Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too would like to talk about the two bills before us tonight, the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission Bill 2012 and a related bill. In Australia, we have 600,000 entities carrying out various forms of charitable and not-for-profit work, and 400,000 of those have access to Commonwealth tax concessions. It is a very significant sector. On top of that we have 11,000 not-for-profit entities that are registered under the Corporations Act 2001. So there is already a fair field of people and organisations that operate in the charitable community.

I want to put a slightly different argument here tonight and I want to illustrate this by two examples of things that have happened in my electorate. It would still be happening to one organisation and would have happened to another. They would be caught up in this. I just want to illustrate how the lack of sensitivity from government—I am not talking about any particular party but government in the past—has led to a diminution of volunteerism and charitable enterprise.

The first one I want to talk about is the Rotary Hospital House at Hervey Bay. This is a marvellous organisation. It is a motel like structure with six units and a common lounge area. It took 12 years to raise the funding for this—and then, in more recent years, a lot of voluntary work, a lot of donations of material and a lot of purchase of materials by the Rotary Club of Hervey Bay. It was a huge effort. As they carried out their work, they were assisted by the Rotary clubs, Lions clubs, Zonta, the Hervey Bay Boat Club and the Hervey Bay RSL. All of these made significant contributions to Rotary Hospital House. It has given the Hervey Bay hospital a $700,000 facility. To build that today would cost anything from $700,000 to $800,000. But it cost those clubs, because of the cash donations, the volunteer work, the donations in kind, about—

Mr Albanese interjecting—

Mr Simpkins interjecting—

Could I have a go, please?

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