Peter Hollingworth costs public millions, angering abuse survivors

Abuse survivors are furious as it’s revealed Peter Hollingworth’s taxpayer funded pension and costs have hit $700K a year.

Former Governor-General and Archbishop of Brisbane Peter Hollingworth with his wife Ann. Picture: David Geraghty/The Australian

Former governor-general Peter Hollingworth has received millions of dollars of taxpayer support for staff, accommodation, travel and his pension since he was forced to stand down in 2003 over his handling of sex abuse complaints in the Anglican Church.

Freedom of Information documents show it is now costing taxpayers close to $700,000 a year to fund Dr Hollingworth’s existence, including more than $315,000 a year to run his office, hire staff and pay for travel and communications.

The use of taxpayers’ money in this way has been blasted by abuse survivors, who say ­Anthony Albanese should end the funding because of the findings of the child sex royal commission and the history of the mishandling of abuse cases when Dr Hollingworth was archbishop of Brisbane between 1989 and 2001.

Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet documents show nearly $170,000 was paid for Dr Hollingworth’s office accommodation in 2020-21, up from $150,000 four years earlier.

His staff costs in 2020-21 were nearly $120,000 and he received benefits for travel, communi­cations and vehicle costs.

The total bill for Dr Hollingworth’s expenses from 2016-17 to the end of last financial year was more than $1.5m.

This did not include his pension of about $365,000 a year, which is calculated at 60 per cent of the salary of the Chief Justice of the High Court.

The same deal is provided to other former governors-general.

Chris Goddard, a global expert on the abuse issue, said Dr Hollingworth had a poor record of handling abuse cases and the money he was receiving each year should be compared with the payments made to victims.

 

Professor Goddard said the remuneration was despite Dr Hollingworth spending less than two years of a five-year term in the job as governor-general.

“And he gets all the continuing allowances as well,” he said.

“It’s not just an extraordinary power imbalance, it’s a disgrace.”

Survivor Beth Heinrich, who has complained to the Anglican Church’s Victorian inquiry into whether Dr Hollingworth should be defrocked over his handling of abuse cases, said the former ­governor-general should never have been promoted by the then ­Coalition government.

“With his history of failings in Brisbane, he should never had been made governor-general in the first place,” Ms Heinrich said.

Sexual abuse victim Beth Heinrich at her home in Benalla. Picture: Aaron Francis/The Australian

Another complainant against Dr Hollingworth said: “Being in holy orders is not a right, it is a privilege for which someone must prove themselves worthy.’’

In 2003, an Anglican Church inquiry found Dr Hollingworth had allowed a known paedophile to remain a priest and described his action as untenable.

In 2017, the sex abuse royal commission found that Dr ­Hollingworth had made a ­“serious error of judgment” for ­allowing a rector who admitted to abusing a child to continue in the ministry.

The Anglican investigative body Kooyoora is inching closer to deciding whether Dr ­Hollingworth, 87, should be stripped of holy orders – that is, defrocked – after several ­complaints about his conduct while he was archbishop of Brisbane in the late 1980s and 90s and his comments as governor-­general.

Multiple victims of church abuse – like Ms Heinrich, who was abused at a hostel as a teenager in the 1950s by an Anglican minister – are highly critical of Dr Hollingworth.

Her victim impact statement to the current Victorian inquiry into Dr Hollingworth is a shattering account of how she was groomed and then abused from the age of 14 in NSW.

Dr Hollingworth’s reputation was battered in 2002 when he falsely suggested Ms Heinrich had instigated sex with disgraced Anglican minister Donald Shearman.

Dr Hollingworth’s office did not respond on Friday.