Andrew Leigh (Fenner, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move the second reading amendment that has been circulated in my name:

That all the words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House:

(1) notes that the Coalition Government has had six Ministers responsible for charities over the last five years; and

(2) expresses its disapproval of the appointment of prominent anti-charity advocate Gary Johns as chair of the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission".

Labor will be supporting this bill in the House. Schedule 1 of the bill makes a number of technical refinements to the income tax law so that the new tax system for managed investment trusts operates as intended. Following recommendations made by the Board of Taxation in its report on the Review of Tax Arrangements Applying to Managed Investment Trusts in 2016, the new tax system for attributed managed investment trusts was enacted. Labor supported that legislation. The new tax system was designed to increase certainty, provide flexibility, reduce compliance costs for managed investment trusts and improve the competitiveness of Australia's fund management industry.

The amendments in this bill clarify the operation of the income tax law applying to managed investment trusts and attributed managed investment trusts and make a number of modifications. Those amendments are technical and non-controversial. Schedule 2 updates the list of specifically listed deductible gift recipients, adding the Australian Sports Foundation Charitable Fund, the Australian Women Donors Network, the Paul Ramsay Foundation Ltd, the Q Foundation Trust, the Smile Like Drake Foundation Ltd and the Victorian Pride Centre Ltd. Labor supports the listing of these organisations.

Schedule 3 provides that entities that promote Indigenous languages may be endorsed as deductible gift recipients. The income tax law currently provides support to cultural organisations that have a principal purpose of, among other things, promoting the arts of Indigenous peoples, but prior to these amendments this category didn't include organisations with a principal purpose of promoting the languages of Indigenous Australians. Given that there are estimated to be 250 original Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages and over 600 dialects, it is vital that we as a nation put measures in place to prevent the loss of these languages. One such measure is to extend deductible gift recipient status to organisations with a principal purpose of promoting Indigenous languages. I had many differences with the former Prime Minister, but one thing that I did admire about Malcolm Turnbull was his use of Ngunawal language in this place in delivering the Closing the Gap statements. It is a small way in which we, as non-Indigenous Australians, can acknowledge the rich Indigenous culture of this land, a culture going back 60,000 years, tens of thousands of years before the civilisations of ancient Greece and Rome, and joined to the present day through those traditional Indigenous languages. Organisations that support those languages should be supported in this way.

Schedule 4 makes changes to the Competition and Consumer Act, removing the exemption for conditional licensing or assignment of intellectual property rights, such as patents, registered designs, copyright and eligible circuit layout rights, from prohibitions on restrictive trade practices. The Productivity Commission's intellectual property arrangements inquiry report and the Harper review recommended that this subsection be repealed, largely because the rationale for the exemption has fallen away. The number of arrangements that are affected by removal of the exemption is likely to be small. Intellectual property rights do not of themselves have significant competition implications, and indeed the repeal of subsection 51(3) brings Australia into line with jurisdictions such as the United States, Canada and Europe, which do not provide an exemption from competition law for conditions of intellectual property transactions. In those jurisdictions, and in ours following the passage of this bill, intellectual property assignments and licences and their conditions will be assessed under competition law in the same way as we assess other commercial transactions.

I come now to the substance of the second reading amendment. We read in The Australian newspaper today that the charities commissioner, Gary Johns, has raised questions about the work done by environmental charities. This is not the first time that Mr Johns has criticised environmental charities. He said, for example, in The Australian, on 8 April 2015, when speaking about parliament's inquiry into environmental charities, that that inquiry 'should question the presumption of public benefit in environmental charities'. And today in The Australian, the head of the charities commission has said:

What I will say is that if governments don’t like the present regime, which is built around a purposes test, then they have to have something else. And that’s probably an activities test.

If governments want charities to butt out of partisan politics, then they'll have to think about whether the purposes test is strong enough.

So, we are seeing here the charities commissioner reverting to type, reverting to his role not as a supporter of charities but as a chief critic of charities, again showing that he is somebody whose role as a critic of charities is his primary focus.

We have seen from the charities commissioner a whole host of attacks on charities. He said in The Australian on 2 December 2014: 'The Abbott government should deny charity status to the enemies of progress.' He said in his book, The Charity Ball, 'The idea of public benefit needs to be trimmed and tested'. He said in that book, 'there is a great deal of impure altruism in the charities business.' He has attacked Indigenous reconciliation charity Recognise, describing it as 'the officially sanctioned propaganda arm of the Australian government.' He has criticised beyondblue, an organisation supported by the vast majority of members here on both sides of the House, as being an organisation which 'does no dignity to the national debate'. That's what the head of the charities commission says about beyondblue.

The charities commissioner is quoted today as saying, 'You don't want a commissioner who runs around like a bull at a gate.' Indeed, it is not the first time that he has used a bovine analogy when it comes to referring to public policy issues. He said on The Bolt Report on 12 July 2015, 'Look, a lot of poor women in this country, a large proportion of whom are Aboriginal, are used as cash cows, right.' That is our charities commissioner, and this is why the head of the Community Council of Australia described putting him in charge of the charities commission 'as a bizarre appointment' which 'sends a signal to charities the government is out to get them'.

As my second reading amendment details, this government have now gone through six ministers responsible for charities. They spent five years trying to shut down the charities commission. They have waged war not just on the environmental charities, as we've seen in inquiries involving the Liberal backbench, but also attacks on social service charities with the re-introduction of gag clauses, a measure which Senator Pratt has spoken out against strongly. There were then attacks on legal charities for their attempt to become engaged in the public policy debate. This is a government that believe that charities should have the ability to serve soup in a soup kitchen but not to talk about poverty and inequality; to plant trees but not talk about the root causes of deforestation; to help a client in a community legal centre but not talk about the root causes of rising incarceration.

Mr Johns was indeed a Labor member of parliament last century but he is no more Labor today than Billy Hughes was at the end of his career. The fact is that the government is continuing its war on charities. We have had two open letters to the Prime Minister complaining about attacks on charities, the most recent signed by Volunteering Australia, Carers Australia, the Australian Conservation Foundation, the Community Council of Australia, Justice Connect, Philanthropy Australia and the Starlight Foundation. The Liberals are great at bringing charities together. The only problem is, when they bring charities together, they are bringing together charities united against the Liberal government. We have seen possibly the only time in Australian history that GetUp! and the IPA have signed on to resist the same measure, which is the government's attempt to include charities in its ban on foreign political donations. That brought together the Hands Off Our Charities campaign and led to significant reform of those laws. Again, this was charities having to spend time campaigning against the ATM government, rather than getting on with helping the vulnerable.

We've seen a survey from Pro Bono Australia which found that two-thirds of Australian charities find it harder to be heard by the federal government than they did five years ago. Part of the reason for that is they don't know who to speak to. They've had six ministers in five years. It has been a revolving door of ministers responsible for charities in the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison government. They have changed charities ministers twice as fast as they've changed prime ministers, and that's saying something! Now we've had appointed as head of the charities commission—following on from Susan Pascoe, a woman well-respected across the sector—Gary Johns, whose appointment is akin to putting Ned Kelly in charge of bank security. It's akin to putting Bronwyn Bishop in charge of transport for politicians.

The fact is that Gary Johns is somebody whose appointment was announced in the hours after this House's historic same-sex marriage vote. People in this House will be familiar with the expression 'taking out the trash'. It is when governments look for a moment in which the public is focused on another issue to make an announcement they don't want to draw attention to. Well, the appointment of Gary Johns fits that description to a tee. Making that announcement in the hours following the same-sex marriage vote shows how nervous the government were about the response that they knew charities would deliver. This is somebody who believes in the scrapping of the Charities Act 2013.

The House should be clear about what happens if we scrap the 2013 Charities Act: we take charities law back to the 1600s. I'm sure there were good things about the 1600s. It was, after all, the Shakespearean era, and there were beautiful things going on at the Globe at that moment. But I'm not so sure that our charities want to be regulated by charities law of the 1600s, and yet that's what the head of our charities commission believes. As Brad Chilcott, the founder of Welcome to Australia, said, 'The message that charities should not be involved in advocacy is akin to saying you can plant a tree but you can't protect a forest.'

We on this side of the House don't want to put a velvet rope across the entry to the public square. We believe that Indigenous charities should have a role in talking about Indigenous policy and about redressing disadvantage. We on this side of the House believe that social services charities have a valuable role to play. Indeed, I pay tribute to UnitingCare, whose important report mapping the geography of child social exclusion came down this week, Anti-Poverty Week. It is another example of what you get when you're not scared about charities getting involved in the public domain.

When those opposite see charities talking about rising carbon emissions, about the threats to the Great Barrier Reef, they don't deal with the root causes of those problems. No, they put their tail between their legs and look to their hand-picked, unpopular-with-charities charities commissioner to try to shut down those voices. But the fact is we have Australian emissions rising, and, as every child in every school around Australia can tell you, Australia needs to tackle climate change. We need to tackle climate emissions, and attempting to shut down the advocacy work of important environmental charities is simply putting your head in the sand. Those targeted, according to The Australian's story, are Greenpeace, the Australian Conservation Foundation and 350.org. These organisations are no cheerleaders for the Australian Labor Party, but we on this side of the House are robust enough to believe in a healthy public debate.

We also support stronger reform to charities laws. We support the fixed fundraising campaign. We support the notion of the charities commission as a one-stop shop, removing duplicate state and territory reporting. We've held 16 Reconnected forums across Australia, talking to the leaders of more than 1,600 charities about rebuilding social capital in Australia. Labor wants to work with charities. The coalition is waging a war on charities, and at the helm of that war is the charities commissioner himself, Gary Johns.

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member. The member has moved an amendment. Is the amendment seconded?

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes.

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I call the member for Grayndler to speak to the amendment to the motion for the second reading?

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to speak on the amendment to the motion for the second reading of the Treasury Laws Amendment (2018 Measures No. 5) Bill 2018 because I am very pleased to support the member for Fenner. One of the things that is happening in this parliament, as you might have noticed, Madam Deputy Speaker Bird—as we see when we look at the list every day, as with the next bill, the Maritime Legislation Amendment Bill 2018, which I am responsible for, and then the Shipping Registration Amendment Bill 2018—is that there is no-one from the government prepared to defend their record, just as there is no-one from the government prepared to speak on this legislation, which deals with some minor amendments, but which provides an opportunity for this amendment to be moved about the failure of the government to understand that a strong civil society requires, and indeed is strengthened by, groups in the charity sector that are able to advocate particularly for the vulnerable in our community—and that's what charities do. The figures raised by my colleague the member for Fenner, that two-thirds of Australian charities find it harder to be heard, stand in stark contrast to what those opposite would have us believe is their ideology—the ideology of Menzies, which is about the individual and respecting individuals. The fact is that those opposite do not do that.

They want to shut down the capacity of people who don't agree with them to have a voice. That's why so many charities feel that this government has been more determined to intimidate them than concerned with actually listening to the issues that arise in our society. The fact is that many people in our community are much better off than they were decades ago, but it's also a fact that a lot of people feel as though they are being left behind. They are being left behind and they are increasingly reliant upon charity for themselves and their families, just to get by from day to day. It's also the case that the community sector should be able to have the capacity to speak out on a range of issues. That doesn't hurt us. I've been a government minister and had to deal with community sector people who mightn't agree with every issue. Every time you build an infrastructure project there will be someone who is adversely affected. What you need to do, though, is not to ignore them. You need to listen to them.

It's the same across the board. Sometimes you need to make decisions in which some people feel aggrieved, but, if they have had an opportunity to put their view, they at least will feel like they have been heard. What's more, it may well be that they come up with better solutions.

One of the things about a democracy, as opposed to a totalitarian regime—which I think those opposite sometimes resemble in the way that they conduct their affairs—is that a democracy allows for different voices, including dissenting voices, which strengthens outcomes.

Here we have, though, the quite extraordinary situation, as the shadow Assistant Treasurer has raised, of the appointment of the anti-charity advocate Gary Johns as Commissioner of the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission. It is quite extraordinary that we have someone who has advocated over this entire century—since he had his conversion!—having done quite well out of life himself, just as all parliamentarians are relatively well off!

Gary Johns did very well out of life. He got to be a minister. As a former minister, he's on a parliamentary pension which is significant. Yet he feels as though it is legitimate for him to essentially deride and ridicule and undermine those people who are not as well off as he is. The fact that this announcement was made public at the time that the marriage equality vote was being celebrated in this parliament says it all.

This was literally taking out the trash, when it comes to Gary Johns and when it comes to his attitude towards charities. It is quite indefensible, having been the darling of the new Right movement in Queensland and, indeed, nationally. He has regular columns in The Australian which, of course, continually mention he is a former minister for a Labor government. Quite frankly, so what? Lots of people change their views. Mark Latham, who is now a member of a far Right party, once sat in this chamber in a Labor caucus with me. I was never a fan of Mark Latham, I've got to say, and I was never a fan of Gary Johns. I was right on both occasions. This appointment wasn't appropriate, but it says a lot about the cynicism of this government. By all means, Gary Johns may well have been appropriate for a pro resources sector job or—I'm not quite sure; I'm trying to help him out here, but I can't think of much.

Certainly it's the amendment I'm speaking to, and it's a very good amendment by the member for Fenner, it must be said. I think the government is considering supporting this as they listen to the strength of our arguments.

Jason Falinski (Mackellar, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You'll have to do a better job than this to convince us!

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Mackellar, you can tell, was ready to cross the floor as soon as the member for Fenner raised his predecessor. The bells went off in his head and he was ready to walk across the chamber.

The fact is that in Anti-Poverty Week it is appropriate that the member for Fenner has moved this amendment. It is appropriate that we consider this government's attitude towards charities and not-for-profits. People who work for not-for-profit organisations, by and large, do it out of absolute commitment to their fellow Australians. They don't do it for the income that members of parliament receive for the job that we do; they do it out of their commitment. I know so many people who work in that sector who end up giving their own money to people when there's not enough money in the till for the particular fund, and I pay tribute to them. Of course, they rely on volunteers to keep those organisations going, to feed the homeless, to look after people or to visit elderly Australians in their homes. Many ethnic communities in my electorate rely upon volunteers who speak the language of the people concerned because many people, as they get older, lose their English and go back to their first language. People who work in youth work, looking after people who might be affected by drugs and alcohol, are trying to get them on the right track. There are organisations like Reclink, which I've had a lot to do with. There are people like Bill Crews and people like Father Chris Riley. These are the inspirations. When we look at the charity and not-for-profit sector, they could have done better than to have Gary Johns as their head. I commend the amendment moved by the member of Fenner to House.

Steve Irons (Swan, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Firstly, I'd like to thank those members who have contributed to this debate, and the member for Grayndler for jumping up—even though he wasn't on the list! But I thank him for giving us enough time to finish off the summing up.

The government is continuing with important reforms to improve Australia's taxation regime for the managed funds industry. We are committed to setting an appropriate legislative framework for what is the largest managed funds industry in our region. Schedule 1 to the Treasury Laws Amendment (2018 Measures No. 5) Bill 2018 provides for a package of technical amendments that will clarify the law, provide industry with increased investment certainty and assist those entities considering whether to opt in to the attribution-managed investment trust regime. The schedule also includes an integrity measure that prevents investors in managed investment trusts from excluding certain income amounts from their cost base, to ensure that investors are paying the appropriate amount of tax.

Schedule 2 to this bill updates the list of specifically listed deductible gift recipients to include: the Australian Sports Foundation Charitable Fund, the Australian Women Donors Network; the Paul Ramsay Foundation Ltd, The Q Foundation Trust, the Smile Like Drake Foundation Ltd, and the Victorian Pride Centre. These changes ensure that taxpayers who make gifts or donations of $2 or more to these entities can claim an income tax deduction.

Each of these organisations promotes important aims. The Australian Sports Foundation Charitable Fund supports projects where sport is the vehicle to achieve charitable aims. The government is supporting the Australian Women Donors Network to provide a voice for gender-inclusive philanthropy across all focus areas, including education, health, disability, youth and the arts. The Paul Ramsay Foundation Limited pursues one or more of the following charitable purposes in Australia: advancing health, advancing education and advancing social or public welfare. The Q Foundation Trust advances education and engagement in science and technology in Australia.

By granting deductible-gift-recipient status to the Smile Like Drake Foundation Limited, the government is supporting research into preventing drowning. It provides water safety education programs for schools. The Victorian Pride Centre will own and operate a centre in the state of Victoria that will facilitate and host support services, facilities and resources for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and/or intersex community. Specifically listing these organisations will give them the certainty they need to fundraise successfully.

Schedule 3 to this bill extends deductible-gift-recipient status to entities promoting Indigenous languages. This extension of the deductible-gift-recipient status provides appropriate assistance through the tax system for the public to make donations to these organisations. This measure will enable entities promoting Indigenous languages to be endorsed as deductible gift recipients under the category of cultural organisations, subject to the entities meeting the other requirements for their deductible-gift-recipient status. This will enable taxpayers to claim an income tax deduction for donations of $2 or more to those entities. There are estimated to be 250 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages and over 600 dialects. The extension of the deductible-gift-recipient status to entities supporting Indigenous languages is just one measure that the government has in place to prevent the loss of these languages.

Schedule 4 of the bill repeals subsection 51(3) of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010. The Productivity Commission recommended repealing subsection 51(3) in its 2016 intellectual property arrangements inquiry report. The 2015 Competition Policy Review also recommended repealing subsection 51(3). Subsection 51(3) of the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 exempts licencing or assignment of intellectual property from most of the prohibitions of anticompetitive conduct under the Competition and Consumer Act. The Productivity Commission found that the rationale for the exemption has largely fallen away, as intellectual property rights and competition are no longer thought to be the fundamental conflict. The measure will ensure that commercial transactions involving intellectual property rights, including the assignment and licensing of such rights, will be subject to the prohibitions on anticompetitive conduct in the Competition and Consumer Act.

The measure will take effect on the day after the end of the period of six months, beginning on the day the bill receives the royal assent. This transitional period will allow individuals and businesses time to review existing arrangements to ensure they comply with the competition law. I commend this bill to the House.

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The original question was that the bill be now read a second time. To this the honourable member for Fenner moved as an amendment that all words after 'That' be omitted with a view to substituting other words. The question now is that the amendment be agreed to.

Question negatived.

Original question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.