Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services, Housing, Youth and Women) Share this | Hansard source

We have a big heart, that is right. I know you are trying to pull my leg here, Mr Deputy Speaker, but as the member for Sydney I see every day just how generous Australians are and just how generous Sydneysiders are. My electorate of Sydney, an inner city seat, is the location for a lot of charities and services—drug and alcohol services and homeless services in particular. We also have the head offices of a number of charities located in the Sydney electorate. Many church groups, welfare services, legal centres, environment groups, gambling services, family support services, neighbourhood centres and health services are located in my electorate. I see the first-class work they do. I also see the sorts of people who rely on these charities every day—Australians who access homeless shelters every night, young people in particular who are being helped to kick their drug and alcohol addiction or gambling habits, or women and children leaving violent partners and looking for a safe place to live. These organisations in my electorate support people living with HIV and AIDS, not only helping them with the usual domestic support and medical advice but also helping them to combat the social isolation which often goes with chronic illnesses such as HIV.

I see a lot of people who are desperate for help accessing community legal services to try to get some protection for their rights, protection which they are likely to miss out on without advocacy on their behalf. Day after day I see the charities and other organisations supporting some of the most disadvantaged and marginalised citizens in the country. Many of the charities have deductible gift recipient status. That means that they are allowed to receive donations which are tax deductible for the donor. The staff of these organisations are basically doing charity work also—they are certainly not being well recompensed. The deductible gift recipient status provides for organisations to allow their staff to salary package. Sometimes that is the only way people can make ends meet. Deductible gift recipient status allows organisations to receive money from philanthropic trusts and grants and to use that money for innovative new projects.

The point that needs to be made here is that Australian society relies more and more on charities as the government has withdrawn from providing some of the most basic services to Australian people. There are a couple of examples in my electorate. An organisation called the Luncheon Club AIDS Support Group started in my electorate in November 1993 and is a registered charity for taxation purposes. Every Monday the luncheon club offers lunch free of charge to people who are living with or affected by HIV or AIDS. Families, friends, partners, carers and children come along to support their loved one. HIV sufferers are able to support each other and to build a social network, and as well they get a nice lunch.

Until recently, the luncheon club has also had a larder program, under which it has been able to provide food and other essential items free of charge, because people who are living on the disability pension find it very difficult to pay for the medication they need in order to combat their HIV, as well as all of their other associated expenses. The luncheon club is really struggling at the moment. I met with the organisation recently to go over some of the things we can do to improve its financial situation. But this is just one organisation; there are literally hundreds that support people who live in my electorate.

While I support these measures that make it easier for Australians to donate to these organisations, I make the point that in the last 12 months I have become increasingly worried about the number of organisations in my electorate that have lost their deductible gift recipient status. I know that a number of organisations have been audited recently by the Australian Taxation Office—some of them a number of times over a very short period—in order to establish that they meet the criteria for retaining DGR status. They are forced to go through what is really a very arduous process to prove that they are charities—to itemise carefully all of their different functions and the varied work they do, in order to show that they meet the criteria.

Apparently, the ATO has stepped up its auditing of non-profit organisations to ensure that they are entitled to the tax concessions that they are claiming. The ATO’s compliance program priorities for 2005-06 include ‘testing the integrity of endorsed deductible gift recipient status organisations and tax concessions charities’. Losing DGR status results in substantial financial losses for these organisations. Their staff effectively lose money because they are no longer able to salary package a proportion of their wage. They have an increased tax burden. They are no longer able to accept donations and they can no longer apply for or receive philanthropic grants.

This move really began in 2003, when the government threatened to introduce the charities bill, which sought to remove charitable status from organisations which engaged in advocacy. In short, the government basically said, ‘If you help homeless people, that’s all right, but if you say there shouldn’t be so many homeless people, you become an advocate and you lose your funding.’ It reminded me of what Brazilian bishop Dom Helder Camara said:

If I give food to the poor they call me a saint. If I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.

It is important to note this threat of losing charitable status if you are advocating for the people that you are trying to help: instead of just giving them handouts, if you actually stick up for them, you are threatened with losing your charitable status. That is a very serious threat for these organisations.

A great amount of work has been done by the Australia Institute. One of their reports shows that 70 per cent of organisations report that the funding restricts their ability to comment on government policy and that 76 per cent of these organisations disagreed with the statement that current Australian political culture encourages public debate. Firstly, these organisations fear that they will lose their public funding if they criticise the government. Secondly, if they get no funding, how does the government get to them? If they have no government funding, the way the government gets to them is by taking their charitable status away from them, making sure that they are too frightened to make public comments. So the deductible gift recipient status audits are one way of intimidating some organisations. Losing their government funding is another. Another way, of course, is the confidentiality agreements that charities are made to sign when they do a lot of—

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