All the major religions urge kindness and generosity, and all cultures seem to like stories that celebrate these qualities; for example, the Good Samaritan, Simpson and his donkey and the almost universal obligation to be hospitable to visitors. Sometimes we assess the virtue of a society by the way it cares for its poor, its disabled and its vulnerable. By this measure India probably rates quite highly and the United States rather low, with Australia somewhere in the middle.
Some people see giving as a moral imperative. Philosopher Peter Singer sums it up with characteristic bluntness: ‘We need to challenge the idea that you can live a morally decent life just by looking after your own family and not actually causing harm to others. We need to develop a sense that if we have an abundance, we are actually doing wrong if we don’t share it.’
These thoughts are partly provoked by the indignant reactions to Kerry Packer’s recent publicly funded send-off. It is said that Packer avoided paying tax, an impression that probably arose from his famous 1991 comment when he appeared before a parliamentary committee: ‘I pay what [tax] I’m required to pay; not a penny more, not a penny less. If anybody in this country doesn’t minimise their tax, they want their head read.’
Actually, this seems pretty reasonable. I don’t pay more tax than I have to either. I don’t think I know anyone who does.
Anyway, when Kerry went off to confirm his assertion that there is nothing beyond the final curtain, many of his eulogisers spoke of his philanthropy. Writing in The Monthly (February 2006) Bridget Griffen-Foley asserted that ‘no Australian has left behind such a distinctive gift as “the Packer whacker”—the defibrillator with which he helped equip the New South Wales ambulance fleet’. Putting aside the matter of whether the Myer Music Bowl, the Felton Bequest or the Murdoch Institute might better deserve this distinction, was all this praise warranted?
Well, it seems that he was generous to his employees and was sometimes spontaneously kind. According to Phillip Adams, he was once on the point of creating the El Gordo of Australian philanthropic foundations, until the Costigan Commission’s ‘Goanna’ allegations caused him to change his mind.
Perhaps James Packer will presently announce the establishment of the Packer Foundation, but in the meantime the evidence suggests that Kerry was somewhat less generous than, say, a pensioner who gives away a