philanthropy James Hardie was the naming rights sponsor of the Bathurst 500/1000 from 1968 until 1987. It was shirt sponsor for the Parramatta Eels from 1981 until 1995. In 1988 James Hardie Industries made the largest donation ever made to an Australian public library when it gifted to the State Library of Queensland the meticulously developed and hugely significant Australian Library of Fine Art which was given as a bicentennial gift to the nation. This collection became the James Hardie Library of Australian Fine Arts, and was part of the Arts and Rare Books Unit at the State Library. Asbestos History In 1978 the effects of pleural abnormalities and other asbestos-related diseases were beginning to show up in the former mine workers. While other companies were involved in similar asbestos-related activities, most notably CSR, more than 50% of claims made to the Dust Diseases Tribunal of New South Wales in 2002 were brought against companies in the James Hardie group. There were protests against the companies' operations near the small Aboriginal Australian community of Baryulgil on the NSW North Coast, with Lyall Munro Snr and the NSW Aboriginal Legal Service taking an active part in actions against the company. James Hardie and its subsidiaries had been providing compensation for victims of its operations since the 1980s. Though some earlier claims had arisen, the proliferation of cases from the 1980s onwards forced James Hardie to acknowledge that it had known asbestos to be dangerous. James Hardie nonetheless maintained that it had done everything possible to protect workers. In 1978 the company began putting warning labels on its products explaining that inhalation of the dust could result in cancer. In March 1987 James Hardie ceased all asbestos manufacturing activities. As concern grew about the serious adverse health effects of asbestos, in the mid-1980s James Hardie developed an asbestos-free fibre cement technology, without the dangers associated with asbestos. The MRCF and move to the Netherlands James Hardie had been structured as a parent company operating through subsidiaries since the 1930s. All asbestos operations, including the provision of compensation, were undertaken by James Hardie's subsidiaries, principally James Hardie and Coy and Hardie-Ferodo (later known as Jsekarb). Between 1995 and 2000, James Hardie (the parent company) began to remove the assets of these subsidiaries (since renamed Amaca and Amaba respectively), while leaving them with most of the asbestos liabilities of the James Hardie group. In