Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party, Chairman of the Scrutiny of Government Waste Committee) Share this | Hansard source

I appreciate the offer from the Assistant Treasurer to hand some notes over to help me make this contribution, but I will not need them. We stand as one in opposition to this bill. It is another step in the Labor Party's dream of regulating every aspect of our society. This is of course an area that has operated in our country at law prior to Australian courts being established. In fact, the definition of charity came under an English statute. This really gets to a difference in view between the Labor Party and our side of politics. The Labor Party seek to put strict black-letter law definitions around these sorts of organisations, whereas we think the common law definition has operated very successfully for a very long period of time. I know we should not breach the standing orders and discuss these matters across the chamber, but during one of the contributions it was mentioned that the former Treasurer, Peter Costello—Australia's greatest ever Treasurer—had looked at this issue when he was Treasurer of our country for 11½ years and he decided that it was not worth defining in legislation what charities are.

See this speech in context