Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I also wish to address my remarks on this bill to schedule 6. This amends the list of deductible gift recipients in the tax act to assist listed organisations attract public support for their activities. The inclusion of these new organisations as part of this bill is an initiative of the previous government, and I am pleased to support these measures. I commend all of those organisations listed, and those to whom the matter is extended, for the work they do in our community. More generally, we debate this bill today during National Volunteers Week. The combination of these events presents an important opportunity to reflect on the status of our not-for-profit sector, their contributors and volunteers and the important role they play in our community at a global, national and local level.

Australia is a strong and prosperous country. We have also demonstrated our ability to be a very generous country. In my own electorate of Cook, in Sydney’s Sutherland shire, we have a proud record of volunteering and support for community organisations. My predecessor, the Hon. Bruce Baird, would often quote the statistic that there were more volunteers for the Sydney Olympics from the Sutherland Shire than from any other part of Australia. Our challenge as a nation is to see our generosity rise to a new level. We are living in a post-prosperity world, and this is the result of our success. On this side of politics, economic questions have never been a passing interest. The management of our economy has always been core business for the coalition. Our commitment to economic policy and reform has fuelled the policy visions of generations of Liberals, and the fulfilment of these policies, most significantly by the Howard-Costello government, has played a central role in the prosperity we enjoy today.

A by-product of this success, however, has been that economic prosperity is no longer seen by new generations of Australians as an end in its own right. The question being asked by these new generations is, ‘What is our prosperity for?’ In responding, we must be careful to prevent complacency returning to economic management. Prosperity can never be taken for granted. Our longstanding principles of economic conservatism remain hallmarks of the Liberal approach—not a passing fashion or a politically expedient slogan to wheel out at election times. As Liberals, we believe we should leave what people do with their hard-won prosperity to themselves. After all, it is our opponents who champion the nanny state—as evidenced again last night by their fortnightly payments now for the baby bonus.

But as we see surpluses and individual wealth grow, there is no danger in giving voice to how we can harness this prosperity to work together to create an even better and more generous society. Our opponents believe that such efforts are best directed through the state. The Liberal answer rests in returning the focus of such efforts to our communities. Our communities are the front line in creating a better society, and I believe this is a fundamental Liberal notion. In our post-prosperity age, there is a fresh hunger for real community—not the community of government institutions and bureaucrats, but the community of families and individuals that creates identity and purpose for life. As a society, we have allowed the realm of community to retreat. Our communities have become desensitised and disempowered by our state-centric models. It has got to the point where we barely notice we are even doing it any more.

We have created an expectation for the role of government that exceeds its natural mandate and, too often, its capacity. Just ask anyone who relies on—or even works for—the Department of Community Services in New South Wales and they will tell you so. Our response today is too often, ‘What is the government doing?’ rather than, ‘How as a community can we act to address the crises we face?’ whether it is ageing, respite, youth homelessness, suicide, mental illness or substance abuse, just to name a few. The question for government is: what role can it play to strengthen and support the naturally formed institutions of our communities to enable communities to play a greater role and a more direct role in addressing the challenges we face, in particular the social challenges?

Our role in the Northern Territory intervention is a case in point. Our objective in the Northern Territory intervention, as introduced by the Howard-Costello government, is not to run these communities but to help these communities find their feet again. After decades of socialisation and dependency, the Howard government acted to support these communities by seeking to re-establish a secure environment for families by removing influences, such as pornography, that would undermine their rehabilitation and ensuring that government support was targeted to restoring individual health and wellbeing by tying welfare to food, hygiene and education.

Our objective is to not be there, or at least no more so than in any part of the wider community. That is what closing the gap actually looks like: functional communities. The former approach would leave us in these communities to a disproportionate level forever. This is Liberal community policy in action in the most extreme of conditions. Thankfully, the rest of our communities are not in such a derelict state. However, our community institutions are in need. Our sports clubs, volunteer clubs and charitable organisations, like those that are mentioned in this bill, are all under-resourced and overworked. Surely an objective of government should be to reinforce and support the health of these organisations so as to enable the government sector to retreat from the front-line role of service delivery in more areas, opening up the opportunity for direct community action and involvement by community organisations. We should certainly seek to fund, but why, as under the Labor model, should government seek to control and own?

Community organisations are best run when they are community owned and directed. There is an accountability that exists under this model that governments cannot replicate. Those making the decisions on services are the ones who will more often find themselves in front of someone who is using and relying on those services, whether it is in the direct provision of those services or as part of their local community. By all means provide a national or state-wide context to funding arrangements and ensure appropriate protections for public funds, but do not let centralised bureaucracies use such reasons as an excuse to commandeer. The Labor view, I believe, is to command and control in these areas. I believe the Liberal view is to nurture and support. And I believe that this is the intention of this bill: to encourage community support for community organisations, to address community problems.

However we must go further. As a nation we have demonstrated our generosity, but it must become a more permanent and substantial feature of our society. Such a goal should be an objective of government. We need to develop a serious culture of philanthropy in this country that can build a not-for-profit sector that can provide the institutional depth and capacity necessary to be a more significant partner in dealing with the many challenges our community faces, as well as providing support for those in need, both within Australia and overseas.

The Giving Australia report, funded by the previous government, concluded that ‘a diverse and healthy non-profit sector contributes to a stronger, more prosperous and cohesive civil society’, and I agree. The report notes that there are 700,000 non-profit organisations in Australia, with an estimated total revenue of $33.5 billion back in 2000. Approximately 20,000 organisations have tax-deductible status. In 2004, 13.4 million Australians, or almost 87 per cent of the adult population, gave a total of $5.7 billion. Half of those donations were $100 or less and just over half, 51 per cent, of those donations were one-off. Furthermore, since 1997, personal giving has increased in absolute terms by 88 per cent, or by 58 per cent in real terms after adjusting for inflation.

It is not just in the area of donations that we are increasing; it is also in the area of volunteering itself. ABS statistics show that, in 2006, 5.2 million Australians, or just over a third of our adult population, participated in voluntary work and contributed 713 million hours. This is up from 4.4 million Australians in 2000 and 3.2 million in 1995. The same statistics show that people who are volunteers are more likely to have made a donation than those who are not volunteers—85 per cent compared to 72 per cent. It is also true that these volunteers do more than just give their time, often putting themselves out of pocket for expenses directly incurred in performing their service or in lost wages or earnings. I particularly note the sacrifice made by small business people who are involved in volunteering, who take time away from their businesses and incur a loss of earnings for that reason.

The study attributes a number of key reasons for the growth in volunteerism and the increase in charitable giving: the increasing size of the adult population; sustained economic prosperity, with more people in employment, rising wages—and let us not forget that over the course of the last government there was a 21.5 per cent increase in real wages—rising disposable income and improved business profitability, which are all things that went forward under the previous government; and greater and positive publicity for giving and increased fund-seeking activity by charitable organisations, using more sophisticated methods.

I also note the report says that, while 51 per cent of donations are one-off, non-profit organisations are almost always likely to be sustained by regular and generous giving than by one-off measures, and they acknowledge that taxation measures are a good way to foster planned giving, as is provided for in this bill. It is therefore not surprising that the following measures introduced by the previous government have played an important role in encouraging greater giving by Australians. Those measures included: five-year averaging of donations; deductions for gifts of property over $5,000; deductions for gifts of shares under $5,000; deductions for minor benefit contributions, such as gala dinners; deductions for workplace giving, which has been particularly successful; conservation covenants; capital gains tax for gifts within the cultural gifts program; and the introduction of the prescribed private fund.

A recent study by the Australian Centre for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Studies at the Queensland University of Technology, titled Good times and philanthropy, identified that between 2001 and 2006 more than 450 PPFs had been established by individuals and companies and that since that time estimates point to more than 600 in operation. So these are successful measures that have encouraged the flow of charitable giving in this country. As a nation we have become more generous, but I believe we can do much better. A study recently undertaken by BERL in New Zealand, in March last year, estimated that Australian giving accounted for 0.68 per cent of GDP. This compares to 0.81 per cent of GDP for New Zealand and 1.6 per cent for the United States. So there is a further distance to travel. The QUT study also noted that the total value of donations claimed by individuals as tax deductions in 2005 was $1.7 billion. This accounted for 5.3 per cent of the total value of deductions. This is only slightly higher than the amount claimed for using tax agents in this country.

The study also noted that there were 4.3 million Australians who made charitable gifts and claimed them in their tax returns for 2005. That is the highest level on record. However, this represented an average of just one-third of one per cent of these donors’ assessable taxable income. Across all taxpayers, when this is averaged out, this represents just 0.00032 per cent of the average Australian taxable income. So we can do better and we must do better if we are to ensure that our non-profit organisations who stand in the breach for our communities can continue to perform their valuable service and, even better, expand their operations.

To this end I believe we need a national strategy on philanthropy and volunteering that builds on the success of the Howard government’s policies and leadership in this area and works to deliver better and more inclusive outcomes for our communities. This must include increasing our current level of giving as a target, increasing and recognising volunteer involvement in non-profit organisations in all ways that we can and increasing the institutional strength of our not-for-profit sector. We need more A-list non-profit institutions evident in other Western democracies—these institutions that have depth, capital, experience, properly structured governance, the capacity to step in in so many more conditions in a way that government cannot and the capacity to engage the not-for-profit sector as a key partner in addressing community challenges. We need better institutions that become better partners.

Such a strategy will require us to look at many issues, including additional taxation measures that provide an incentive for planned giving and compensation and/or relief for out-of-pocket expenses for volunteers. Costs and processes associated with background checks are something that Volunteering Australia has highlighted. This is a very necessary step in the process but one we must ensure the not-for-profit sector is resourced to perform. The implications of occupational health and safety requirements also need to be addressed. There is a need to increase awareness of non-profit organisations and their activities, and I must admit this bill does go some way towards advancing that goal. We also need to look at partnership models for accessing public sector support to build institutional capacity, information and data resources to better understand the incidence of and influences upon philanthropic activity, a review of red-tape regulation impacting on the activities of non-profit organisations and improving the transparency in governance arrangements for nonprofits. A national strategy that can advance these causes is one that I believe can lead to greater institutional capacity in the non-profit sector in this country and ensure a greater response by our community to address the challenges we face.

In closing I wish to make particular reference and give recognition to a constituent of mine whose own activities are recognised in this bill—Ian Thorpe and his Fountain for Youth. Ian Thorpe is a proud resident of the shire, in the seat of Cook. Ian is an inspirational Australian whose achievements in the pool provided us all with a sense of what is possible when great talent is combined with great dedication. He has been an outstanding ambassador for Australia, in and out of the pool, most notably in tourism. Both before and while I was managing director of Tourism Australia, Ian was a fantastic ambassador for Australia, particularly in Japan, and always made himself available to advance our national cause wherever he could. He was deeply admired and remains deeply admired by the Japanese people. He is a great asset to Australia in our relations with that country. He has been an outstanding ambassador for Australia and he is now applying those same characteristics to his post-sport life. His foundation focuses on advocacy for the needs of ill children, building alliances with the corporate sector and general community to raise awareness and funds to bring positive changes to the lives of children by improving their health and education. These include, for instance, a literacy empowerment project in remote Indigenous communities east of Katherine in the Northern Territory as well as funding research into Rett syndrome, which is a devastating genetic disorder that is one of the most common causes of severe, progressive intellectual disability and affects one in 10,000 female children. I commend both Ian and his organisation for their work and all those organisations that are included in schedule 6 of this bill, and I commend the bill to the House.

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