Neil Balnaves

Neil Richard Balnaves (5 May 1944 – 19 February 2022) was an Australian media executive and arts philanthropist. His production companies were responsible for bringing Big Brother and Bananas in Pyjamas to Australian television screens. He turned to philanthropy after a life-threatening accident in 2002, and founded the Balnaves Foundation in 2006, which by the time of his death had given around to arts organisations.

Early life Neil Richard Balnaves He grew up in Penola in the south-east of the state, and had polio as a teenager.

Career Balnaves' media career started in advertising, in Adelaide in 1960, moving into senior roles in production companies.

Balnaves worked in the media industry for over 60 years. He founded the Southern Star Group in 1988, and was executive chairman of the company. Southern Star was responsible for bringing shows such as Water Rats, and McLeod's Daughters, Big Brother and Bananas in Pyjamas to Australian television screens.

From 2003 until 2016 he was chair of the Ardent Leisure Group, responsible for running theme parks such as Dreamworld in Queensland. 2010: Honorary doctorate of the University of New South Wales in a boating accident while holidaying with his wife, Diane, in Tahiti. He was survived by Diane and children Hamish and Victoria. Their sister Alexandra had died after a long illness in 2019.

Philanthropy and interests Influences It was after a near-death experience caused by a boating accident on the Gold Coast, Queensland in 2002 that Balnaves turned to philanthropy. to support the arts, education, and research into medical and social justice issues in Australia. Balnaves said that it was important to him that the foundation focused on "Indigenous Australia, young people and the disadvantaged" in order to help create "a better Australia".

In 2017, Balnaves supported the Adelaide Festival, then under the directorship of Rachel Healy and Neil Armfield, and started the "Tix for Next to Nix" program,

In 2020, the Balnaves Foundation gave A$1.25 million to the Indigenous Law Centre at UNSW to establish a term chair, known as the Balnaves Chair in Constitutional Law, to allow Professor Megan Davis to continue the work of the Uluru Statement from the Heart. The chair was named in honour of Alexandra Balnaves, who died in 2019. The foundation had had a long relationship with UNSW, by 2020 having given almost A$5.5 million, which included allocations for Indigenous medical scholarships and for funding the UNSW Indigenous Law Centre.

In 2021, the foundation helped to fund Unsettled, an exhibition on the colonisation of Australia through Indigenous perspectives mounted at the Australian Museum in Sydney, enabling free entry to for the more than 70,000 visitors. Balnaves was a strong supporter of the First Nations Division at the museum, and also encouraged others to contribute to supporting the arts and First Nations peoples.

Nick Mitzevich, NGA director, said of Balnaves: "The beauty of his philanthropy was to leverage and do more with the support he gave to make it bigger and better. He was never a passive philanthropist". The Balnaves Contemporary Series supported major annual commissions of contemporary artists from 2018 onwards.

Others to benefit from the foundation's philanthropy are: St Vincent's Hospital, Sydney Black Dog Institute Story Factory NIDA's First Nations Program

People All three of Neil and Diane Balnaves' children worked for the foundation, and after Neil's death, Diane, Hamish and Victoria continued to work for the foundation, along with a daughter of Alexandra, Caillean Honor. By the time of Balnaves' death on 19 February 2022, the foundation had given away A$40 million over its 15 years of existence, and was continuing to give around per year to the arts.