Bushfires: Celeste Barber $50m donations in limbo as legal solution sought
Urgent negotiations are under way to help ensure almost $50m of donations raised by comedian Celeste Barber go to firefighters.
Urgent negotiations are under way between lawyers for comedian Celeste Barber and the NSW Rural Fire Service to help ensure more than $50m of donations raised by her campaign can go where donors want — to the firefighters.
The staggering amount raised by Barber hit an unexpected roadblock this week when legal experts warned that the RFS trust fund to which donors gave so generously was strictly limited to spending money on fire trucks, training and administration costs.
Lawyers for Barber and the RFS have spent the past few days trying to find a way around the limitations of the trust so the money could be spent as donors intended.
The dilemma for the RFS was that Barber had made it clear to her 6.5 million Instagram followers that the money was intended to go to the country’s hero volunteer firefighters and the families of volunteers who had been killed as well as bushfire victims and injured animals.
Despite the best of intentions, Barber clearly didn’t read the fine print, directing the money to the RFS’s trust, the Brigade Donation Fund, which is prohibited from spending any donations on volunteer firefighters, let alone any outside organisations.
The RFS trustees generally handle donations of about $1m a year, in stark contrast to what Barber has described as “a f..kload of money”.
The RFS has declined to comment on the issue over the past few days. Barber has also been coy, telling her Instagram followers on Thursday: “I have had some pretty long and pretty boring conversations with fancy people at PayPal, Facebook and the RFS, and I can tell you now, your money is getting moving.
“We are moving it, people. And Facebook and PayPal aren’t taking any of (the money).”
A spokesman for PayPal told The Weekend Australian on Friday night that the company was holding on to the money at this stage only to allow the RFS to resolve the “challenges they are encountering”.
He said PayPal had already distributed “millions” of dollars to other bushfire fundraisers after waiving the usual 15- to 60-day wait because of the “exceptional circumstances of (the) bushfires”.
He said the near $50m donation posed a “unique” challenge for the RFS, and PayPal had agreed to wait until it had resolved the issue.
“Our priority is to honour the donors’ wishes,” the spokesman said.
“They (the RFS) are working through the challenges they are encountering, and the moment they have a solution we are ready.
“We are very mindful they have a day job, a massive day job.
“We just don’t want to make things any harder for them.”
Barber has continued to promote her bushfire fundraiser, appearing as MC alongside celebrities Chris Hemsworth and his brother Liam at the Make It Rain: Fund the Firies 2020 fundraiser at the Beach Hotel in Byron Bay on NSW’s north coast.
Barber shared an Instagram video of herself playing the tambourine to Are You Going to be My Girl? performed by members of Jet and Spiderbait.
Proceeds from the event, held on Wednesday and Thursday, will benefit the NSW RFS Northern Rivers and Far North Coast brigades.
On Tuesday, the 36-year-old Thor star announced that he had donated $1m to help relief efforts and encouraged others to “dig deep” and help in any way that they could.
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