Queen’s birthday honours: Gretel Packer honoured for contribution to the arts

Gretel Packer is reportedly thrilled to be receiving her AM in recognition of her commitment to the visual and performing arts.

Gretel Packer has joined the Queen’s Birthday honours list. Picture: Alex Coppel.

It says something about how much Gretel Packer jealously guards her privacy that not even the honour of being appointed a Member of the Order of Australia could tempt her into giving a media interview.

But those close to one of the lowest-profile members of the billionaire Packer family say she has described it as a “wonderful honour” and while she is thrilled to be receiving her AM in recognition of her commitment to the visual and performing arts and to conservation, she is “quite overwhelmed”.

Ms Packer has a fortune estimated at $1.27bn in The List, The Australian’s list of the nation’s 250 richest people, after she and her much higher-profile brother, James, agreed in March 2018 on a final settlement of the will of their father, media mogul Kerry Packer.

The first agreement between the siblings, struck in September 2015, was reportedly worth $1.25bn and included a lump sum of more than $200m. The final agreement gave Ms Packer total ownership of the family’s Ellerston pastoral property in the NSW Hunter Valley,

She is now active on a range of philanthropic and arts community boards including the Art Gallery of NSW Board of Trustees and the Sydney Theatre Company Foundation, while she is also a founding patron of the Taronga Zoo Conservation Science Initiative and a founding governor of the Taronga Zoo Foundation.

In July 2014, the Packer family’s philanthropic foundation and the philanthropic arm of James Packer’s Crown Resorts created a $200m National Philanthropic Fund, a joint 10-year charitable commitment to the community.

In less than six years the Crown Resorts Foundation and the Packer Family Foundation — Ms Packer is chair of the advisory board of the former and chair of the latter — have provided close to $105m through 350 grants to charitable and not-for-profit organisations.

The foundations’ $30m Western Sydney Arts Initiative was the largest allocation of private philanthropic funding for a western Sydney arts organisation, while it has also provided an ­additional $30m to Sydney arts ­institutions such as the Sydney Theatre Company and the ­Museum of Contemporary Art.

Just last week it was reported that Ms Packer and the Packer Family Foundation had joined other philanthropists to pledge $240,000 to support Sydney’s embattled Carriageworks, the largest multi-arts centre in Australia.

The Packer Family Foundation still continues the family’s support of health organisations such as the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Centre and St Vincent’s Hospital.