Labor’s Tony Burke denies double standard on $2.4m grant

The former Labor environment minister bought a bush block two years after approving $2.4m for a green group to restore ­adjacent wilderness area.

Then Labor environment minister Tony Burke with then Environment Tasmania head Phill Pullinger in 2014.

Labor frontbencher and former environment minister Tony Burke bought a Tasmanian bush block two years after approving $2.4 million for a green group to restore the ­adjacent wilderness area and ­upgrade a walking track 300m from his property.

Two grants totalling $2.4m, provided to Environment Tasmania in 2013, have come to light as Mr Burke attacks the Turnbull government for a $444m grant to the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, which was made without a tender process.

As Mr Burke questions a lack of due process in relation to the money provided to the foundation, parallels have been drawn with the grants he made to Environment Tasmania. On July 24, 2013, he gave the not-for-profit organisation $1,361,250 for “carbon pollution reduction land sector initiatives”, and $1,089,000 for “sustainable management of natural resources and the environment”.

Environment Tasmania, which had no experience in forest restoration, secured the funding despite the fiscal responsibility for restoring former forestry harvesting areas resting with state-owned Forestry Tasmania. The organisation subsequently paid Forestry Tasmania $582,135 to complete the restoration work.

In 2014, the Australian Nat­ional Audit Office completed a ­report on the administration of the Biodiversity Fund Program through which the Environment Tasmania funding was provided.

“Several applicants in the ­Investing in Tasmania’s Native Forests funding round have ­informed the ANAO that, in their view, the funding of a project outside of the established competitive, merit-based process did not represent a transparent, accountable and equitable process,” it found. “The department subsequently informed the ANAO that the option of a discretionary grant was pursued as ‘the timing for this grant was necessary to meet pressing government priorities and it was therefore assessed as a one-off/ad hoc grant’.

“While organisations are entitled to seek funding directly from ministers, and it is within the authority of ministers to approve the awarding of funding, the negative reaction from some stakeholders to this decision underlines why merit-based approaches are commonly adopted by government.”

Mr Burke has been on a number of bushwalks with former ­Environment Tasmania director Phill Pullinger. Both say their relationship is ­purely professional.

Bill Shorten’s Leader of the House said he had never met Dr Pullinger outside of work. “I hold the environment portfolio. You’ll find photographs of me with environmentalists,” Mr Burke said.

He added that he was not aware of the Jackeys Marsh property when he was minister, and bought it in 2015 when he was a member of the opposition.

The property, southwest of Launceston, abuts the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area, which Mr Burke extended as minister in 2013.

Asked whether there were similarities between the Environment Tasmania grant and the Great Barrier Reef Foundation grant, Mr Burke said it was “hard to imagine a more different process”. “We had applications and the department assessed them and I followed departmental advice. In the case of the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, the government didn’t even allow the public service in the room,” he said.

Dr Pullinger said of Mr Burke: “I met him on multiple occasions in his role as minister … I took him on walks into … rainforest that we were proposing to get protected.”