Ursula Stephens (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to contribute to this debate this afternoon on a matter of public importance and to put on the record some of the things that the government is doing to address the very issue that we are discussing today. Before I do, we heard Senator Boyce contributing to this debate and Senator Cameron pointed out, exactly, that she was someone with great courage who crossed the floor on this issue last time. I also remind members of the Senate that Senator Humphries is very clear in his support for climate change action. We look forward to seeing how he is going to support these bills because if he is really concerned at how we are looking after charitable and not-for-profit organisations in Australia then it behoves him to pay attention to exactly what is going on in this space. If he aspires to be a minister in a future government that might be considering these areas of policy reform, then he really does need to understand that this is an incredibly changing agenda. The reform agenda for the not-for-profit sector in Australia, which is about enabling those organisations to do what they do best, has come about simply because for the last 20 years the experience under the previous government has been one of regulatory burden, mountains of red tape, reporting requirements, convoluted arrangements—all laid bare in the work of the Senate Economics References Committee inquiry into the regulatory burden of not-for-profit organisations and then taken further, expanded and dissected by the Productivity Commission's major report on the sector. It recommended a series of very important changes to the environment that will free up their resources and enable the not-for-profit organisations to do what they do best.

For me, it is very important that this clean energy package and climate change response is not debated in a vacuum. It needs to be considered in the broader context of what we are doing. So, for the first time in Australia, we have a Non-Profit Sector Reform Council working very closely with the government. I convened several meetings with organisations in the sector about the issue of climate change and about crafting a response that made sure that the most vulnerable in our communities were not going to be adversely affected. That is why there is such a strong package of support for carers, pensioners and low income families in this package of bills.

For the sector itself, which is the point of this debate, there is so much more happening that is freeing up resources and reducing the pressure of red tape. A major piece of work that has been undertaken by an organisation in Sydney has looked at the compliance burden of not-for-profit organisations in Australia, by a myriad of standards, and has identified that, through a very simple and comprehensive reporting system that has been developed for state and territory governments and already applied to some Commonwealth agencies, the resources that could be freed up to frontline services would be hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. That represents the red tape burden of generations of government impost on the sector, and that is where we are going to make the biggest difference.

Now we are looking at the establishment of the Australian Charities and Not-for-Profits Commission, which comes in place from 1 July next year. Senator Bilyk talked about the extent to which organisations under the previous government were gagged, with actual contractual conditions that said 'you must not criticise the government'. The first thing that we were able to do when we came to government was to lift those gags, to encourage organisations to advocate not only on behalf of their clients but also for the policy reform and the policy change that they wanted to see. We encourage debate and welcome it.

We have come from that point to engaging with the sector through the national compact, which is about developing a collaborative relationship with the sector to get the end point that we all want. We have been working very closely to establish the charities commission. Australia should have been here a long time ago, but the previous government piked on the recommendation of the commission of inquiry, which recommended the establishment of a charities commission in 2002. So here we are, trying to catch up with what has been going on in the rest of the world for more than a decade. This is the way in which we will be supporting organisations through this change.

Now we have a relationship with the not-for-profit sector. We have representatives at the table considering the impact of legislation right across the board. So I can tell members of the opposition here that the not-for-profit sector have been at the table through the work of the Not-for-Profit Sector Reform Council, working closely with government, working closely with Treasury, working closely with the minister for climate change and working very closely with Minister Plibersek and Minister Macklin on the issue of climate change impacts, not just for their clients but for their organisations. We will be making sure that we can support those organisations as we progress through this.

The tax summit is coming up in October, and of course we are going to have the sector there at the table. That has probably been the biggest request and the biggest change that has happened. The sector tells us, 'Thank you—we are now engaged when policy is being developed.' That is going to make an important difference. I want to tell you why it is important and I have an example here which will perhaps explain the reason why regulatory reform and change will make a big difference and why people like Senator Birmingham need to support the extraordinary amount of work that is going on in the not-for-profit space. This is an email that came to me this morning from an organisation working really hard. It received some money from the government through the volunteer grants, and of course the volunteer grants also support organisations such as scouts and Meals on Wheels, which Senator Humphries mentioned, by providing money for fuel. But this organisation—a genuine, hardworking organisation registered in New South Wales as a not-for-profit organisation—wanted to buy a software package. Because it is an American software package, the guidelines are very narrow, rigid, restrictive, burdensome and pretty difficult. Unless you are a charity registered in the same way as charities are registered in America, you do not qualify for charitable purposes under the guidelines associated with the software package. It is a pretty common software package, I have to say. It is one that many, many organisations use. But because we do not have a definition of charities, because we do not have a charities register and because we do not have a charities commission that can sort these things out, this organisation in New South Wales which is defined as a charity for all of the purposes that we have here in Australia and which is registered in New South Wales cannot demonstrate to this large software company that it is a charity for the purpose of getting a price for this software. Instead of paying $500, this organisation is being asked to pay more than $2,160.

That is what we are doing for the not-for-profit sector in Australia. That is how we are supporting organisations. When we have a register, when we have a definition and when we have a charities commission, we will be where everybody else in developed countries is. We will be able to streamline and support our not-for-profit organisations through this whole carbon package and ensure that we can support them to do what they do best. So let us not think there is a quandary here. We know what we are doing. The Clean Energy Future package and the National Disability Insurance Scheme are the things that are going to make a difference for Australians.