Another legacy of pandemic: war families threatened by shrinking cash flow

Selling Legacy House in Brisbane was the toughest call CEO and returned soldier Brendan Cox had to make since leaving the Army.

Legacy CEO Brendan Cox outside Legacy House in South Brisbane, which sold last week for $6m.

Selling Legacy House in Brisbane was the toughest call chief executive and returned soldier Brendan Cox had to make since leaving the Australian Army, but COVID-19 left him no choice.

More than 6500 war widows and dependants ranging in age from 10 to 100 rely on Legacy’s big Brisbane club and it could either keep the beloved headquarters or slash the help it gave them.

A no-brainer, really — so the property went in a $6m deal that settled last Friday, a prime example of the extreme measures community and welfare groups nationwide are taking to stay afloat during the pandemic.

Like most of them, Brisbane Legacy’s income has been shredded by the public health emer­gency. Instead of earning a budgeted $200,000 from its annual Anzac Day appeal in April, the club reaped barely $1200, punching a hole in its already-stretched finances.

With the year’s remaining cash drives in doubt — Mr Cox can’t be sure Legacy Week leading into Father’s Day on September 6 will go ahead, along with the ­Remembrance Day appeal on ­November 11 — the operation was set to lose up to 90 per cent of its annual income. Something had to give.

“From a mission purpose point of view it

Member for South Brisbane Jackie Trad speaks to Legacy chief executive Brendan Cox at West End Coffee House in Brisbane’s West End on Friday. Picture: Claudia Baxter

was a very clear choice … we could continue doing the work we do or hang on to this place,” the retired lieutenant colonel told The Australian.

“Knowing that the ladies, our war widows, had so many fond memories of Legacy House we knew they were going to take it personally. They are very attached to the bricks and mortar.

“But they understood it came down to maintaining services and that meant cash flow.”

COVID-19 couldn’t have struck at a worse time. The Brisbane club had just taken over struggling Legacy branches in Rockhampton and Hervey Bay, adding hundreds of dependants to its books at a time when the economy was shutting down. The chapter’s finances were pushed into the red.

Half the sale will go to a new headquarters within 8km radius of the CBD and with public transport access equal to the site in fashionable South Brisbane, while the $3m balance will be ploughed into the organisation’s good works.

This covers everything from paying school fees to all manner of financial and practical assistance for the dependants of deceased or incapacitated military personnel. Legacy has even stepped in with legal advice to extricate widows from battles with aggressive neighbours.

For Mr Cox, 50, it’s intensely personal business.

He served on secondment to the British army in the Bosnia conflict zone in the late 1990s, completed two tours of duty in East Timor and ended his career in khaki as mentor to an Afghan general in war-torn Kandahar province.

“If I had taken a wrong step in Afghanistan or on one of the tours, I knew my family would be looked after … Legacy was that insurance policy that gave me emotional ­licence to focus on what I was doing in operations,” he said.

While the state government had propped up the eight Legacy clubs in Queensland with a $1m COVID-19 bailout, thanks in part to the intervention of local MP and former deputy premier Jackie Trad, Mr Cox said the property deal would set up the Brisbane branch for the long haul.

“We are at a real point of history,” he said. “If we invest wisely we can rise with the market.”