John Curtin Foundation
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Formed in Perth, Western Australia in October 1984, the John Curtin Foundation was a fundraising organisation for the Australian Labor Party which attracted the sponsorship of a powerful group of wealthy businessmen, placing them in a privileged circle with direct access to both the Australian prime minister Bob Hawke and the state premier Brian Burke. The foundation was an early step to the creation of a unique network of corporate and government co-operation which was dubbed WA Inc by news media. Its two vice-patrons were Kim Beazley, senior, a former Whitlam government minister, and Mick Michael, an electrical contractor and former lord mayor of Perth.[1]: p.80 The executive-government patronage of business was similar to Peronism in Argentina.[1]: p.82 It caused multiple financial disasters, leading to a royal commission which exposed and condemned the corruption.
In October 1984, 21 months after Brian Burke became the first of a line of Western Australian Labor premiers, Bob Hawke, himself having been in the prime minister's job for only 20 months, hosted a lunch for the new foundation.
It was the brainchild of Laurie Connell, Labor strategist Jack Walsh and Burke, and named after Hawke's wartime political hero John Curtin. [As well as Alan Bond and Laurie Connell,] Hawke also mingled with John Roberts, the hard-as-a-hammer builder who created the giant Multiplex corporation, the philanthropic James McCusker, founder of the Town and Country building society, Ernest Lee-Steere, the pastoralist, racehorse owner and Perth lord mayor, prominent businessman Kevin Parry and Ric Stowe, Australia's most reclusive billionaire, of Griffin Coal fame.[2]
Others were timber entrepreneur Denis Cullity, prominent Catholic businessman John Horgan, and bookmaker Rod Evans, who was also a publican and substantial Perth property owner.
[In evidence to the WA Inc Royal Commission,] Connell alleged that Hawke dropped a proposed gold tax after Connell and various Perth high-flyers donated $250,000 each to Labor during an infamous lunch in Brian Burke's office in 1987 – a claim the former PM vigorously denied. Burke's loyalty to those who had donated their efforts (and money) to Labor was no less fervent. Taking the John Curtin Foundation axiom to the next level, Burke created the West[ern] Australian Development Corporation and installed fellow Catholic John Horgan (pictured second from left, top) on $800,000 a year, an extraordinary figure for a public servant not only then but now.[2]