No environment officials at Turnbull meeting about $443m reef grant to tiny charity

No environment department officials were present at a meeting in which the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, and the environment minister, Josh Frydenberg, discussed a plan that led to a $443.8m grant to a small Great Barrier Reef charity.

The Great Barrier Reef Foundation has confirmed it did not
seek the $444m federal grant to help support the health of the reef.

The charity, the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, has also confirmed that its founders were wealthy businessmen and philanthropists with links to the resources industry, and one was a senior public servant in the Bjelke-Petersen government.

In hearings this week for a Senate inquiry examining how the foundation came to be awarded the funds, its managing director, Anna Marsden, said the foundation’s chairman, John Schubert, was informed there would be a budget allocation at a 9 April meeting with Turnbull, Frydenberg and the secretary of the Environment and Energy Department, Finn Pratt.

Read the story boy Lisa Cox from The Guardian - “No environment officials at Turnbull meeting about $443m reef grant to tiny charity.”