John Curtin Foundation

Formed in Perth, Western Australia in October 1984, the John Curtin Foundation was a fundraising organisation for the Australian Labor Party which attracted the sponsorship of a powerful group of wealthy businessmen, placing them in a privileged circle with direct access to both the Australian prime minister Bob Hawke and the state premier Brian Burke. The foundation was an early step to the creation of a unique network of corporate and government co-operation which was dubbed WA Inc by news media. Its two vice-patrons were Kim Beazley, senior, a former Whitlam Government minister, and Mick Michael, an electrical contractor and former lord mayor of Perth. The executive-government patronage of business was similar to Peronism in Argentina. It caused multiple financial disasters, leading to a royal commission which exposed and condemned the corruption.

In October 1984, 21 months after Brian Burke became the first of a line of Western Australian Labor premiers, Bob Hawke, himself having been in the prime minister's job for only 20 months, hosted a lunch for the new foundation.

It was the brainchild of Laurie Connell, Labor strategist Jack Walsh and Burke, and named after Hawke's wartime political hero John Curtin. [As well as Alan Bond and Laurie Connell,] Hawke also mingled with John Roberts, the hard-as-a-hammer builder who created the giant Multiplex corporation, the philanthropic James McCusker, founder of the Town and Country building society, Ernest Lee-Steere, the pastoralist, racehorse owner and Perth lord mayor, prominent businessman Kevin Parry and Ric Stowe, Australia's most reclusive billionaire, of Griffin Coal fame.

...
Wikipedia