Andrew Leigh (Fraser, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

You did, member for Dunkley; you were invited and, sadly, you declined the invitation to celebrate what is a great Australian institution. I know people on both sides of this House support charities, but you have got to go further than simply supporting charities in words; you have got to do it in your deeds.

The charities commission is recognised by charities across the spectrum as having built Australia's first national charities register, which now has nearly 60,000 charities on it. It not only protects Australians from scammers but also allows us to understand the full size, depth and economic contribution of the charity sector for the first time. We used to have lists of charities kept by the tax office, but the lists were out of date, overlapping and nowhere near as consistent as the charities register we have now under the charities commission.

The charities commission has now de-registered or revoked the charitable status of over 1,000 not-for-profits, which no longer met the requirements. In some cases the groups were inactive; in others, it was because they were not involved in legitimate charitable work. But the charities commission's work in monitoring and de-registering charities means that Australians can have confidence in those charities which remain listed on the charities register.

When Labor set up the charities commission, we hoped to one day make it a streamlined national scheme—much like a previous Labor government did in streamlining the Corporations Regulations in 1990, moving from state and territory based corporations registers to a single national corporate regulator, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission. That same streamlined national scheme for charities is also in operation in Ireland and the United Kingdom. Australia can do the same and can reduce paperwork for charities as we have done for corporations. South Australia and the ACT, to their credit, have tied their charities regulation to the national charities commission. Rather than having separate regulatory schemes, any not-for-profit that registers with the national charities commission is now automatically registered in that state or territory as well. So they qualify for state concessions and exemptions simply by becoming a deductible gift recipient at the federal level.

We know that other states are also looking closely at this approach because it makes like significantly easier both for charities and state regulators. We hope the charities commission will act for not-for-profits like ASIC does for business: that it can be a one-stop shop for registration and reporting. But here is the catch: the charities commission can only do that if the Turnbull government allows it to stay open and continue its good work. The coalition went to the last election promising to scrap the commission. Former social services minister Kevin Andrews spent much of last year trying to break it up. Indeed, there is still a bill languishing on the Notice Paper in this very House that would abolish the commission, although the government has not been game to bring it on since a single brief day of debate late last year.

Before the winter break, the Senate passed a motion calling on the government to withdraw that bill and commit to giving the charities commission the resources it needs to continue operating on a permanent basis. Given that the coalition did not even call that to a vote in the Senate, that gives you a pretty strong sense as to how the Senate crossbenches feel about maintaining the charities commission. I would reinforce to the House of Representatives today that the Senate supports the charities commission.

We know that charities support the charities commission. The 2014 Pro Bono Australia State of the Sector survey found that four in five charities said the commission was very important for the sector, a result virtually unchanged from the previous year's survey, which does tell you something about the advocacy power of the member for Menzies.

Last year, over 40 charities signed an open letter to the Prime Minister calling for him to keep the charities commission. The signatories read like a who's who of the charity sector, including Lifeline, ACOSS, Save the Children, the RSCPA, World Vision, the Ted Noffs Foundation and many more. Nine in 10 submissions to a Senate inquiry about the charities commission called for it to be kept. In consultations between the social services department and over 300 charities, the vast majority wanted to build on the commission's work rather than scrapping it altogether.

Basically, the charities sector believes that the commission is doing great work and should be retained. That is because not-for-profits understand that the commission cuts red tape rather than creating it. Labor understands that too. Charities want to save time and money by reporting once through a single agency.

We have seen hints of a new approach since Scott Morrison, the member for Cook, took over from Kevin Andrews, the member for Menzies. He has indicated that scrapping the commission is 'not a priority'. He went to a Philanthropy Australia meeting on 9 September 2015 and again hinted that the government did not want to go ahead with scrapping the charities commission. But here is the thing. Until the charities commission gets the certainty that it needs from this government, it will continue to have difficulty attracting and retaining staff. It has recently seen around 25 per cent staff turnover each year as a result of the legislative uncertainty caused by this government. The government just needs to withdraw the charities commission abolition bill from the Notice Paper and clearly state that it recognises, as the charitable sector and Labor do, that the charities commission is a way of cutting red tape, not a form of red tape.

Of course, the other big red tape cut that the Comma Commando from Kooyong was going to deliver was the gutting of Labor's future of financial advice reforms. Those reforms set new professional and ethical standards for financial advisers and reduced the lifetime cost of receiving financial advice. We introduced them to prevent a collapse like another Storm Financial, when thousands of people lost their life savings because of bad financial advice.

On the government's first Red Tape Repeal Day, the member for Kooyong stood in this chamber and proudly listed the FoFA changes as one of his main red tape targets. One year on, Labor and the Senate have stood up to stop the watering down of consumer protection and said no to letting practices like conflicted remuneration continue unchecked in the financial advice sector. He could not get it done, because it was a bad policy that would put thousands of Australians at financial risk.

It is becoming a bit of a habit with the Member for Kooyong, I am sad to say. He is big on a headline and loves the announcement, whether it is FoFA, legislating the bank deposits levy or cracking down on multinational tax avoidance. But, when it comes to delivery, FoFA changes went down in flames, Josh Frydenberg and Joe Hockey got rolled on the bank levy at a cost of $1½ billion to the budget bottom line and the great crackdown on corporate tax, according to the budget numbers, does not raise any revenue. Perhaps the former tennis ace from Kooyong needs to focus more on actually concluding sets rather than just serving into the net.

The thing about the coalition's approach to red tape is that they claim their red tape measures are necessary and significant. They are right, but it is a pity that over the past year they have made very clear that the necessary ones are trivial and the significant ones are unfair.

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