Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Finance and Deregulation) Share this | Hansard source

The Treasurer has provided the following answer to the honourable senator's question:

Various units within the Treasury advise the Treasurer on different elements of the National Rental Affordability Scheme (NRAS):

Based on current data (March 2011) NRAS will achieve the revised 35,000 incentives by 2013-2014 or 50,000 incentives over the extended time period.

Treasury has consulted industry in relation to various housing matters, which included NRAS.

Depending on the specific issue, the Treasury works with the Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities (SEWPaC) in a number of ways.

The November 2008 amendment to the Extension of Charitable Purposes Act 2004 related specifically to stage one (the establishment phase) of NRAS. However, as a result of the 2008 High Court decision (Federal Commissioner of Taxation of the Commonwealth of Australia v Word Investments Limited [2008] HCA55), a charity is able to undertake unrelated commercial activity. The Government announced in the 2011-12 Budget that it will reform the tax concessions provided to NFP entities to ensure they are targeted only at those activities that directly further not-for-profit entities altruistic purposes. The Government has announced that the existing 50,000 NRAS allocations will be unaffected by the measure. Therefore, charitable organisations can fully participate in NRAS, without any further amendments to the law.