In Hillary’s term at State, wealthy crooks, influence-seekers and tyrannical governments rushed to donate millions to the Clinton Foundation, its spin-offs, Bill Clinton personally or vague combinations of all/any of them. Figuring large on the donor list, Australia’s taxpayers.
Australian governments’ $85 million aid to the Clinton Foundation is a bit surprising, given that ex-President Bill and presidential candidate Hillary are synonyms for financial and personal sleaze. That total sum was paid by both Coalition and Labor governments over the past decade. Coalition and Labor have also despatched and committed $460m to the Clinton-affiliated Global Partnership for Education, chaired by our ex-PM Julia Gillard. Abbott’s Foreign Minister Julie Bishop threw Gillard’s show a lazy $140 million of taxpayer money in 2014, no questions asked. That aid was in the teeth of Gillard’s lusty presidential campaigning for Hillary against Trump.
Ostensibly charitable, the Clinton Foundation is the centerpiece of the couple’s amassing of a vast personal fortune. Bill was president from 1993-01. Hillary was Secretary of State for Obama from 2009-13.
In Hillary’s term at State, every variety of wealthy crook, influence-seeker and tyrannical government rushed to “donate” millions to the Clinton Foundation, its spin-offs, Bill Clinton personally or vague combinations of all/any of them. Lots of those crooked donors later scored disgrace, convictions and/or gaol on unrelated matters. Amid the sleaze, of course, the Clinton Foundation did manage to do some genuine charity work.
The Australian’s Greg Sheridan reported last February that the Coalition and Labor governments aided the Clinton foundations by more than $75 million in the past decade. The aid was via partnerships with the Clintons’ outfit as ‘technical implementing partner’. There are still three deals involving the foundations aiding Indonesia, PNG and Vietnam. Australia appears to be the biggest single foreign-government source of Clinton Foundation funds, he said. Annual aid has ranged from $6.5 million to a peak $10.3 million in 2012-13, the final Labor year.
However, Sheridan and/or his US source overlooked $10 million in a direct donation by a Rudd government entity to the Clinton Foundation in 2009-10. Rudd in 2008 set up the Global CCS Institute for research into carbon capture and storage with $100 million of taxpayer money. “The Institute provided AU$10 million to the Clinton Foundation to support the work being conducted through the Clinton Climate Initiative to accelerate key ‘early mover’ CCS projects around the world,” the Institute said.
According to the ABC, Rudd’s little venture actually involved a further commitment of $215m, at the rate of $100m a year. Other countries were supposed to tip in money too but by 2012 that amounted to a tiny $4.5m from the US and EU. The Institute itself had no idea what to spend its money on, actually complaining to the ABC that “the Rudd Government funding was too much, too soon.” After two years, Rudd’s institute had spent $7.4 million on travel and meetings, $11.3 million on contractors and consultants, and almost $6 million on administration. It had donated only $37m to carbon capture projects around the world but had $145m sitting idle in the bank. The $10 million thrown to the Clinton Foundation appears to be part of the institute’s desperate attempts to spend its piggy bank. Carbon capture of course has proved to be a total turkey.