Brendan Nelson defends approach to Chau Chak Wing

War memorial director Brendan Nelson has defended his decision to pursue donations of $560,000 from Chau Chak Wing.

Chau Chak Wing, left, with Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop and Australian War Memorial director Brendan Nelson.

Australian War Memorial director Brendan Nelson has defended his decision to pursue donations of $560,000 from the Australian-Chinese businessman accused of funding the bribery of a UN official, saying Chau Chak Wing was among several high-wealth individuals approached for funds.

Liberal MP Andrew Hastie last week named Mr Chau in parliament as the alleged co-conspirator codenamed CC-3 by the FBI, and accused of having close links with the Chinese Communist Party.

Dr Nelson told a Senate estimates hearing he had recently briefed Veterans’ Affairs Minister Darren Chester about the donations following media reports.

“In 2013 I was trying to do what I could to raise funds to support the Australian War Memorial and things we would like to do, would need to do, but simply couldn’t ­afford or justify within our existing budget,” Dr Nelson said.

“I wrote to a number of high-wealth individuals and Dr Chau Chak Wing was one of them.

“I had had dealings with him professionally in my political life, as I suspect others here have, and he had a reputation, or has a reputation, for philanthropy, and I thought, ‘Well he might be prepared to support us.’

“I wrote to a number of others, by the way, and didn’t even get a reply. That’s another matter.”

Dr Nelson said he had written to Dr Chau in April 2013, and subsequently taken the billionaire and his family on a tour of the war memorial.

“I took them through the commemorative area, I took them through the galleries — I particularly pointed out to him and his family the Chinese-Australians who are on the roll of honour, the stories that are told of Chinese-Australians through the galleries, as you would expect, and so then I subsequently wrote to him, I think about mid-year 2013, with the proposal for $60,000,” Dr Nelson said.

The $60,000 funded an Anzac diversity project designed to explain the role non-English speaking servicemen and women, including indigenous people, had played in World War I.

Dr Nelson said he had subsequently asked Dr Chau for $500,000 for a new media centre, which is now known as the Kingold Education and Media Centre after Dr Chau’s company.

The AWM director was photographed with Dr Chau and his family at the memorial on September 16, 2015.

In that same year, ASIO director-general Duncan Lewis secretly briefed top administrative officials from the Labor, Liberal and Nat­ionals parties about taking donations from Dr Chau and another Chinese-Australian billionaire.

Dr Nelson also defended the AWM’s practice of pursuing donations from defence contractors, including companies that produce munitions.

“I think these companies, by the way, have a responsibility to support the war memorial, and I worry about the ones that don’t,” he said.

“I said to the president of one large defence contractor … whose company had given us a small amount of money two years earlier, I said, ‘Thank you’, and he said, ‘That’s terrific. We’re very supportive of the war memorial.’

“I said ‘Yeah, but it’s pathetic’, and then I reminded him of how much business in the defence space and in the civilian space that his company had received from Australia, so as a consequence that particular company is now very supportive of the memorial, and as a result of that others have come on board as well.”

Dr Nelson said all donations were detailed in the AWM’s annual report, listing a $375,000 ­donation from Lockheed Martin and $450,000 from Leidos as current significant pledges.