Dozens of Australia’s biggest churches and other religious institutions pocketed millions of dollars in JobKeeper payments while remaining in the black during 2020.
An ABC investigation into the financial records of more than 100 religious organisations has found many qualified for the emergency wage subsidy despite seeing little financial impact from last year’s COVID-19 economic shock.
Figures from the Australian Tax Office show about 3,500 religious entities received a total of $627 million in JobKeeper payments during the life of the scheme, which ended in March.
That figure excludes payments to social welfare charities controlled by religious groups, such as Uniting Care, Mission Australia and the Brotherhood of St Lawrence.
Religious groups delivering the federal government’s school chaplaincy program were among the biggest recipients, with the Scripture Union of Queensland receiving more than $15 million in JobKeeper while seeing only a slight fall in government revenue during the year. Its overall revenue excluding JobKeeper was down 11 per cent for the year, but the wage subsidy helped it post a surplus of $11.7 million. “Scripture Union QLD met the statutory decline-in-revenue tests for charities to qualify for JobKeeper support,” the organisation said in a statement.
“We are grateful for JobKeeper as it meant we maintained employment for all of our staff despite the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Other major JobKeeper recipients include the Catholic Archdiocese of Adelaide, which received $13 million while posting a surplus of just over $7 million in 2020.
The archdiocese declined to comment.
Labor MP Andrew Leigh said religious organisations that remained in surplus while on JobKeeper should consider paying the money back. “I also think that the Morrison government needs to be held to account for running a scheme which continued to hand out money to firms with rising earnings,” Mr Leigh said.
Federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg declined to do an interview but in a statement said he would welcome religious groups and other charities repaying JobKeeper “if they are in a position to do so”.
“These organisations perform vitally important work,” he said. “That’s why the Morrison government provided them with unprecedented support to ensure they could continue to help those Australians in need of their services during this once-in-a-century pandemic.” Religious organisations are typically registered as charities, meaning any surplus revenue at the end of the year — otherwise known as profit — is returned to the institution’s cash reserves.
Yet only a fraction of the total amount of JobKeeper paid to religious groups can be traced because most religious institutions are exempt from financial transparency rules that require businesses and charities to submit annual financial statements to regulators. “Their transparency requirements under the Australian Charities and Non-Profits Commission are much more lax than for other charities, such as environmental charities or social welfare charities,” said Luke Beck, an associate professor of law at Monash University, whose research focuses on the legality of government funding of religion.
“It is very difficult to get a full picture of how much government money is going to religious groups at any time.” Religious practitioners such as priests, nuns, imams and rabbis were not initially included in the JobKeeper scheme when it was launched in March last year because clergy are not technically considered employees under Australian law. But the government amended the scheme’s rules in May 2020 to extend the payment to religious practitioners.
Like other charities, religious organisations could qualify for JobKeeper by forecasting a 15 per cent decline in revenue between March and September last year. Mr Frydenberg said eligibility rules changed during the second stage of JobKeeper, which ran from October to March this year, and required organisations to demonstrate an actual decline in revenue. “Our focus as a government was to get money out the door to support those who were in need.”
Dr Beck questioned whether the decision to include religious practitioners fit with the original intention of the scheme. “When the government first introduced JobKeeper at the beginning of the pandemic, they explained that this was to keep workers to their employers so that when things got better people would still have their jobs to go back to,” he said. “I’m not sure that there was really much risk that churches would have gone around sacking their priests, or pastors, or mosques would go around sacking imams.”
But Matt Brain, Bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Bendigo, says ministers within his church faced serious financial hardship without JobKeeper. He said without the wage subsidy, the diocese would have been forced to slash the stipend paid to its 45 clergy members. “I would have had to put them in the Hobson’s choice of doing a job that they thought was morally right, without any capacity to keep bread on the table,” he said.
The Anglican Diocese of Bendigo received about $1 million in JobKeeper during 2020, which Bishop Brain says helped make up for a revenue decline of between 30 and 50 per cent across its 32 parishes. “I think we are in for another difficult year, like the rest of Australia, as we navigate the consequences of COVID-19,” he said.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s place of worship, the Horizon Church in southern Sydney, increased its surplus from $42,816 in 2019 to $81,101 in 2020. The organisation’s accounts do not disclose exactly how much JobKeeper it received, but it recorded $533,694 in grants and subsidies. In a statement, the church said it qualified for JobKeeper “under the law and was grateful for the ability to be able to support its staff and their families during that particular window in 2020”.
The Prime Minister declined to comment.
Financial statements for the Evangelical Christian group Power to Change show it received $3.4 million in “government subsidies” in 2020, including JobKeeper, the federal government’s cash flow boost and Victorian Government business support funding. It recorded a surplus of $2.3 million.
“We have been audited by the government to ensure our compliance and satisfactorily complied. We are really grateful to the Government for JobKeeper,” Power to Change’s national director Allan Gibson said in a statement. “We have looked in hindsight about the ethics of our receiving JobKeeper. As my team examined the various pressures, we actually thought that JobKeeper kept and is keeping somewhere between 10 per cent and 20 per cent of our team in employment.”
The Lutheran Church of Australia recorded a $1.7 million surplus last year while receiving $1.4 million in “government grants”, according to its financial statements. Its accounts do not break down how much of that grant funding is made up of JobKeeper, but in a statement said the payment “enabled the retention of staff who otherwise may have been stood down given the high level of uncertainty prevailing during 2020”.
Financial records for the Crossway Baptist Church in Melbourne show it received $2.8 million in “government stimulus”, which the organisation confirmed include JobKeeper revenue. “Without JobKeeper, we would have been forced to make difficult decisions with regards to staff and this may have involved terminations,” it said. The church recorded a $3.4 million surplus for the year.
Melbourne-based Jewish religious charity the Mizrachi Organisation received $4.1 million in JobKeeper and other government financial assistance. It posted a $3.2 million surplus. In a statement, it said it was “severely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and experienced a significant drop in revenue, well in excess of the criteria set under Jobkeeper”. “As a result of this support, we were able to ensure that all staff were retained and that we could continue to provide vital support to the community during this time.”
Churches say JobKeeper not used for redress payments
Survivors of historical sexual abuse within religious institutions have criticised some organisations for receiving JobKeeper while also making payments through the national redress scheme. “If the churches are paying the redress with money that was given to them for a specific purpose, that is quite wrong,” said Jim Luthy from Care Leavers Australia Network, an organisation that provides support to abuse survivors. “The community would then be paying for their actions.”
But religious institutions contacted by the ABC insisted the payments under the National Redress Scheme were fully funded by their own cash reserves. The Christian Brothers, which spent $39 million on legal and litigation expenses last year, said none of the $1.3 million it received in JobKeeper was used for compensation payments. “For more than 30 years the Trustees have met the obligations of responding to past abuse through our own financial resources,” the Catholic order said.
The Bendigo Anglican Diocese paid $961,204 in redress payments last year, but Bishop Matt Brain said no JobKeeper funds were used to cover the payments. “We’ve set up a system that doesn’t rely upon the day to day running of our payroll in order to pay them, they are a priority.”
Any legal challenge to JobKeeper has ‘zero chance’ of success, expert says
The federal government is facing renewed scrutiny over the design of its JobKeeper scheme following revelations last week that $4.6 billion in payments went to businesses that increased their revenue during the first three months of the scheme.
Australia’s auditor-general is currently investigating the administration of the scheme, with its final report to be tabled in December. Professor Luke Beck believes any inquiry into JobKeeper needs to examine whether the scheme was in breach of laws preventing the government funding religious organisations. “JobKeeper for religious practitioners is almost certainly unconstitutional”, he said.
“Australian courts have said that giving federal money to religious groups for non-religious purposes, such as education or social welfare programs, is valid. But giving money to religious organisations for religious activities is a valid matter for constitutional challenge.” But he says now that the scheme has ended, a legal challenge has “zero chance” of being successful.
“Firstly, the JobKeeper program is over, and the courts don’t hear cases that are hypothetical,” he said.
“Secondly, there is the problem of who would have standing to bring a case, and effectively the only people who have standing to bring a challenge to government action are people directly affected by it.
“And the people directly affected by this aspect of JobKeeper are the people receiving the money. And if you’re receiving money from the government, you’re hardly going to be motivated to go to court.”
Josh Frydenberg rejected the suggestion the extension of JobKeeper to religious practitioners was unconstitutional. “The JobKeeper payment was established in full compliance with the requirements of the Constitution and Commonwealth law,” Mr Frydenberg said.
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