MEDIA RELEASE
For immediate Release
7 October 2010
Dreamworld’s “Charity” Must Be Investigated
Giant theme park Dreamworld has built a major marketing campaign around a charity that has
no status as a registered charitable organisation and more than $1million dollars has been
distributed with very little accountability.
Neither the “Dreamworld Tiger Conservation Fund” nor the much touted “Dreamworld
Conservation Fund” are listed on the Australian Register of Environmental Organisation.
Neither fund attracts any form of tax deductibility. Neither fund is addressed in parent company
Ardent Leisure’s Annual Report.
Visitors to Dreamworld are encouraged to adopt an animal for anywhere between $50 and
$1000. Visitors are also encouraged to put money in special donation boxes and to buy a range
of Dreamworld merchandise. In what must be the most blatant misuse of the term “charity”
visitors are encouraged to send a cheque or money order directly to “Tiger Island”.
Dreamworld supplies only the vaguest details of what it does with this money. Some goes to
Indonesia, India and Russia. Some goes to saving koalas and bilbies through organisation
which themselves are not registered environmental organisations.
In recent days Dreamworld has denigrated the efforts of the South African government and a
worldwide network of hunting organisations to protect game species in African Game reserves.
The theme park has ridiculed a program that provides enormous benefit to African villages and
saves hundreds of thousands of animals from poachers.
At the same time the theme park promotes it’s contribution to “Wages for multiple anti-poaching
patrol teams and forest guards” somewhere in India or far eastern Russia.
Donors to the Dreamworld Conservation Fund should look very carefully at the structure of this
organisation. Dreamworld claims donations are not tax deductible because “ none of
Dreamworld's wildlife projects are government funded.”
Government funding has nothing to do with tax deductibility. Tax deductibility has everything to
do with managing a real “Charity” with real accountability and real outcomes.
A “charity” to promote the use of chained tigers to fund vague international projects simply
doesn’t stack up.
Queensland Attorney General Cameron Dick has been asked to investigate this matter.
If Dreamworld wishes to use a highly successful international game management project in
Africa as an excuse to deny all Australian firearms users and their families from one third of the
park more than a million Australians will be happy to enjoy their holiday anywhere else but
Queensland.
For further information contact:
Peter Rice
03 5799 0960
NEWS 
