Tag: Volunteers

30 May 2026

I don’t believe that you get what you pay for and have huge doubt that hard work necessarily brings rewards.  Price used to be different from value, but now they are synonymous.  Price has become whatever the seller can persuade people to pay, and now the concept of value is devalued to the same concept.  I knew a chemical engineer who supervised face cream manufacture (before the company offshored to save money).  He said that all the face creams were basically the same- sorbolene with a few colours and scents added, and they all came from the same production line, whether they retailed for $2 or $56 for a small bottle.

Volunteers work for nothing because they believe in a cause.  I spent 20 years fighting tobacco and it was the most useful thing I have done or will ever do.  I had the advantage that I could say the situation as it was- the tobacco industry was killing people and the government was not doing anything about it because the industry gave money to the big political parties.  No one in the Health Dept could say that, and none of the big Health NGOs would either for fear of upsetting the big end of town that were significant donors.

The media came to me because I could say it as it was. I had a freedom that no one else had.  I wasn’t paid a cent.  Minor clerks from the health NGOs would go to conference hotels paid by well intentioned donors.  I stayed in the cheapest hotels I could find as I was paying for myself. Tobacco work was free. I was lucky that I was single with a public service job which subsidised my passion, and a house that made more money than I did, merely by being there. (Hard work, no money; no work, lots of money- get it?)

Volunteer lifesavers, disaster relief workers, firefighters, food vans, homeless shelters, bush regenerators etc run with volunteer help. Usually these organisations start as all volunteers, then get a grant to help pay for a CEO and an office. They then expand in numbers and recruit more paid staff. The office gets bigger.  The CEO changes from the most dedicated volunteer to a manager. The manager thinks it is a job rather than a cause. He or she looks for a better salary, a better office and more staff. A lot of energy starts to go into fundraising, and government grant applications. The paid staff have status above the volunteers, who ask themselves, ‘Why should I do this for free, when they are getting paid for it?’ The CEO will not say anything that might jeopardise grants or donations, so if major policy decisions are made that adversely affect the organisation’s aims, no one speaks up. Hey, without that government grant we would have to sack X% of the paid staff!

I am told that social research in Germany has looked at this as a life cycle in the rise and fall of NGOs, but I am unaware of literature here, though I can’t say I have looked for it.

I have observed myself highly respect charities moving into very expensive offices and CEOs salaries rising to close to industrial salaries with the same budgets. I have noticed difficulties between volunteers and professionals in health areas, disability, blindness, lifesaving, bushcare and fires.

The difficulty seems to stem from the idea that everything has to be monetised and all benefit has to be at an individual level.  I credit John Howard with the concept that if you work for free, you are a mug, and for the idea that volunteers were good, as they saved wages cost. His only question was how long the volunteers would work for free, and how well could managers control what they did.  The idea that we work to contribute to society without an immediate personal benefit has been a casualty of the neo-liberal society where the value of anything is judged by what it costs or what return it might make.

My simplistic explanation for all this is that at the end of WW2, the meeting at Bretton Woods concluded that the world wars were about access to markets and if the whole world had no trade barriers countries could rise or fall depending on how productive they were. Wars would be unnecessary.

In the 1980s the Union-funded Trans-National Cooperative predicted the rise of world oligopolies, and this had happened in many areas such as oil, fertilisers, chemicals, grains, pharmaceuticals, and most recently AI and information management.  Multinationals have taken their industries to wherever labour is cheapest, but have managed to keep most of the profits, which has left poorer workers in first world countries approaching the incomes of those in developing countries as the world globalises.  The emphasis on individual rights, which then become individual consumption, have led to an unwillingness and now almost inability for governments to share resources.  Common property and ownership are given away which exacerbates the problem as the neoliberal mantra has been that governments are inefficient and the government must never raise taxes for universal services or welfare incomes.

The problem of volunteer organisations will not go away. They are always needed in crises when the workforce has to expand very quickly, such as in disaster relief, and they can help increase many social services and make them more flexible and responsive.  But they cannot fix the underlying economic problems of Western society.  In the meantime more attention to the relationships between volunteers and their management would let them function better for what they still do.

Here is an example of what can happen from today’s SMH.

Disaster relief agency shuts down after revolt

30 May 2026   Eryc Bagshaw

Australia”s top disaster relief agency has been shut down after an internal revolt and allegations of fraud led to the withdrawal of all taxpayer funding.

Disaster Relief Australia”s creditors yesterday voted to wind up the emergency agency after the federal government refused to extend its $38 million grant, leaving the volunteer organisation without two-thirds of its budget.

Disaster Relief Australia was praised by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and led by two of Australia”s most decorated military commanders, Major General Andrew Freeman and Brigadier David Smith, as it responded to national emergencies including the Lismore floods, Cyclone Jasper and the Black Summer bushfires.

But it has spent the past year mired in internal conflict, driven by disputes between its volunteer veteran and professional workforce.

In December, this masthead revealed claims that Disaster Relief Australia used opaque recruitment practices, prioritised marketing over missions, and pushed out whistleblowers who raised concerns.  Eight whistleblowers said DRA was inflating membership numbers and fostering a culture of censorship and retribution. DRA denied the allegations.

DRA at the time said it had 6700 volunteers registered to assist in emergencies. Internal documents revealed that only 2503 were ready to deploy. The organisation is also embroiled in a dispute with the AFL over a $300,000 donation, which the league demanded be returned in the wake of the allegations.

“The Australian Football League”s law firm demanded that DRA return a donation of $300,000,” Fort Restructuring said in a report to creditors last week. “The administrators are seeking legal advice in this regard. The return of the AFL donation will reduce the funds available to creditors.”

Fort Restructuring estimated the organisation owed $442,000 to staff and $647,000 to creditors. Liquidator Mark Robinson advised creditors that this would be repaid if DRA went into liquidation.  In a note to be sent to volunteers and veterans, Robinson said the liquidation was regrettable.

While the agency marketed itself as a volunteer workforce, the liquidators” report shows employee costs almost quadrupling from $2.6 million to $8.3 million per year between 2023 and 2025. As a proportion of its expenses on disaster relief efforts, employee costs surged from 27 per cent to 50 per cent over the same period.

The organisation also increasingly relied on government funding, growing from $3 million in 2023 to almost $11 million in 2025, while donations fell from $3.2 million to $3 million, leaving DRA vulnerable to collapse once taxpayer funding was pulled earlier this year.

In March, the National Emergency Management Agency said it would withhold government funding over the serious allegations against DRA of misconduct, mismanagement and misuse of grant funding, and formal complaints against DRA relating to staff and volunteer wellbeing.

A WorkLogic report commissioned by DRA concluded that no allegations of organisational or management-level fraud or misuse of funds could be substantiated. The federal government “expressed reservations” about the report.