Celeste Barber was warned about choice of firefighter fund

From the start there were doubts whether the bushfire heroes and victims would ever see a cent of the $51m raised by the comedian.

Comedian Celeste Barber charmed the world into donating a staggering $52m during Australia’s summer bushfire crisis, far eclipsing every Facebook fundraiser before it.

But from the start there were warning signs that the hero fireys and bushfire victims the donors thought they were helping were unlikely to see a cent of it.

Those warnings were sounded, gently at first, by a small gang of strangers who had banded together ­online after the fundraiser was launched on January 3.

The group — calling itself the #fundraiserfail gang — repeatedly tried to warn Barber and her supporters over the next 14 days that her charity of choice, the RFS fund, could never deliver what donors were hoping for.

They pointed out that under its trust fund conditions, it would be prohibited from spending the funds on anything other than fire equipment, training and, at a pinch, ceremonial medals.

Unless she shut down the link, and rediverted to other charities, they warned, the ever-growing millions would be trapped, forever, in the RFS trust fund.

Barber herself posted the RFS trust conditions on her “This is Terrifying” Facebook donations page on January 4 — a day after she launched the fundraiser — circling it under the headline “this is where your millions of dollars are going”.

By January 5, donations had ­almost topped $30m and were flowing in at the phenomenal rate of $10,000 an hour.

Barber posted a video message to her 6.5 million Instagram followers lashing out at those who had questioned where the money was going.

“It seems raising a f. k-tonne of money comes with a f. k-tonne of people telling you what you should do with it,” she declared.

She then gave her personal guarantee that all the donations to the RFS would be “distributed out” from there.

“I’m going to make sure that Victoria gets some, that South Australia gets some, also families of people who have died in these fires, the wildlife,” she said.

She also added that she was in discussions “with fancy people in fancy RFS land, and we will sort it out”. “Why raise this money if it’s not going to go to the people who absolutely need it?” she asked.

Barber’s apparent failure to understand she had no legal say about how the RFS could spend the donations so alarmed the #fundraiserfail group that its founding member, Melbourne telecommunications manager Nathan Clark, sent direct messages to Barber, her husband and the RFS trustees on January 6.

Mr Clark said while Barber never got back to him, his post kicked off the debate on Facebook’s charity donations page as he and other members of the #fundraiserfail group tried to warn donors that Barber’s fundraiser was “cooked”.

A friend of Mr Clark and fellow #funderaiserfail poster, Jason Askew, said: “As people found out and realised the money was not going to be used the way they had intended, they were devastated.”

Barber’s followers turned on the #fundraiserfail posters, lampooning them as ­Barber haters. It all came to a head, Mr Askew said, on January 16. A #fundraiserfail member called Mandy Jane posted a link for donors who wanted to claim their money back. Barber hit back, replying under her married name, Celeste Robin.

“Mandy stop it,” she warned. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Stop it. This is bigger than you, bigger than me.”

Later, Barber appeared highly agitated in a video on Instagram, calling the #fundraiserfail posters “dickheads” and “trolls”.

“Hi team … those, what are they called? Dickheads online, bugger off … don’t troll a fundraiser page. We did a really crazy thing raising this money. Are you kidding? I’m on a bloody mural in Melbourne, thank you very much. I’m hosting a gig with Queen and Farnsie!!”

The next day, Barber closed down her fundraiser.

“The donations had gone down to a dribble; we stopped her,” Mr Askew said.

Late last week the RFS finally confirmed it was so paralysed by its legal obligations under the trust fund it now plans to go to the NSW Supreme Court to get “clarity” on what its options are.

Barber, “politely declined” to comment to The Australian on Friday, insisting she would only be communicating directly with her followers.

Additional reporting: Lachlan Moffet Gray