Sue Boyce (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I was going to seek to continue my remarks, as I have in the past on this document, but I feel as though I should speak on it. I think everyone should be properly grateful that I ensured that it stayed on the Notice Paper so that we could debate it tonight. One would get the view that prior to the existence of the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission, and it has been less than a year, the not-for-profits sector did not exist. I am surprised that they managed to stagger through without the ACNC to assist them.

Once again, the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee inquired into the establishment of the ACNC and at that time the then opposition—now government—senators expressed great concern about what was being done here in the terms of empire building. It had been put to me some time previously by the then minister Mr Shorten that the plan was to assist not-for-profits to become more efficient by combining their back-office activities. It was an absolutely great idea. Everyone would be in favour of ways of allowing not-for-profits and charities to perform more efficiently. To suggest that the existence of the ACNC actually does that in any way I cannot imagine because it certainly does not apply.

The annual report of the ACNC is an excellent report for an organisation that has been set up to do what it had been set up to do by the then Labor government. But that does not change the fact that it was not needed to do that job and the money that was spent to establish it. One other thing that the then opposition senators, such as myself, complained about during the inquiry was that the acting CEO had been appointed long before the inquiry had been completed and long before the commission was actually established by law. There were advertisements going out for staff—for dozens of staff—for this commission before it was established by this parliament. So once again we have the former government putting the cart before the horse and spending money unnecessarily to build empires where empires are not needed.

The current minister, Mr Kevin Andrews, plans that there will a centre of excellence to look at research and to suggest other ways to improve the activities and the governance of the charities and not-for-profit sector. They are and have been a very, very strong and integral part of the framework of the centre-right parties for a long time. The history of the establishment of charities would be littered with the activities of the British, in that case, Conservative Party who established the values and the framework that still underpin some of the activities in this area. But it did not need a monolith known as the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission costing the amount of money that it has to achieve a good and functional charities and not-for-profit sector.

The opposition might contemplate the idea that there is going to be legislation put through which will delay the establishment of the organisation so that it can be wound back. Once again, we had legislation after piece of legislation going through this place when the then Labor government came up with a great idea and implemented it, but forgot to put the framework in place to achieve it through the legislative framework. If anyone needed lessons in governance I think it was the former Labor government.

The not-for-profit sector in Australia can be reassured that the current government is very much in favour of a vibrant well-governed sector, and an advocacy sector that functions alongside that is absolutely critical to its good performance.