Key points

• VicTrack and Eloque chief executive Campbell Rose was the anonymous donor funding the yacht co-owned by Nick Foa and Justin Hanney to compete in the 2020 Sydney to Hobart yacht race. 
• Nick Foa is the former head of transport at the Victorian government’s department of transport and Justin Hanney is the former chief executive of the City of Melbourne. Both resigned following the fallout from the fundraising. 
• Rose has been on extended leave from VicTrack since late March with no public explanation from the authority about his absence.

VicTrack and Eloque chief executive Campbell Rose anonymously donated more than $13,000 of his own money to help a senior public servant in the Victorian Transport Department and the City of Melbourne’s chief executive compete in the Sydney to Hobart yacht race.

Nick Foa, who was head of transport services at the department, and Melbourne chief executive Justin Hanney, solicited $35,855 in an online fundraiser via the Australian Sports Foundation to crew and equip Protagonist, the 12-metre yacht they co-owned, to take part in the 2020 race.

Former VicTrack CEO Campbell Rose, who also ran the Eloque joint venture, is on extended leave from the rail agency.Credit:Andrew De la Rue

The money raised included two anonymous donations of $9090 and $4545. Several sources have confirmed to The Age that Rose made those donations, though it is not clear when the donations were made. Hanney and Foa may not have known that the money came from Rose.

The Australian Sports Foundation has previously told The Age that it does not disclose any fundraising campaign details beyond those available on its website.

Foa resigned from his role at the department in September and Hanney resigned last month amid the fallout from the fundraising saga.

Rose has been on extended leave from VicTrack since late March, with no public explanation from the authority about his absence.

A former chief executive of the Suburban Rail Loop Authority, Foa was elevated in April 2020 to become the second most powerful bureaucrat in the Department of Transport, which works closely with VicTrack to manage the state’s rail network.

The department was also involved as an investor in and customer of Eloque, a government commercial joint venture which Rose was put in charge of, until it collapsed earlier this year.

However a spokesman for the department said Foa did not have oversight of Eloque and did not exercise some of the powers delegated to him which could have seen him deal directly with VicTrack.

Justin Hanney’s resignation last month followed a four-month probe into donations he solicited for the Sydney to Hobart yacht race.

The investigation into former City of Melbourne chief executive Justin Hanney is being kept confidential. Credit:Wayne Taylor

The council’s CEO Employment Matters Advisory Committee started investigating Hanney in July.

The City of Melbourne has refused to publish its investigation into Hanney’s fundraising, which found he should have declared the donations, but that there was “no evidence to indicate that Mr Hanney intentionally or recklessly lodged returns that were false or incomplete”.

A spokesperson for the foundation said in September that it had a range of measures in place to seek assurance that funds were used for appropriate sporting purposes and would be implementing stricter requirements following the fallout from Hanney’s fundraising.

The City of Melbourne and VicTrack have regular dealings with each other.

The City of Melbourne is working with VicTrack to undertake its $300 million Greenline project which involves land owned by VicTrack along the Yarra.

In 2020 planning approval from the City of Melbourne enabled VicTrack to undertake the sale of Treasury Square, a $2 billion parcel of land at the Eastern end of Flinders Street to developer Mirvac and superfund Cbus property.

Before the deal, the City of Melbourne voted to subdivide the 1.4 hectare site and rezone the land to allow building to occur.

At the time the council’s deputy planning chair, Greens councillor Rohan Leppert, said the site was being sold under the “worst sort of provincial planning” rules. “This is Gold Coast stuff,” he said.

Justin Hanney’s fundraising page on the Australian Sports Foundation’s website to raise funds for the yacht he co-owns with Nick Foa.

City resident Greg Bisinella, convener of the East Melbourne Group’s planning committee, said there had been a lack of transparency about the site, which had been zoned for public transport use.

Stuart Hamilton, director of integrity group Accountability Round Table, said the donations raised probity concerns.

“Relationships between key government regulatory funding and planning agencies must be always above board and be seen to be above board,” he said.

Hamilton said private benefits not made public and passing between people with regulatory and planning responsibilities meant there was always a perception of potential conflict of interest.

Nick Foa was the head of transport services at Victoria’s Department of Transport.Credit:Penny Stephens

“Such a lack of transparency means people can’t be fully held accountable for their actions and is not acceptable in well run public agencies,” he said.

Rose represented Australia in sailing at the 1988 Seoul Olympics and is an active member of Victoria’s sailing and sports community.

Rose has been closely involved in the Australian Sports Foundation and, in 2018, the foundation agreed to host an event and fundraiser he established called the Prime Ministers’ Sporting Oration.

The inaugural speech was presented that year by Julia Gillard but it does not appear to have been held since. Its website was recently being taken down and all mention of the event has been removed from the Australian Sports Foundation’s website.

Rose, Foa and Hanney did not respond to requests for comment.

The Department of Transport, VicTrack and the City of Melbourne declined to comment on the donations made by Rose.

Contact the reporters [email protected] and [email protected]

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