Australians love a tale of property renovation, but one story that’s little known is that Queensland Premier David Crisafulli was once a successful house flipper.
Between 2005 and 2009, his private family company, Crisafulli Financial Services, bought and sold seven north Queensland houses in rapid, profitable deals.
Those successful deals make a disastrous loss on another property in 2022, when he was opposition leader, unusual.
The family company lost more than $50,000 on a long-held property sold in a rush.
That was just less than a year after he secretly finished paying out liquidators $200,000 to settle claims of botched business oversight.
Queensland Premier David Crisafulli was previously in the business of flipping properties. (ABC News: Lucas Hill)
When private becomes public
Politicians have private business, but that business is sometimes thrust into the public arena.
And the premier’s failure to declare private business affairs on a register of interests was found in June to breach parliament’s rules.
A bipartisan parliamentary ethics committee decided he had failed to declare a liability for the $200,000 liquidator settlement.
He had been “careless”, and there was evidence he “ought to have known that such payments were to be declared (as a liability) or at least sought the registrar’s advice”, the committee found.
Another question he has since refused to answer is how he paid for the $200,000.
Journalist: Did you pay yourself?
Premier: I’ve met my obligations.
Loading…
Did anyone assist him in paying for it?
“Well, have a look at the report,” he replied, arguing how he paid was “part of the analysis”.
But the report does not mention how he paid.
Public trust key
It goes to what private business of politicians should be public.
Transparency International Australia chief executive Clancy Moore said public figures withholding information about financial dealings erodes public trust.
Transparency International Australia’s Clancy Moore says it erodes public trust when public officials withhold information about their financial dealings. (ABC News: Richard Sydenham)
He said that was particularly the case when it related to “insolvency and potential conflicts of interest”.
“Being forthcoming about how a significant financial settlement was funded, especially while serving in public office, would demonstrate a commitment to integrity, reduce speculation and enhance public confidence,” Mr Moore said.
But back to the profitable days flipping homes in the mid-2000s.
Mr Crisafulli’s family company was in the business of acquiring homes in Townsville before flipping them. (ABC North Queensland: Zilla Gordon)
Mr Crisafulli’s family company was acquiring homes — often in Townsville’s battler suburbs — capitalising on demand for housing with quick, hard real estate work.
In general, these properties were nothing fancy but could be spruced up. One might have new tiles installed, for instance.
It was successful.
Property records show Crisafulli Financial Services bought one property for $256,000 in June 2007 and offloaded it by September for $312,000.
Another, acquired in December 2006 for $218,000, was sold in March 2008 for $291,000. All told, before costs, the Crisafullis cleared almost $330,000 on those seven homes.
By then, Mr Crisafulli had been in local government, later becoming a state minister in the short-lived LNP administration of Campbell Newman.
Mr Crisafulli became a state minister in 2012 in the short-lived LNP administration of Campbell Newman. (ABC News: Brigham Edgar)
A new job for the future premier
In 2015, Mr Crisafulli lost office and ventured into the private sector.
As revealed by the ABC, he landed a job via LNP donor and soccer-fanatic businessman Rabieh Krayem.
The pair had known each other from Townsville and Mr Krayem had put forward the now-premier’s name as sole director of a long-struggling training organisation SET Solutions.
That was the same company in which Mr Krayem had just acquired a 50 per cent stake.
Mr Crisafulli lasted mere months in the role — from his appointment in December 2015 until his resignation in April 2016.
He was ultimately never paid a wage for his time, and one creditor told the ABC that Mr Crisafulli had been a straight shooter at the business and paid bills when promised.
Rabieh Krayem, pictured in 2020, is now president of the Wynnum Wolves. (ABC News: Curtis Rodda)
The business, which auditors found had received government funding for more hours of teaching than it had delivered, even when Mr Crisafulli headed the company, collapsed into liquidation in June 2016.
Mr Crisafulli returned to parliament in 2017, but the ABC later revealed he had quietly paid liquidators $200,000 to settle claims the training business might have been trading while insolvent while he was at its helm.
Such a payment can make business sense even when people do not believe they have done anything wrong.
That’s because settling liquidator claims privately may be cheaper and less scarring than risking a long battle, which could potentially involve public court hearings.
Company receipts show Mr Crisafulli made the payment in multiple tranches. (ABC News: Lewi Hirvela)
Mr Crisafulli secretly paid the settlement in three tranches: $80,000 in March 2020, $60,000 in July 2020 and $60,000 in July 2021.
Insolvency industry sources said the multiple transfers can indicate financial strain or an inability to gather sufficient funds for a one-off payment.
At the time, Mr Crisafulli’s register of interests listed a multi-property portfolio and six Bank of Queensland mortgages.
Land records also show an early-mid 2021 sale of one mortgaged property for $2.3 million and a mortgage-backed purchase of another for $745,000 by his wife, Tegan Crisafulli.
The Townsville property sale
The company tried to offload this Townsville property. (Supplied: realestate.com.au)
In February 2022, about half a year after finishing paying the liquidators, his family company tried to offload a Townsville property bought for $287,500 12 years earlier.
It was on a big but odd-shaped battleaxe piece of land. Even the sale advertisement was blatant about the property’s bad condition: “No point in doing a building and pest.”
But buyers weren’t keen. The asking price dropped.
The advertisement suggested selling pressure: “The owner’s instructions are clear, and this will be gone before the end of the financial year.”
By May 2022, it was sold for $230,000, marking a gross loss of $57,500.
The sale advertisement was blatant about the property’s bad condition. (Supplied: realestate.com.au)
Mr Crisafulli won’t answer why a sale needed to go through that financial year or if he was under strain then.
Perhaps he might have wanted cash to make another purchase later, or to bring down borrowing levels. It could be unrelated to the liquidator settlement.
But the premier, who had campaigned on his love for small business and transparency, will not clarify that, nor how he financed the $200,000 liquidator settlement.
Perhaps he drew down on existing loans. Or family might have provided a payment as a gift — a carve-out in the register of interests allows some family contributions to not be declared.
Loading…
‘A test of leadership’
In June of this year, when asked how he financed the $200,000 payment, Mr Crisafulli repeated phrasing he’d used before about having met his “obligations”.
He was asked: Did the $200,000 payment impose obligations on him to other people?
“I want to be clear, this was subject to this analysis (the committee report) and I have met my obligations,” he responded.
Yet the report does not mention how he paid.
He had also previously, when asked why he had not listed the liquidators’ debt as a liability, maintained he had “met [his] obligations” — a statement the ethics committee later found was incorrect.
Transparency International’s Mr Moore said even if a payments disclosure “is not technically required under the letter of the law, the spirit of democratic accountability calls for more openness”.
“Transparency is not a technicality, it is a test of leadership.”
Deputy Opposition Leader Cameron Dick said in June questions lingered over how Mr Crisafulli made the $200,000 payment. (AAP: Dan Peled)
Deputy Opposition Leader Cameron Dick argued in June that questions remained.
“Where did the $200,000 come from — you know, who’s got $200,000 lying around in a bank account that he can just use to pay this?“
