Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I move amendments (1) and (2) on sheet 8930 together:

(1) Clause 3 (before line 9), before the definition of approved form, insert:

ACNC -registered charity has the meaning given by the A New Tax System (Goods and Services Tax) Act 1999.

(2) Clause 7, page 4 (after line 29), at the end of the clause, add:

  (3) If the rules make provision for a test of eligibility of an ACNC-registered charity to a payment, the test must:

     (a) exclude funding from a Commonwealth, State or Territory that is provided to the charity for a specific purpose; and

     (b) include income from:

     (i) individualised government funding, such as that provided for the purposes of the Child Care Subsidy or the National Disability Insurance Scheme; and

  (ii) donations; and

  (iii) investments and social enterprises; and

     (c) for the purposes of this subsection, an entity's turnover is to be assessed for each separate service the entity provides.

Note: An example of an entity providing separate services includes a single entity that provides disability, child care and aged care services.

  (4) Subsection (3) does not limit subsections (1) or (2).

These amendments relate to the definition of charity and the charity-specific eligibility. In my second reading contribution I made the argument for why I think this is essential. There are a couple of short points I wish to make.

What I didn't talk about in my second reading contribution, due to time, is the fact that this pandemic and the crisis have an impact on charities' ability to support and to have volunteers supporting their efforts. I did just want to make the point that charities are now struggling to access volunteers. In fact a number of charities and not-for-profits, I understand, have been told that their volunteers won't be covered for insurance, for COVID-19, which means that they will not be able to access volunteer support. In some instances they are then trying to see if they can get other volunteers or, in fact, have to pay workers. The point here is that we recognise and appreciate that we've gone down to 15 per cent versus 30 per cent for not-for-profits. The point is that a lot of charities and not-for-profits actually get a lot of tied grants. They have no discretion over that funding, but they've seen a significant drop-off in funding, in donations and in their revenue-raising capacity.

ACOSS did a short survey—I won't go through all the detail because of time. For me, one of the outstanding statistics on their members was: in less than 24 hours I understand 168 of their members, who represent a lot of people, responded and said that they felt that at this stage—37 per cent thought—they had job losses and thought that they wouldn't come under the 15 per cent turnover drop, because they have those tied grants. That 37 per cent would have job losses is quite significant.

So I'm moving this amendment. I won't rehash all my other arguments for this, but I do ask—and I do realise that the tax commissioner has some discretion—on what basis is the government prepared to reconsider this issue, if it doesn't support this amendment? I'm guessing, from what people have said, that it won't get supported. Is there a point at which you will keep reassessing the not-for-profit and charity sector, to see when the tax commissioner will look at exercising their discretion?