Anglican Church shifts $40m child sex bill to taxpayers

The Anglican Church is using its embattled - taxpayer-funded - aged care arm Anglicare Sydney to pay out millions of dollars a year in church child sex abuse claims. It can be revealed the aged care giant - operator of notorious Newmarch House - has been secretly laden with almost $40 million in historic abuse liabilities. Anglicare Sydney has pointed to its “dire” financial position as the reason why it is delivering sub-standard aged care services - and why it deserves even more government cash. Anthony Klan investigates…


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The Anglican Church is using its embattled - taxpayer-funded - aged care arm Anglicare Sydney to pay out millions of dollars a year in church child sex abuse claims. It can be revealed the aged care giant - operator of notorious Newmarch House - has been secretly laden with almost $40 million in historic abuse liabilities. Anglicare Sydney has pointed to its “dire” financial position as the reason why it is delivering sub-standard aged care services - and why it deserves even more government cash. Anthony Klan investigates…

EXCLUSIVE 

ANTHONY KLAN

SPECIAL INVESTIGATION

The Anglican Church is using tens of millions of dollars it receives from taxpayers for aged care services to instead cover the church’s historic child sexual abuse claims.

Investigations reveal the church is using money from Anglicare Sydney, one of the nation’s biggest aged care operators, to pay child sex abuse claims and house associated liabilities worth over $39 million - protecting the church itself from exposure.

In 2016 the Anglican Church Sydney Diocese shifted all of its historical child sex abuse liabilities into the federally-funded Anglicare Sydney, as part of an internal restructure it called a “merger”.

Those abuse liabilities were initially recorded as $21.35m. In 2020 - inexplicably - the church almost doubled that figure, increasing it by $18.9m.

Anglicare Sydney is “economically dependent on the Federal Government”, its annual reports state.

Last financial year alone Anglicare Sydney received $248.4m in government aged care funding, around two-thirds of its revenue.

Institutionalised, systemic abuse by the Anglican Church spans back to the 1800s and the liabilities transferred to aged care giant Anglicare Sydney include horrific crimes inflicted at some of Australia’s most notorious children’s homes and orphanages.

The Anglican Church Sydney Diocese ran multiple facilities that were for many decades the scenes of child rape, physical and emotional abuse.

Among them is the Boy Charlton Home in Sydney’s Glebe, where hundreds of young boys were seriously abused over many decades - some dying from the injuries inflicted.

The Anglican Church Sydney Diocese is both the church’s biggest and most “conservative” - making headlines for donating $1m to the “no” campaign against marriage equality and for telling people to “leave” if they believed the church should support same-sex marriage.

The Sydney Diocese is one of the Anglican Church’s wealthiest, comprised of “over than 400 churches” in the Greater Sydney area, covering much of the NSW South Coast, up to Newcastle in the north and the Blue Mountains and Lithgow in the west.

The intricate scheme hiving-off the Anglican Church’s historic child sex abuse liabilities to the new aged care entity in 2016 was directly overseen and approved by long-time Archbishop of Sydney Glenn Davies, as well as by the entire Sydney Diocese governing body.

““The scheme was directly overseen and approved by long-time Archbishop of Sydney Glenn Davies””

Anglicare Sydney is the operator of Newmarch House, where 19 aged care residents died after Covid-19 swept through the facility in 2020, in what was at the time the nation’s deadliest outbreak.

Anglicare Sydney, which operates 23 aged care facilities home to over 2,000 residents, has publicly admitted delivering sub-standard aged care - which it blames on a lack of government funding.

It latest annual report says Anglicare Sydney is “one of the largest providers of aged care services in the country” but is being “significantly impacted by a funding system” that has “not been at the level required to sustain the levels of care that the community expects”.

To date, Anglicare Sydney has been used to pay out $7.6m of Anglican Church child sex abuse claims.

“To date, Anglicare Sydney has been used to pay out $7.6m of Anglican Church child sex abuse claims”

Last year Anglicare Sydney announced its financial situation was “dire” and that it would slash 125 aged care jobs to save “$7m to $7.5m” annually due to a lack of government funding.

“That is not the way we want to go, but if we want to stay viable - able to operate - there is very little else,” Anglicare’s then CEO Grant Millard told a NSW parliamentary inquiry.

Anglicare Sydney’s total assets have exploded in recent years on the back of huge taxpayer subsidies. Source: Anglicare Sydney. Graphic: The Klaxon

Anglicare Sydney’s board and executives have pointed to the group’s 2019-2020 financial accounts as evidence of its alleged “dire” financial position.

Yet 2019-20 was when Anglicare Sydney was inexplicably laden with the additional $19.1m in child sex abuse liabilities, which accounts for much of its poor performance.

Anglicare Sydney’s reports state the Anglican Church child abuse liability is “held at fair value” and “calculated with reference to future expected payments”.

No explanation is given why the liability surged from $18.9m to $35.2m in the 2019-20.

Anglicare’s claims of facing a “dire” financial situation are despite it receiving an eve-watering $1.5 billion in tax payer funds in the past seven years alone.

As previously revealed by The Klaxon, the group’s assets, fuelled by massive taxpayer funding, had ballooned to $2.035bn by mid-2020.

The Anglican Church has its roots in Australia dating back to white-settlement in 1788, although it was called the Church of England until 1981.

Archbishop 

The 2016 “merger” creating Anglicare Sydney was orchestrated at the top levels of the Sydney Diocese, and included the close oversight of long-time Sydney Archbishop, Glenn Davies.

(Davies was Sydney Archbishop from 2013 until March last year when he retired having reached the time limit the church sets for the position. He was replaced by Kanishka Raffel, the Anglican Church’s Dean of Sydney since 2015.)

Both Davies and Raffel have refused to comment.

While Anglican Retirement Villages (ARV) and SAHMS each had their own CEOs and management, they were both under the full control of, and fully answerable to, the Sydney Diocese and its chief, the Archbishop of Sydney.

The “merged” Anglicare Sydney is also under the full control of the Sydney Diocese, headed by the Archbishop of Sydney.

The Sydney Diocese is controlled by a “Synod” headed by the Archbishop of Sydney.

“Six Board members (three clergy, including at least one rector, and three lay persons) are elected by the Synod of the Diocese of Sydney, three Board members are appointed by the Archbishop and two Board members are appointed by the Board,” Anglicare Sydney’s annual report states.

In 2016 the Anglican Church created Anglicare Sydney in what it called a “merger” between two of its entities - Anglican Retirement Villages (ARV) and the Sydney Anglican Home Mission Society (SAHMS).

It was ostensibly to give the church more “scale” in the aged care sector - in fact it saw tens of millions of dollars of its historic child sex abuse liabilities hived-off to its (taxpayer-funded) aged care arm.

Anglican Retirement Villages (ARV) was created in 1959 when it opened its first retirement village at Castle Hill in Sydney’s west.

The Sydney Anglican Home Mission Society (SAHMS) was created in 1856 and has operated many children’s homes and orphanages under multiple names, including Church of England Homes, The Church Society and the Home Mission Society of the Anglican Diocese of Sydney.

It’s where the child rape liabilities exist.

Despite being labelled a “merger”, SAHMS still exists in its own right, and is still fully controlled by the Sydney Diocese.

It also technically still has all its historic child sex abuse “liabilities” - except these are now covered by Anglicare Sydney.

This has been achieved by the newly-created Anglicare Sydney in 2016 providing a SAHMS with an “indemnity” against all its liabilities, “actual and contingent”.

Page 40 of its 2020-21 accounts state:

“Under the terms of the merger of ARV and Sydney Anglican Home Mission Society (SAHMS) in 2016,(Anglicare Sydney) has granted an indemnity to SAHMS in respect of the remaining liabilities of SAHMS, actual and contingent.”

““(Anglicare Sydney) has granted an indemnity to SAHMS in respect of the remaining liabilities of SAHMS, actual and contingent””

A similar statement appears in the “notes” deep in each of Anglicare Sydney’s annual reports, starting in 2017-18, its first full year of operations post “merger”.

No mention of “abuse”, or what the SAHMS “liabilities” actually relate to, is made in any of the annual reports.

 Part of p40 of Anglicare Sydney’s 2020-21 annual report. Source: Anglicare Sydney

Anglicare Sydney’s annual reports show the size of its SAHMS “indemnity” started at $21.35m on July 1, 2017. That year Anglicare Sydney paid out $1.169m in abuse claims.

It paid out $1.28m in abuse claims in 2018-19, $2.84m in 2019-20 and $3.551m in 2020-21.

The size of the SAHMS “indemnity” remained relatively constant, around $20m, until 2019-20 when it inexplicably exploded to $35.2m.

The current value of the SAHMS indemnity ($31.753m) and the payouts to date ($7.6m) means Anglicare Sydney is being used to cover $39.35m of Anglican Church child abuse liabilities.

““The indemnity to SAHMS is to cover its ongoing and historical liabilities regarding survivors of child abuse””

Details of the 2016 “merger” are set out in a document titled “2016 Special Session of Synod”.

It states the indemnity to SAHMS is to “cover its ongoing and historical liabilities” regarding “survivors of child abuse”.

It shows “initial discussions” about a potential “merger” commenced “about two years ago in 2014”.

The matter went cold until late 2015. 

In January 2016 it was decided SAHMS and ARV would “merge” with effect “from 1 July 2016”.

On 27 April 2016 Sydney Archbishop Davies held a Special Session of the Synod to formalise the merger.

Tax Haven CEO

Highly instrumental in the “merger” project was lawyer and tax-haven specialist accountant Grant Millard.

The Anglican Church appointed Millard as CEO of SAHMS in 2011.

 In 2016 it appointed him CEO of the new “merged” Anglicare Sydney.

As previously revealed, before joining the Anglican Church in 2011 Millard spent 13 years working for Coca-Cola, where he ran running international tax affairs for a global arm of confirmed global tax cheat Coca-Cola.

It was revealed that while at Coca-Cola, Millard ran a string of “shell” companies in the notorious tax havens of Luxembourg and Guernsey.

Along with Archbishop Davies, the Sydney Synod and Millard, Anglican Church documents show current Anglicare Sydney chairman, corporate lawyer Greg Hammond, was also a key player in the “merger”.

It was Hammond as Anglicare Sydney chair who oversaw the appointment of tax-haven expert Millard as Anglicare Sydney CEO.

As previously revealed, Hammond, a corporate lawyer and “corporate governance” expert, was in 2017 handpicked by Prime Minister Scott Morrison (then Federal Treasurer) to steer a financial regulation overhaul.

Hammond was the author of the so-called “Hammond Review” into non-banks, “cooperatives” and mutuals, which called for the relaxing of laws, including so as to allow them to raise funds more easily and face fewer government restrictions.

The Coalition Government responded to Hammond’s report by saying it supported all of his recommendations.

The Klaxon began revealing Millard’s tax haven past in September 2020.

Millard announced his “retirement” from Anglicare Sydney in May 2021.

Millard and Anglicare threatened The Klaxon and this reporter personally with serious legal action including an “injunction”, “costs” and demanded an “urgent takedown” of our highly-detailed first expose

We refused, noting the article was entirely accurate.

We received no response from Millard or Anglicare Sydney and all of our requests for comment since then have gone unanswered.

In November Anglicare Sydney chairman Hammond announced the appointment as CEO Simon Miller, a former executive with Boston Consulting Group.

Miller started as CEO last month.

He refused to comment.

More to come…

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Editor, Anthony Klan

Australian journalism is under threat like never before. So too is the ability for us, the public, to make informed decisions. A disintegrating media is serving to further concentrate the already vast, unhealthy, power held by a few. That power is routinely abused, its attendant responsibilities wilfully ignored, and our democracy weakened.

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Anthony Klan

Editor, The Klaxon

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