Telethon 2019 breaks the $42 million barrier, over $350m since 1968

After the Seven Upfront in Sydney on Wednesday night, CEO James Warburton took the late plane to Perth to prepare for Telethon weekend.

WA’s remarkable generosity was on full show again across the weekend when the state raised $42,596,034 million for the 2019 edition of the annual fundraising event.

Steve Butler reported in The West Australian:

Underpinned by multimillion donations from the Federal and State Governments and several other WA businesses and philanthropists, the record total pushed Telethon’s combined annual medical funding to almost $350 million since its 1968 inception.

Seven West Media chairman Kerry Stokes said WA was now Australia’s undisputed leader of community giving.

“I know it is,” Stokes, the immediate former Telethon chairman, said bluntly.

“There are even premiers from other States who have asked if we can replicate it for them and I just keep telling them it has to be West Australian. It’s become something way bigger than we ever contemplated and I’m just so excited that we’ve come on this journey.

“This is human spirit on a total Statewide level as well as individual, from the smallest kid giving their pocket money to the people who get treated better than they would have because of all this generosity. It’s not just corporate, it’s the whole community and I think it can still get bigger and we can do even more.”

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Top Photo: Seven’s Basil Zempilas reveals the Telethon total last night