Dear reader, you may be aware we’ve ‘sort of kind of’ tried to draw a very pallid half-light upon just some of the emergent “criminal” trends within our society. After some thoughtful consideration over a game of vignt-et-un and Sazerac at the Boston Club with our celebrated deep-southern correspondent G.T. (Gran Tourismo) Beauregard it was decided that from amongst all the front runners, (Joe Hockey’s elevation as Washington ambassador, The splendid police complex at Yuendemu, Wadeye and Arlparra, 38.6 million dollars and counting, and our celebrated frontrunners in stealing public assets) the grand prize should go to a group of Queenslanders.
No! They’re not those the responsible for pushing egregiously huge and environmentally devastating coal mine projects on future generations, (though they should be somewhere up the very top with Chevron, for giving so little of their wealth back to the society that allegedly supports them), but a family concern, that was quite honest and transparent in their intentions. One can only hope after their subsequent denouement at the the hands of the ATO, other charities, (foremost the Church of Scientology) would also fail the “pub- test”. But these are testing times, and we leave it to you, our dedicated and astute readership, to decide for yourselves, and offer the inducement of the gift of the recently released Christopher Pyne and Corey Bernardii autobiographies as a Christmas stocking filler, if you can find us a better one.
The following extract appeared in last weeks Fairfax newspapers. And unusually for current news items, It made us laugh! We begin with the headline;
‘Charity’ that spent $1m on luxury cars, holidays and gambling loses tax-free status! (Alana Schetzer Published: November 25, 2015)
Mr Salerno. Literally, ‘packing up his troubles in his ol kit bag’. Before being undone by those ‘peck sniffs’ in the Tax Office.
‘A so-called charity that spent more than $1 million on luxury cars, overseas jaunts and gambling in the name of research has lost its appeal to keep its tax-free charitable status.
Mrs Salerno’s pink Rolls Royce ‘FAB 1’, and chauffeur, (Christopher Morris) on a fact-finding tour of London.
The Federal Court struck out an appeal from The Study and Prevention of Psychological Diseases Foundation (SPED), which was fighting the Australian Tax Office over the loss of its charity tax concessions and deductible gift recipient status for its work to study the “ideal human environment”. The Brisbane-based foundation, which was founded by James Salerno Snr, purchased a Rolls-Royce for about $695,000, a $100,000 Hummer, and a $300,000 Ferrari for what it claimed was research.
Mr Salerno. Actively engaged in research somewhere in the outback.
Other costs include travelling to India to attend a wedding and gambling as part of research into “understanding thought processes and addictive behaviour from engagement in games of chance”. In the late 1990s, Mr Salerno lived for three months with family members and a group of other volunteers in a remote part of Western Australia, as part of an experiment on the “ideal human environment”. The foundation’s membership was stacked by members of Mr Salerno ‘s family, who paid their entire salaries into the foundation and therefore paid no income tax. Their everyday living expenses, such as housing, food and travel, were paid for by the foundation. The court upheld an earlier decision by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, which concluded the foundation was “neither a charitable institution nor a health promotion charity”. The tribunal was scathing of the foundation in its decision, saying “nothing has made its way into, or even been submitted to, any medical or other journal”. Federal Court Justice Andrew Greenwood said in his ruling that SPED’s research only had educational value to “a very limited class of people”. “The research has little or no educational value to the community and, in any event, if benefits were produced by the research, those benefits were not available to the public or a sufficiently significant section of the public,” he said.
A spokeswoman for the Australian Tax Office told Fairfax Media: “The decision helps protect the integrity of the not-for-profit sector by ensuring charity tax concessions are accessed only by those entitled to do so. “SPED could not be reached for comment.
A disconsolate Minister Pyne, upon hearing that his costumes, generously lent to the Salerno family, will not be returned. Nor a promise to ride in Mrs’ Salerno’s pink Rolls Royce honoured. The pitfalls of public office.
SPED was founded to research crowded living, people who live alone, opulence and poverty across urban and regional Australia, and what effect this had on people.
So there you have it dear reader. But wait!! There’s more!! We believe another charity has drawn the effluvium of public attention upon it. And it’s an unorthodox delivery from none other than the master of spin, Shane Warne. But as Australia’s greatest living sports-person we can’t go there. Respect has its price, so we’ve been told.