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The truly bizarre visit of Bill Gates to Australia in early 2023 raised many eyebrows. Just after making half a billion US dollars selling stock in BioNTech, his admission while in Australia that the vaccines which he so heavily promoted did not stop infection or transmission was picked up by news outlets around the world.
Equally his presence at the Australian Open to watch “NoVax” Djokovic take the title spurred many a derisory comment.
PRIVATE DINNER AND DRINKS
Although the Bill Gates Australian tour is over, more information has been revealed about his visit to our nation.
Particularly, revelations that Gates wined-and-dined with some of Australia’s richest individuals while in Sydney.
A new article by the Australian Financial Review has revealed and detailed this dinner.
The article states: “He had brought the Australians together to discuss the health of philanthropy here, with a particular focus on the efforts of the new tech billionaires who populate the upper rungs of this masthead’s Rich List.“
A meeting of generous ‘philanthropists’, what could be so wrong with that?
Well, as you will see below, these individuals do hold quite the influence here at home and many align with Gates’ visions.
Those in attendance included:
Atlassian’s Scott Farquhar, his wife Kim Jackson (a former investment banker) and Co-Founder Mike Cannon-Brookes.
Most Australians have heard of this group. Mike has made news repeatedly in recent years over his pushes to turn Australia ‘green’.
Photo: QPO
As a shareholder of AGL Energy, he has insisted the company needs to shutter its coal-fired power plants by the middle of next decade to ‘meet climate targets’ and ‘bolster profitability’.
Interestingly, just yesterday, Mike joined US tech billionaires and the CSIRO-backed venture firm Main Sequence in investing in a fast-growing climate company in country New South Wales.
I wonder who pushed him in that direction?
Also in attendance was Canva’s Mel Perkins, Chief Product Officer Cameron Adams and his wife Lisa Miller.
The Canva Foundation gave away $15 million in awarded grants last year. The group was recently valued at $40 billion.
Another attendee was Airtree’s “partner emeritus” Daniel Petre.
Airtree has led a string of investments, including $3.25 million into the robotics and artificial intelligence start-up Abyss Solution. This was on the back of its substantial revenue growth in 2020.
Lastly, MYOB founder Craig Winkler and his wife Di Winkler were noted as attendees. They are the ‘power couple‘ of Australia’s richest list with fortunes between the both of them.
They run the Yajilarra Trust, ranked #3 on Australia’s top philanthropist groups, which gives away more than $100 million a year for a variety of causes like disability, indigenous groups and climate change.
Collectively, the Australian guests are estimated to be worth around $30 billion.
All gathered to dine with Bill Gates. Nothing suspicious here, folks.
Such some friendly, totally-relatable, and grounded people..
So what did they discuss?
As you can imagine, many of the topics these wealthy individuals have their hands in were on discussion during the dinner.
This includes artificial intelligence, charitable donations, climate change and the green agenda.
The Australian Financial Review also noted that vaccines and future pandemics were a hot topic of discussion, for which they make a cheeky little comments in regards too:
Even when we are right about collusion, they still find a way to make light of it.
Let’s not forget that Australian Financial Review journalists were invited and attended Davos 2023.
It is the publication that all the wealthy read, so no surprises they had access to report on this event.
As Gates heads back to whatever hole he came from, he left a memorable mark with his sudden Australian tour.
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