This is part seven in a series. For the full series, go here.
Oran Park on Sydney’s western fringe is solid Labor territory, so what would it take to get the cream of the Morrison government to gather out there, 60 kilometres from the CBD, on a pre-COVID summer’s day early last year with all the cost and logistics involved?
The event that drew Prime Minister Scott Morrison with his wife, Jenny, the then NDIS minister, Stuart Robert, and the Foreign Affairs Minister, Marise Payne — not to mention assorted hangers-on — was the opening of a pilot design home for people with a disability.
Most events are lucky to get the endorsement of one government minister. But three? Including the PM?
In this case it wasn’t pork-barrelling. The event brought together some of the most important connections in Morrison’s private world — although none of them was publicly declared.
The federal government provides major incentives to build the stock of specialist disability accommodation (SDA) under the NDIS. So who was so deserving of the prime ministerial imprimatur?
Disability accommodation royalty
The company behind the Oran Park development is DPN Casa Capace, which has its headquarters five minutes’ drive from Morrison’s Cronulla electorate office in Sydney.
A founding partner of DPN, Lloyd Thomas, is well known to the PM. He is a board member of Morrison’s church, Horizon, the Pentecostal church which was the scene of Morrison’s hand-thrusting ecstasy during the 2019 election campaign.
DPN’s non-executive director, Ian Maynard, is also well-known to Morrison. He is a senior figure in the Australian Christian Churches (ACC) umbrella organisation which covers Australia’s Pentecostal churches. He was also on the board of Hope Services, an outreach organisation Hope Pentecostal church in Brisbane. Hope’s pastor, Wayne Alcorn, has been national president of the ACC for more than a decade and one of the movement’s most powerful figures in Queensland. Completing the scene was Robert, also a committed Pentecostal Christian from Queensland.
More than $40 million for DPN’s work has come from the Brightlight Group, formed out of Christian Super Impact investing. Christian Super has $2 billion under management and its work is underpinned by a Christian statement of faith. It lists the Australia Christian Church as a lead sponsor.
Connections? You bet.
Maynard is a former deputy CEO of the National Disability Insurance Agency. He was also on the board of Scripture Union Queensland Pty Ltd. He now sits atop the industry body which has formed around the Specialist Disability Accommodation sector.
There was nothing in Morrison’s official speech that day that betrayed his or Robert’s myriad private connections to the company. For the casual observer — and the assembled media — an Australian company was getting the prime ministerial tick of approval for no reason other than for its work.
DPN Casa Capace has promoted its Oran Park prototype as the first stage of a total $1 billion project which aims to construct 700 homes over five years. It projected that its dwellings would house 3500 people with disabilities.
Talk on the day was of providing choice and quality housing for people with a disability who have long suffered at times brutal conditions in group homes. But SDA is also the ultimate profit-from-compassion industry, with big money to be made.
Disability advocate Sam Connor warned about the lack of transparency when it comes to government policy.
“Many Australians are increasingly convinced that there may be a privileging of private business interests over the public good in the policymaking process,” he told Crikey. She was concerned about “places like DPN” which were building “only four- to 10-bedroom accommodation”.
“People with a disability rely heavily on the outcomes of public policy. If our collective interests are not prioritised over that of government or big business, we have the most to lose.
“We should not be forced into institutions because the disability housing industry is lucrative. We shouldn’t be deprived of choice because of the private interests of some subset of a politically powerful industry. We should know that government is trustworthy, above reproach and, above all, working in our best interests.”
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