Dinner for the Queensland Community Foundation in honour of The Honourable Margaret McMurdo AC

Our guest of honour and Chair of the Queensland Community Foundation, the Honourable Margaret McMurdo AC and the Honourable Philip McMurdo KC; 22nd Governor of Queensland, the Honourable Leneen Forde AC; Queensland Community Foundation Members Mr Tim Fairfax AC and Mrs Gina Fairfax AC; the Board of Governors and your guests; representing the Honourable Mike Ahern AO, Founder of the Queensland Community Foundation, Ms Louise Ahern; Public Trustee of Queensland, Mr Samay Zhouand; Queensland Gives, Chair, Mrs Nicole Holder and CEO, Ms Tara Castle; President, Volunteering Queensland, Ms Linda Lavarch; good evening all.

I begin by acknowledging the Original Custodians of the lands around Brisbane, the Turrbul and Jagera people, and pay my respects to Elders past, present and emerging.

Graeme and I are delighted to welcome you all to this special dinner tonight to acknowledge and honour Margaret McMurdo’s nine years of exceptional leadership as Chair of the Board of Governors of the Queensland Community Foundation.

Her time in the chair has seen an unprecedented rise in the demand for charitable services and a consequent increase in the need for the Foundation4 to grow its capacity for support. Margaret has strategically led that growth, resulting in an increase in the Foundation’s resources from $70 million in 2017 to over $170 million today — a 143 per cent increase.

This is all the more remarkable when we consider what happened during the nine years of Margaret’s chairmanship.

As Queenslanders, we expect that, every year, there will be communities that need support after floods and major weather events, but not even Nostradamus could have predicted that, three years into Margaret’s term, Queenslanders would be confronted by COVID-19.

Equally, he could not have foreseen that the long-term effects of the pandemic would be seen in everything from mental health, youth vulnerability and domestic and family violence to housing affordability, food insecurity and cost-of-living stress.

Like the virus itself, these trends have penetrated invisibly into communities and individual lives, threatening social cohesion and creating a crisis in health and wellbeing. Graeme and I have seen this ourselves as we have travelled the state over the past five years, visiting communities, talking to people about their fears and concerns, and offering support and encouragement.

Fortunately, they can also be offered hope thanks to the Queensland Community Foundation and its focus on providing the charitable sector with a secure, trusted and sustainable revenue stream

That is due in no small part to Margaret’s vision for what the Foundation could achieve. Like similar organisations established by governments, the Foundation had quietly gone about its business in partnership with the Public Trustee for two decades when Margaret took over the chair in 2017.  

Since then, she has been unrelenting in her efforts to promote philanthropy and to make Queenslanders aware of the existence and importance of the Foundation, especially those who live in regional communities.  

The Queensland Community Foundation has been enormously successful and we can all be immensely proud that our state now has the second-largest community foundation in Australia, due in no small part to improved investment performance and reduced management costs, achieved through the implementation of the Australian Foundation for Charitable Trusts in partnership with the Queensland Public Trustee and the Queensland Investment Corporation.

I also wish to acknowledge the long service and contribution of Mr Bernard Curran, Mr Alistair Comyn and Professor Peter Coaldrake AO who conclude their terms on the Board of Governors this year and thank them for the work they have done to ensure the success of the Foundation.  

In closing, on behalf of all Queenslanders, I offer my sincere thanks to Margaret for her visionary leadership and for making a lasting difference to the lives of Queenslanders, wherever they may live, and I also wish Christine Castley OAM well as she slips into the very large shoes that she will step into after the 27th of September as Margaret’s successor.  

Thank you.