CHERIE BLAIR’S charity speaking tour of Australia, for which she was paid a reputed £102,000, was mired in fresh controversy yesterday.

The Australian authorities are investigating a A$195-a-head gala dinner that Mrs Blair addressed in Melbourne, which generated A$192,000 (£81,000).

Only A$16,000 (£6,774) was given to the charity to help dying children, with the rest divided between the costs of staging the dinner, paying Mrs Blair and Max Markson, the multimillionaire public relations organiser. Mrs Blair’s £17,000 fee for the engagement dwarfed the sum received by the charity. Mr Markson has been named in two Australian parliaments in recent years in relation to disputes over money allegedly owed to charities.

Now the state government of Victoria is threatening to ban the Children’s Cancer Institute Australia from any more fundraising within the state. Under Victoria state law a charity must receive at least 60 per cent of funds raised in an appeal on its behalf. Yet the Melbourne dinner resulted in less than 9 per cent for the charity. Although there is a government inquiry into the Melbourne event, the organisers said that the rest of the five-day trip raised almost A$500,000 (£212,000) for charity.

Mrs Blair was criticised at the outset of the tour for cashing in on her unofficial role as wife of the Prime Minister. She was billed as Cherie Blair, rather than Cherie Booth, QC, and the speeches included a slide show featuring shots of her son Leo and questions and answers about Tony Blair’s role as a father. Dozens of copies of Mrs Blair’s book about prime ministers’ consorts were piled up outside each lecture hall.

Mrs Blair is now under pressure from the Conservatives to repay some of her fee to the charity. Chris Grayling, the Shadow Leader of the Commons, said: “Mrs Blair should take a long and careful look at what has happened and do something to ensure that the children who were supposed to benefit do not lose out financially. The fact that Mrs Blair’s commercial activities have left her exposed to an Australian government inquiry absolutely confirms my view that she has got to stop making money in this way.

“We simply cannot have the office of British Prime Minister sullied like this. Nor is it right that any charity should be put in such an invidious position. Money raised at a charitable event should be for charity – it’s as simple as that. It is wrong for the husband or wife of the British Prime Minister to make money out of commercial activities that are linked to (his or her) job at Downing Street.”

Mr Markson secured Mrs Blair’s services by approaching Harry Walker, the New York lecture agency that she joined for an American tour last year. The agency, in a statement, said: “We understand that, although the Melbourne event did not raise much money, approximately A$500,000 overall was raised for the two charities from (the) speaking events in Australia and New Zealand. We know that both charities were happy with the outcome.”

The Australian charity and Downing Street declined to comment yesterday.

Mr Markson said: “We haven’t got anything to hide. They have asked me for the information and I have provided it to them.” He said it was unfair to ban the charity from future fundraising. “They should not be penalised for one event in a 22-year history of fighting kids’ cancer and raising literally tens of millions of dollars.”

David Cousins, who is leading the inquiry in Victoria into the charity event, denied that the inquiry was making an example of the charity. He said: “The public is the judge on these things and our registration is in the public interest. So is it in the public interest that someone is out there touting events and only 8 per cent goes back to the beneficiaries? Maybe there’s a perfectly good explanation that can justify it.”

HER GREATEST GAFFES

January 2000 on her first day as a criminal judge she had to pay a £10 on-the-spot fine for travelling without a valid rail ticket

June 2002 apologised after apparently showing sympathy for young Palestinian suicide bombers within hours of a blast in Jerusalem that killed at least 19 people

December 2002 allowed Peter Foster, a conman, to negotiate a discount for her on two flat purchases in Bristol. She also telephoned solicitors in the deportation case against Foster, who was dating her friend Carole Caplin

April 2003 astonished supermarket staff in Melbourne when, invited to help herself to a few goodies, she walked away with five boxes containing 68 items. Downing Street said later that Mrs Blair had repaid the full £2,000 value

July 2003 she was criticised for a chirpy rendition of the Beatles’ When I’m 64 on a microphone in Beijing shortly after the suicide of the weapons expert David Kelly

February 2005 at a £380-a-ticket gala dinner in New Zealand, she twice called her hosts Australians. Members of the audience complained that her speech was boring and one businessman gave her a two out of ten. One executive said: “I thought Cherie was very poor . . . it was all about who painted which walls in Downing Street — peripheral crap.”

June 2005 she was criticised for accepting $30,000 for a 90-minute talk in Washington while her husband was in the US trying to persuade President Bush to cancel African debt and increase aid

September 2005 Downing Street under pressure over whether she paid VAT and duty on gems she bought on an official trip to China with her husband. She paid eventually

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