Natasha Griggs (Solomon, Country Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Ronald Reagan famously said:

… government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.

That cannot be much truer than on this piece of legislation. I rise to speak on the Charities Bill 2013 and the Charities (Consequential Amendments and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2013—bills which encompass everything that is wrong with the Gillard Labor government and the general labour movement. This is bad legislation from a bad government; and, if the coalition is fortunate enough to be elected on 14 September, we will repeal it. Big, centralised government, red tape, regulation—that is what this bill is all about. It seems that not even the charities are safe from this Labor government. Our priceless volunteers are being picked on by this Labor government.

The definition of charity is hundreds of years old, a common law that is older than the settlement of Australia itself, and yet here we have a Labor government less than five years old that thinks it knows best about these sorts of things. It knows better than the test of time.

So on this side of the House we support civil society. We trust and want to empower civil society because we know how fundamentally important that is to our freedom. In the coalition we are so proud that we stand to protect the institutions that have shaped modern society as we know it today and that will support the growth of civilisation into the future.

If we look into the bill a little bit further we see that it 'appears' that, as part of this new charity order, opposing a political party or candidate may very well be a disqualifying purpose, the purpose mechanism being that which defines what constitutes a charity. So I pose the question: does this mean that, if a charity is to express dissatisfaction with and/or oppose a government decision, they will be disqualified as a defined charity? Our strong democracy is the root of our society. It defines what we are as a people, and we are a great people. It is of great concern that this is a government that wants to interfere with charities.

I am involved in a number of charities myself, including SIDS and Kids NT and the Cancer Council, and I know firsthand how important our volunteers and these charitable organisations are to our community. Charitable work is akin to freedom of speech. Charitable work is the way in which many fine people express themselves, so Labor now wants to vet them too.

There are extreme elements of both the Labor government and the union movement that I can see and I fear will want their hand on this disqualifying purpose. Would that be to see a charity supporting Israel perhaps refused registration under this mechanism? It is laughable for the Labor government to assure that its legislation has been designed—

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