Steve Georganas (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise in support of the Treasury Laws Amendment (2021 Measures No. 3) Bill 2021. Labor, as we've heard from members on this side who spoke before me, will be supporting it. The bill has five schedules. I don't propose to go through each and every one of those schedules, but I do want to touch on just two: firstly, schedule 2, which expands the objective of the National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation. This, we hear from the government is supposed to support single parents. But we know that only approximately 10,000 single parents will benefit from this particular change. When you look at the demographics of our nation, there are approximately one million single parents in Australia. So it's only a drop in the ocean. Again, it's a classic example of seeing the government great on its spin and great on the marketing but the reality on the ground is that this measure will affect very few people and change very few people's lives. So even though we welcome this measure, it doesn't go far enough and is very, very minimalistic.

The other schedule I want to touch on is schedule 5. This includes several new additions to the list of deductible gift recipients, or DGRs. I want to touch on a particular group in my electorate, the South Australian Viet Nam Charity Group, who, I was very pleased to hear, has just received DGR status. They do great work not just in my electorate but also in Vietnam. They do fundraising, they collect money and they take it over to Vietnam and are supporting a number of orphanages. These are Vietnam vets that came back from Vietnam, got together and formed this charitable group. It's run by an incredible group of people—Ray Whellum (chair), Ryk Traeger, Wayne Honeychurch, Tony French, Lloyd Stevens, Dean Ryan, Ian Muir, Dave Thomas and Kelli De Lacey.

I've been involved with them as their patron. For a number of years, I assisted and tried to do everything I could to get DGR status for them. On many occasions they were knocked back. There was lots of red tape. So much effort and work went into it, so I'm pleased that, with this bill, they are now registered. They have their DGR status and can continue to do the great work of collecting money, doing fundraisers here in Australia, and sending it overseas to these wonderful orphanages. I have visited the orphanages on a number of occasions, and I have felt so proud to see a big plaque saying 'Supported by the South Australian Viet Nam Charity Group'.

We will be supporting this bill. I don't want to go on too much about this, but I certainly want to say that this is something that should have taken place a long time ago. We had an inquiry into it. There were a number of recommendations. The government hasn't responded to all the recommendations, nor implemented them, but we will be supporting this bill.

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