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

This document is the first annual report of the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission, which came into operation on 3 December 2012. So this report reflects on seven months of operation to 30 June 2013. I place on the record my congratulations and my appreciation of the work of Commissioner Susan Pascoe and her team, who have done an amazing piece of work in a very short period of time. They have reported their work so closely and so carefully in a very accessible annual report. Ms Pascoe writes in her introduction:

Charities are essential to the wellbeing of the community—they enrich Australia's culture, strengthen our democracy, contribute to good public policy and advocate on behalf of individuals. They conduct essential work caring for vulnerable people, protecting the environment, educating children, promoting good health and enabling us to practise our faith.

As we all know, so much of the work that our charities do is supported by an amazing number of volunteers. On International Volunteer Day it is distinctly distressing to hear the news today that the minister has moved to end the function of the ACNC. I really need to put on the record that this first report of the ACNC, which may now be a collector's item, outlines the vast amount of work that has been identified by charities and not-for-profit organisations around Australia since the Industry Commission of 1996 first started looking at the complexity of regulation for charities and the not-for-profit sector. The work that has been done since that time—the massive piece of work that was undertaken by the Productivity Commission—led to the establishment of the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission last year when the act was finally passed through the parliament. It is just a gross injustice to all those who work in the not-for-profit sector here in Australia and all the communities who rely on the work of these organisations to have such an announcement made today that the minister is going to move very quickly to abolish the commission and repeal of the legislation by introducing new legislation into the parliament next year.

The minister has instructed the commission to start winding down its operations. The sector is aghast at what has happened, considering that we had invested so much in determining that the shape of this commission reflected the key challenges of: reducing the red tape and duplication; simplifying the state and territory regulations to allow charities and not-for-profit organisations to get on with the work that they need to do; building trust, confidence and transparency in the sector; and ensuring that there was not duplication.

The ACNC was established to be a one-stop shop for not-for-profit regulation, to deal with the vagaries and madness of fundraising legislation, to assist and support the ATO not being the gatekeeper and enabler of charities. Everybody recognised that those two functions needed to be separated. So the notion that we have the minister today, 12 months and two days after the organisation came into being, formally announcing that he is going to move quickly to remove this very important regulatory body from the Australian landscape is a disgrace.

I am distressed by the fact that the report reflects just how much work the ACNC has done. Around 80 per cent of the people surveyed believe that a charity register is very important. The fundamental thing that the ACNC actually did was to introduce the charity register. All of this work—10 years work—is actually going down the drain. It is an outrage.