Stuart Robert.
The Digital Minister.

The Gold Coast Years

1. Before 2010He moves business interests into his elderly parents’ names. His father tells Fairfax this was done without his knowledge.[14]
2. 2012He gives a speech in parliament defending developer Sunland, largely written by Sunland lobbyist Simone Holzapfel. He also lobbies the Gold Coast council for a $600 million Sunland development outside his electorate, which breaches guidelines.[4]
3. 2013Holzapfel pays $114,000 to his fundraising vehicle, the Fadden Forum, in 12 payments. Her company is collapsing at the time and owes the tax office $355,000. At a 2016 Senate estimates hearing, Labor asks whether the money came from a third party. Robert rejects that.[4]
4. 2013At a function with Liberal donor Paul Marks, Chinese billionaire Li Ruipeng hands out Rolex watches to MPs. Robert says he thought his was fake. The watches are returned.[14] He charges taxpayers $1,600 to attend the opening of a mine owned by Evolution Mining, a company he holds shares in. He repays it in 2016.[16]
5. August 2014As assistant defence minister, he flies to Beijing for a signing between Marks’s Nimrod Resources and the state-owned China Minmetals. He says it was private. Chinese officials thought it was official.[4][16]
6. 12 February 2016He resigns after Dr Martin Parkinson finds he “acted inconsistently with the Statement of Ministerial Standards”. The inquiry finds shares had been allocated to his trustee in a company Marks also held shares in.[2][16]
7. 2016 and 2017The Fadden Forum gives $30,000 each to the Gold Coast council campaigns of two of his staffers. At a Crime and Corruption Commission hearing in April 2017 he says: “The Fadden Forum isn’t an organisation. It’s simply a name.” One of the staffers says the Fadden Forum was never mentioned to her.[15][14]

The Money, the Data and the Secrecy

1. 20 September 2018As Assistant Treasurer he introduces the bill that writes the Paul Ramsay Foundation into tax law by name. Every listing[5]
2. October 2018He repays $37,975 in home internet charges after billing up to $2,800 a month.[6]
3. 26 November 2018Back in the ministry, he tells parliament’s register his Robert Family Trust is now in a blind trust “where I have no control of investment decisions”. The trustee is not named.[31][16]
4. 2019 to 2020He runs Robodebt as government services minister. The Royal Commission finds he was “making statements of fact as to the accuracy of debts, citing statistics which he knew could not be right.” It rejects his claim to have ended the scheme as promptly as he says.[7]
5. November 2019He speaks at an industry forum MC’d by Greg Boorer, founder of CDC Data Centres.[8]
6. 23 March 2020myGov falls over as thousands apply for help. He blames a “significant distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attack”. Less than two hours later he says there was no attack and the site was overloaded. The Australian Cyber Security Centre has no evidence of an attack.[20] He calls it “my bad”.[21]
7. September 2020He releases the Data Availability and Transparency Bill, to share Australians’ data across government and with accredited users. He tells the ABC consent is implied: “If an Australian wants a service by a government, they obviously have to consent to having that service delivered to them.”[26] It becomes law in 2022.[27]
8. June 2021Under his Hosting Certification Framework, CDC is one of the first three providers certified “strategic”.[9]
9. 25 August 2021He introduces the Investment Funds Legislation Amendment Bill. It would exempt the Future Fund’s investment documents from freedom of information, whether or not they are commercially sensitive.[29] Civil society groups say it would in practice fully exempt the information they had been asking for, including the Fund’s holdings in arms makers.[30] It passes the House and lapses in the Senate.[29]
10. 1 October 2021He releases the draft Trusted Digital Identity Bill, to expand the government’s digital identity system to the states and private companies.[28]

After Parliament

1. 2022He sets up Coram Deo Capital after the election.[10]
2. 18 May 2023He resigns from parliament.[1]
3. October 2024Nine reports Coram Deo Capital is seeking $500 million for a “top secret” data centre next to HMAS Harman in Canberra.[11][12]
4. February 2025The Future Fund, whose investment papers he tried to put beyond FOI, lifts its stake in CDC to 34.55%.[13][29]

The full data centres timeline