Grants to farming group associated with Angus Taylor’s brother to be reviewed
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Grants to Monaro Farming Systems, an agricultural group that includes federal MP Angus Taylor’s brother, will be reviewed by the New South Wales agriculture minister, after it was revealed a $107,000 grant was given without the group actually applying for it.
The NSW agriculture minister, Adam Marshall, told state estimates this morning he would hold an internal review and produce documents about the grants after he confirmed the Local Land Services (LLS) offered the money to MFS in 2018 but the company had not applied. The money came from the head office-controlled sustainable land management fund.
Marshall also revealed that the deputy premier, John Barilaro, had written to him asking for another grant of $70,000 for MFS in February or March 2020. It is unclear what the grant was for.
The Guardian revealed that the $107,000 grant, according to the current chair of MFS, John Murdoch, had come as “a bit of a surprise” to the company . It had been used to pay for technical work on defining what constitutes native grasslands and for a pilot of the method.
According to MFS’s 2018 annual report, the work was used to pay for work by the agronomist Stuart Burge that was then used to lobby for changes to the protections for grasslands with both the federal and state governments.
At the time, Richard Taylor, Angus Taylor’s older brother, was chair of MFS.
He was also a director and shareholder in Jam Land, while Angus Taylorand Duncan and Bronwyn Taylor (who is a state MP) have indirect interests in Jam Land through their family companies.
In 2017 and 2018 Jam Land was being investigated for illegally spraying 30 hectares of native, critically endangered grasslands near Delegate in southern NSW and was facing possible fines of up to $1m.
The company was recently found to have contravened the federal Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (EPBC Act) but was not fined. It was appealing an order to remediate the land. A state investigation was dropped soon after the clearing occurred.
“My understanding is that LLS approached MFS,” Marshall said of the $107,000 grant. “Given their credibility, their work in this space, their very strong representation of farmers in the Monaro, they were well-credentialled,” Marshall said.
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But he was unable to say how the grant had come about.
Labor’s Mick Veitch said: “I think it would be important to establish what due diligence was undertaken and to look at the mechanisms to grant these funds.”
Marshall said he was not the minister at the time , but undertook to undertake a review all grants to MFS and to produce documents and letters to the upper house of parliament.
He was unable to say how often the government made direct approaches to farming bodies like MFS offering money, but added that “LLS, like all funding bodies, was bound by public expenditure rules”.
Marshall said he had never met Angus Taylor and he had not discussed it with his fellow National party MP Bronwyn Taylor.
It was unclear what the second recent grant of $70,000 sought by Barilaro in 2020 was for and whether it had been paid.
Veitch also asked officials at the hearing if anyone had examined the link between Monaro Farming Systems and Jam Land at the time the funding was awarded.
“I think it’s pretty important that the committee be advised of what due diligence was undertaken, at the time, the approach was made to Monaro Farming Systems about their relationship with the company Jam Land,” Veitch said.
“Because, as you would appreciate, the work they’ve been engaged to undertake, as a part of their spending that $107,000, was to look at mechanisms around assessing the Monaro grasslands.
“And at that very same time the company Jam Land were in a little bit of strife over breaches of the EPBC Act relating to Monaro grasslands.”
During 2017 and 2018, the federal energy minister, Angus Taylor, approached the then environment minister, Josh Frydenberg, to discuss the native grassland protections.
A series of freedom of information requests showed he had meetings with senior departmental officials and that Frydenberg had asked his department whether it would be possible to weaken the protections, against scientific advice. Taylor has said he made no representations about the investigation itself and has repeatedly stated that he sought the meeting with departmental officials on behalf of constituents in Hume who were concerned about the grassland listing.
Both he and Frydenberg have said the meeting was focused on the “technical aspects” of the grassland listing.
Now it has emerged that technical work done to try to convince the federal government to change the law – the same law that the Taylors were being being prosecuted under – was paid for by a NSW government grant.
Burge’s work is believed to have formed the basis of Angus Taylor’s arguments to Frydenberg in 2018. It was also was sent to NSW Farmers, which used it to lobby about the stultifying effect of the federal environmental protection laws on agriculture. This led to a review chaired by Wendy Craik.