Millie Phillips: Jewish philanthropist’s multimillion-dollar estate given green light to become Jewish foundation

The final will of mining tycoon Millie Phillips has been executed by the courts, diverting much of her $62m estate to fund a charitable foundation combating anti-Semitism in Australia.

Australian businesswoman Millie Phillips in London in 1980. Picture: The Sunday Times

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A Supreme Court judge has given the green light to a trust left by multi-millionaire philanthropist Millie Phillips to promote Jewish pride, declaring Australian Jews are “in need of protection” and anti-Semitism must be eliminated.

Judge James Hmelnitsky late last week ruled a portion of the reported $62m estate of Phillips, once Australia’s richest woman, would be used as a charitable trust to help galvanise a “vulnerable section of the community” in circumstances where Jewish Australians are “under threat”.

“The evidence demonstrates that there is an acute social need to combat anti-Semitism, not just for the benefit of the Jewish community but the Australian community as a whole,” he wrote.

“So far as the Jewish community is concerned, there is a profound interest in combating anti-Semitism and seeking to eliminate it. The evidence shows that the Jewish community is a vulnerable group in need of protection.”

The former chair of the International Mining Corporation, known widely as “the Nickel Queen”, died in 2021, after spending three years in a nursing home following a stroke.

Having escaped the Holocaust, she dedicated her time to supporting Israel, the Jewish people and other community charities.

In her will, Phillips wished to see a portion of her large estate dedicated to “promote and disseminate awareness of the State of Israel and its accomplishments” to “ensure the continuity of any vibrant Jewish community” and to “combat and confront anti-Semitism in Australia”.

Justice Hmelnitsky was tasked with approving the establishment of a charitable trust in Phillips’ name, known as the Northfield Foundation. He was required to ensure the terms of the trust reflected Phillips’ “charitable intentions” and that those intentions were “charitable purposes in the legal sense”.

Executor of the will Peter Philippsohn proposed a draft list of 20 terms for the trust which reflected the intentions of Phillips.

Millie Phillips and her grandson Anthony Small in Israel in 2015.

He argued there had been “an alarming increase” in the number of anti-Semitic incidents since Hamas’s attack on Israel on ­October 7, 2023.

“He also referred to the results of a survey conducted by Dr Adina Bankier-Karp and Dr David Graham of the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation at Monash University, published in April 2024,” Justice Hmelnitsky wrote in his judgment.

“The aim of that survey was to carry out an empirical assessment of the impact of the current conflict between Israel and Hamas on Jewish people in Australia.

“They reported an unprecedented level of concern about anti-Semitism in the Australian Jewish community over this period. They also found that many Jews have felt the need to hide their Jewish identity in public. They found that most Jewish people in Australia feel a very strong emotional attachment to Israel.”

Mr Philippsohn said the trust should have an express term to combat the Boycott Divestment Sanctions campaign, claiming the movement is “fundamentally anti-Semitic”.

“The first plaintiff gave evidence that much of the Australian Jewish community views the BDS movement as engaging in the spread of misinformation about the geopolitical situation in Israel in a manner that incites discrimination and hatred against Jews, both in Israel and in Australia,” the judgment reads.

But Justice Hmelnitsky said it was “difficult to conclude” the desire to combat BDS was exclusively charitable, unless it could be said that all activities of the BDS movement “are and will be necessarily anti-Semitic in all ­respects”.

He also queried a term stating that the trust would “ensure the physical and existential security of the State of Israel including protection of its institutions and its digital assets, digital devices and digital accounts”, saying he could not conclude the term was charitable in the legal sense.

Once those two terms are removed, Justice Hmelnitsky will make orders approving the scheme.

Phillips’ family went to war over her unsigned will due to a dispute with her son Robert over a property in Bronte, according to a 2019 succession ruling that occurred after Phillips’ stroke, which left the pair with “no relationship”. She left him nothing, instead giving $1m to each of his five children.

Her daughter Sharonne was left with $5m, but their relationship was also not without challenges. Relations became strained after her children in 2017 discovered Phillips had secretly transferred their deceased sister Lynette’s remains from Sydney to a cemetery in Israel.