when I was at the bank that the politicians and the media would present people in finance as evil and greedy, who were just trying to rip you off to make themselves wealthy,” Lowe says.
“That was not what I saw. I saw a whole bunch of people in finance who certainly were doing well for themselves, but they also wanted to give back and make the world a better place.
“Future Generation, I think, is the best example of that. People who give up their time as service providers and provide their services for free. They are not doing it as part of their marketing budget. They are doing it because they think it is the right thing to do.”
In 2023, the landmark Australian Child Maltreatment Study (ACMS) – which surveyed 8500 Australians 16 and older – confirmed the prevalence of childhood maltreatment in Australia.
The study, the first of its kind, found that more than a quarter of young people aged 16-24 years had experienced between three and five types of abuse in their childhood. This added to data from the Australian Institute of Family Studies estimating that 72 per cent of children have been exposed to at least one adverse childhood experience and more than 50 per cent had been exposed to two or more by the age of 11.
Geoff Wilson, founder and director of FGX, says: “Having worked in financial markets since 1980, it’s exciting that we have been involved in creating a structure where investors can do well financially, while doing good for the community. I’m extremely proud of what FGX and its impact partners have achieved. In our second decade, we must ensure that our giving continues to create a significant impact, particularly with the current circumstances facing young Australians.”
As a large private donor, Future Generation looks for areas with high potential for social good, but which are overlooked or underfunded by other donors, particularly governments.
“Despite compelling evidence about the scale of adverse childhood experiences and their lifelong impacts, the response by governments remains piecemeal and reactive. At Future Generation, we are determined to change that – with the help of our army of mum-and-dad shareholders,” says Future Generation CEO Caroline Gurney.
‘When you are a child and you experience an adverse event like bullying, sexual abuse or a period of homelessness, you have no control over that and no ability to recover from it unless someone extends a hand to you’
Philip Lowe, Future Generation Australia chair
She says FGX is seeking to build a portfolio of small to medium-sized non-profits with a proven track record, but still enough “runway” to deepen their impact.
They will include a mix of national scope and community-based organisations, including Aboriginal organisations.
In tandem with the selection process, FGX will build a framework that will allow it to track both the individual partners’ progress and their collective impact.
“Our partners’ work is complex, which makes tracking their impact tricky. But our shareholders and other stakeholders deserve to know what their social investment is achieving,” Gurney says.
“By measuring our partners’ collective impact, we will be able to tell a compelling narrative that will demonstrate to others, particularly governments, the value of investing in the thousands of Australian children facing adversity.”
Emily Fuller, Future Generation’s social impact director, says while the lifelong impacts of childhood trauma are well documented through decades of research, this doesn’t have to be the case in the future.
“We plan to lean into the more emergent field of positive childhood experiences – achieved through healthy relationships and connection – which have been shown to help children overcome and heal from trauma,” she says.
“We will focus on children aged 0 to 14, and their parents, because this age bracket captures key development phases. Within that, we are looking particularly for partners that work with children aged 8-14 because they have traditionally received less attention and funding than the 0 to 3 or youth/adolescent stages. We believe that this is the area where Future Generation Australia can make the most meaningful and useful contribution.”
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